Diversity vs. Division

I did not watch the Super Bowl this past weekend. I can honestly say that I haven't seen a moment of the game -- not even a highlight of the game shown afterward. So, I didn't know about Coca Cola's "America the Beautiful" commercial until folks started to talk about it after the game ended. When I heard about it, I watched the commercial.

Predictably, a number of folks took to places such as Twitter to voice displeasure that parts of "America the Beautiful" were sung in languages other than English during the commercial. Fortunately, it appears that even more people called out the English-only folks for the problematic aspects of what they were saying.  Perhaps just as predictably, a number of political pundits, including Rush Limbaugh, Laura Ingraham, and Glenn Beck, voiced their opposition to the commercial.  Among these, Beck suggested that the commercial was divisive because it set up a dichotomy in which either one is in favor of particular immigration policies or one is racist.

Honestly, though the immigration reading of the commercial is certainly there to be had, I hadn't even connected the commercial to immigration until I read Beck's comments.  To me, it came across as a commercial that reflected the diversity of cultures -- and with that the diversity of languages -- that constitute the United States of America and have constituted the country since before it even became a country.  We are not a country of one language, and democracy would compel us not to be a country of one language, for reasons I have explained before on this blog.  As I explained in that blog post, there are elements of racism built into English-only perspectives and policies.  The kind of diversity represented in having "America the Beautiful" sung in multiple languages can help to facilitate unity rather than divisiveness within democracy because it represents inclusion of multiple voices and the multiplicity of perspectives that those voices represent.

When I hear folks such as Beck argue that the Coke commercial is divisive, it rings as the same tone as what I heard from Beck's fellow conservative commentator, Sean Hannity, this summer when he responded to President Obama's speech about the George Zimmerman-Trayvon Martin verdict.  I was travelling by car on the day that Obama made that speech, and as I was flipping through radio stations, I heard Hannity say that Obama had a chance to promote unity but that Obama's comments had been divisive.  Yet, when I subsequently listened to Obama's speech, it seemed to reflect quite the opposite of what Hannity said.  Obama attempted to address and incorporate both the perspectives of those who were disappointed in the verdict and the perspectives of those who agreed with the verdict.  Similarly, Obama's comments attempted to address and incorporate the perspectives of many African-American communities who felt that the case reflected histories of failures of U.S. institutions to provide justice to African Americans as well as the perspectives of other communities, such as many white communities, who felt that the verdict represented a system of justice working effectively.  The ability to address and incorporate alternate and even opposing perspectives is fundamental to a functioning democracy, yet the likes of Hannity were dissatisfied because Obama's comments included not only their perspectives, but also perspectives different from theirs.  Hannity's comments thus reflect an exclusionary perspective that works against democracy, and the suggestion that portraying multiple languages in connection with U.S. identity is divisive does the same.

In the end, comments such as Hannity's about Obama's speech and Beck's about Coca Cola's commercial reinforce the power of privilege.  They call for unity built around privilege, wherein oppressed folks are asked to conform to an empowered culture and its perspectives.  I say this recognizing that neither the Obama administration nor the Coca Cola company is some kind of pure defender of social justice and democracy.  Far from it.  Indeed, incorporation of surface-level diversity can often serve as a kind of smoke screen that hides deeper forms of oppression.  In the case of Coca Cola, we might argue that the incorporation of multiple languages and cultures serves a kind of colonizing interest, hailing various folks to become consumers of this transnational company's products and thus increasing the company's global influence and power without real attention to the political, economic, and social conditions of need of the folks whom the company is hailing.

Yet, the kinds of comments about the incorporation of diverse perspectives offered by the likes of Hannity and Beck not only don't serve as a necessary resistance to such transnational influence and power; they advocate a form of colonization themselves, asserting the power of particular cultures and perspectives to dominate others.  As my wife very eloquently put it, diversity does not equal division.  She's right, and while that doesn't mean that Coke is an exemplar of standing for democracy, the sentiment of Coke's Super Bowl commercial does reflect democracy in action in a way that the commercial's detractors fail to do.