In the end, we're all different: don't fixate on what unites us • Identity Abounds

You are probably familiar with the type of stories about how one night in a café a bunch of people from different countries had a great time together. They found out they all like dancing, love meeting new people, and all want world peace! Gone with the stereotypes! In the end, we’re all the same! Why can’t we just all get along?

Such approachment often happens within a select group of a rich, open-minded, worldly, liberal elite that speaks English, who together create the illusion of experiencing (and overcoming) diversity. This has been called homophilic diversity: these people look differently, but think very much the same – there is no cognitive diversity.

Comparable observations also sometimes come from travelers who meet the less privileged and share just enough time together to learn about kindness and generosity, but lack the time and overlapping vocabulary needed to find out about diverging world views.

Reflection on such experiences often takes the shape of celebrating the transcending of human nature. As if we have reached the next evolutionary stage of cosmopolitanism. As if we discovered that focusing on what unites us, rather than what divides us is the key to empathy and world peace.

Unfortunately, reality is not all butterflies, rainbows and daffodils. Certainly, in some very fundamental ways, all humans are the same. We share needs, wants, emotions, instincts. But in some other very fundamental ways, we are very different from each other.

We are different from each other both as individuals (personality) and as groups (culture). Together with our unique life experiences, personalities, and cultures create as many identities as there are people.

It can be harmful to only focus on what unites us and make discrimination unspoken of. We see this happening in many contexts, where discrimination is not detectable because it is a taboo subject. Explicit discrimination becomes implicit, which is more difficult to recognize. Endorsing norms of equality, people might themselves even become unaware of their own still-existing biases (leading to aversive racism and ambivalent prejudice).

Here’s an example of that. In strictly universalist France, it is forbidden to collect religious or ethnic census data. It is also a country where Jews are periodically murdered for being Jewish. Denial does not remedy antisemitism.

Differences do not justify discrimination. And ignoring differences does not solve problems. Differences exist and do matter.