Unity is our strength

December 14, 2023 · 0 Comments

by BRIAN LOCKHART

‘United we stand – divided we fall.’

‘All for one, and one for all.’

‘Divide and conquer.’

Those are a few well-known phrases demonstrating that working as a group or unit is better than working in disarray. Several of those phrases are several thousand years old.

Even then, they knew the benefits of working as a team.

We have been getting the diversity thing jammed down our throats over the past few years. We all know what it’s supposed to mean, but the truth is, encouraging diversity just doesn’t work.

Take a look at those same phrases with diversity as the core meaning, and you get:

‘We stand apart – and we will fall.’

‘All for none, and none for all.’

‘Unite them, and we will be defeated.’

The whole diversity thing is supposed to encourage welcoming newcomers. Fair enough. But you shouldn’t need to be told that.

If you have a new person in your company, social group, or neighbourhood, the decent thing to do is make them feel welcome. That’s just a part of having good social skills.

However, saying ‘diversity is our strength’ is just nonsense. Diversity doesn’t create strength, the opposite happens. There are several thousand examples of this in the history books.

The federal government likes to use the ‘diversity is our strength’ thing a lot.

They weren’t saying that when the province of Quebec had its 1995 referendum to determine if it would proclaim itself a sovereign state.

At that time, Quebec’s diversity was a big problem, which could have cut the country in half. In fact, the federal government was doing everything it could to stop the diverse province from breaking away.

Now, the diversity thing has become one of the politically correct things that everyone has to use in the company or organization propaganda. I’ve seen it on company and organization websites when the company or organization is about as diverse as a bag of oranges.

But they still have it on the website because they feel pressured to have it on there.

From my experience, most people who come here from other countries don’t want to stand out as being diverse. Most of the people I know personally, who came here to live, want to blend into society and be part of the fabric of the country.

They may hang on to some of their cultural customs, but they don’t want to be known as ‘the guy from wherever.’ They know their kids will be growing up here and want them to fit in, not stand out.

It’s people from here who are pushing the diversity thing.

Several years ago, I did a photo shoot for a local organization. The photos were going to be used for marketing purposes and were of many of the people who worked there. Some of them were in uniforms, others held tools of the trade that identified their position in the organization.

The idea was to let the public know who worked there.

When the marketing team was choosing the final photos for the piece, one woman was not pleased.

‘We need to show more diversity’, she said.

For some reason, she directed her comment at me – as if I had anything to do with their hiring practices. I only took the photos.

I explained that I wouldn’t go out and find someone who looked different and take their photo as a ringer to show diversity. That would be insulting to both the organization and the person who was asked to pose because they looked different.

Fortunately, the rest of the team agreed that we didn’t need to bring in someone wearing a traditional dress from a foreign country to show the diversity that didn’t actually exist.

We should be promoting unity as a national message, not diversity.

The diversity message is nothing more than a political ploy to gain favour and garner votes.

No one ever won a hockey game by diversifying on the ice. No country ever won a war by not being unified.

Playing as a team will always produce the best results.