What’s the difference, indeed? Well, there all kinds of differences. We look different from one another. We talk differently. We live different places. We think and we feel differently from each other. We have different ways. We have different religions and different values. We want different things from the lives we lead.
Matthew Engelke said, “While anthropology wants to document difference – and often to be a witness to it – it also wants to make sense of those differences. Anthropology seeks to explain.” A hundred years ago, I taught Introduction to Sociology and Cultural Anthropology. That study of anthropology must be where I got my need to explain.
I particularly liked teaching several sections, among them was Assimilation vs. Differentiation or the Melting Pot vs. the Salad Bowl. Assimilation spoke to European emigration to the U.S. in the 19th century, when the goal was nation-building, and one nation, under God was the ideal. This is from whence many of you, and I hailed.
People thought at that time, the nation would be best served by a people with one identity, therefore, the various immigrant nationalities were expected, or forced – depending upon one’s perspective, to set aside their unique national heritage and identity for the sake of becoming American. We were a melting pot, or a soup cauldron. James Baldwin put it this way, “The American ideal, after all is that everyone should be as much alike as possible.”
You’ve heard the idiom, “It’s the same-difference?” Same difference comes from a melding of the word same and the phrase no difference, and it first appeared in 1945. Well, we’re not the same, although “There is very little difference in people, but that little difference makes a big difference. The little difference is attitude” (W. Clement Stone).
As to the differences between people, I like the way Bill Clinton put it, “Our differences do matter, but our common humanity matters more.” However, we can all likely agree with Vincent O’Sullivan that “If you’re different from the rest of the flock, they bite you.” Don’t they just?
I’m okay with soup, but its consolidation of a bunch of flavors, textures, and solids into a smooth, singular sensation leaves me wanting. In fact, the soups I prefer are chunky, not a pulverized, smooth amalgamation of nothing in particular.
I overwhelmingly prefer salad. The crunch, surprising changes in flavor, and discernible differences in ingredients are what satisfy my palate.
Differentiation speaks to more recent emigration to the U.S. and a “we are the world,” multi-culturalism. The salad bowl metaphor depicts our culture as one in which a flavorful, colorful, crunchy mixture of unique cultures work separately and together to freely form a diverse people into one union – unity within diversity.
Personally, I think the crunchy part of the salad is the most telling, culturally. Crunchy is what differences between groups produce. Other ways than my ways make me bristle and frankly the clash of cultural or ideational textures sometimes “rubs me the wrong way;” just like the sensation of wool on my skin.
Some folks just don’t want to fight through our differences. It’s easier to just stick with the easier route of spending time only with those who are like us. I guess if you prefer not to distinguish between a burro, which is an ass, and a burrow, which is a hole in the ground, then you’ll never know the difference between your ass and a hole in the ground.
We have our differences. Think on these thoughtful quotes: Marty Rubin said, “the sea and the shore disagree, it’s only natural.” I would add, but oh when the two meet!
Another one is, “The heart and mind work together but make decisions differently (Ehsan Sehgal).” This is the very definition of wholeness. You can’t separate the heart and the mind, they work together, making us whole. Finally, “We all see the same thing, but interpret it differently (Sukant Ratnakar).” Rasheed Ogunlaru said, “We are one at the root – we just part at the branch.” I’m all about trees and branches, and such.
Now, I segue to The Tower of Babel, which I always understood was about God’s judgment on a narcissistic bunch of unruly, mean-spirited people; a people with one mind and goal – setting themselves above God. Thus, the tower they were building, was intended to gain a one-up on the Almighty God.
Rabbi Sacks (Not in God’s Name) parlays another, more plausible truth of the matter of The Tower of Babel. He reminds us that Genesis Chapter 10 tells of seventy nations with seventy languages – God-given differences and each respected for their uniqueness, working at nation-building.
By Genesis Chapter 11, one imperial power imposed its monotheistic will on the seventy nations, making them follow one God, one truth, and one way, and speak one language. This now, one nation was orderly and compliant (a primary goal of nation-builders), but bland and devoid of life and color.
God – the Founder of Monotheism, when he confused the language of the builders of the tower (Genesis 11:7) was not pronouncing judgment, but restoring the nations to their distinct, unique, cultural identities. Sacks (Not in God’s Name) suggests that the whole of the Hebrew Bible is God’s attempt to show humankind the way out of our “fundamental human dilemma” of difference.
No matter what our differences, if we remember that we all have something in common – the image of God inside us – that glimmer of commonality can point us toward peace. No matter how ugly, beautiful, sinful, saintly, grotesque or majestic we look or behave; we have a common feature: God’s image. Remember, “One who is not in my image is nonetheless in God’s image” (Sacks, p. 202).
“Vive la difference!”