Diversity: “People Like Us”

Part 1: Summary of “People Like Us” by David Brooks

People like us is an article about America’s diversity, well actually it’s about the lack of diversity within our diverse culture. Mr. Brooks proclaims that America boasts for being an extremely diverse society; but he shows many examples of how America is still segregated by choice, by habits and other measurable categories. Mr. Brooks proclaims that people of the same race and income level tend to flock together and live in the same communities. Some examples of this is Black’s tend to live in the same neighborhoods by class, being low income, middle class, upper middle. He also says people move to areas that are known for certain characteristics such as mountain bikers moving to a certain city because that city is known be to have a large mountain biker population. Mr. Brooks says trends and tendencies like this makes America less diversified and this makes most places look the same as other neighborhoods in other area with the same type of people. People look for cultural affinity and move there.

Mr. Brooks spends a lot of time explaining high end professions tend to have certain commonalities such as most college professors who teach Sociology tend to be democrats. So in return they only hire other democrats to fill vacant positions, thus eliminating diversity in the work place regarding politics. Some colleges only hire republicans.

The author also says marketing firms track our habits and can accurately predict what each group or class of people will purchase and live. These firms have vast data on all groups of people and target them by what others like them have done and are doing.

Finally Mr. Brooks suggest to break the norms and do something totally uncharacteristic for your race or culture. He wants you to embrace different cultures, people and ideas.

Part 2: My response to the article People Like Us

I agree with Mr. Brooks on many of his points. We tend to be creatures of habit and we usually flock together, no pun intended. We often find comfort in being around others like us. In many cases, a case could be made that certain types of people have certain tendencies. Does this make us less diverse? I don’t think so. If anyone looks hard enough at any situation he will find commonalities and differences. It’s up to that person to report his view from his prospective. He can choose to ignore all facts that prove a different prospective from his report.

Mr. Brooks only looks at the diversity or lack of diversity issue from one side. America is also free and that is an important aspect of diversity. We can practice what ever we want to. So when we move from place to place we are being diverse, even if we move to places where others are that share our values and goals. Having said that, I know of many blacks and other races that move to neighborhoods where they are the only family of their race or culture there. Like Indians from India, they move to areas all over and bring their diverse culture with them including their clothing, religion, cooking and other traditions. Hispanics are others that do this also. They thrive of being in a strange place and learning new cultures.

Politics in the work place should not be discussed, so if a trend exists it could be unintentional. Also I have always heard that blacks are democrats, yet two of the most powerful black people are republicans. I’m speaking of Colin Powel and Connie Rice. So people are diverse in all areas although the majority may share a great deal of commonalities. So the point to diversity is there’s no point, we are free to come, go, live and practice any subculture we choose even if it’s the traditional one.