Rebekah Nathan and Kwame Anthony Appiah on community and conversation

Rebekah Nathan in "Community and Diversity" and Kwame Anthony Appiah in "Making Conversation" and "The Primacy of Practice"

The Value of Community Organizations

Reflections on Rebekah Nathan in "Community and Diversity" and Kwame Anthony Appiah in "Making Conversation" and "The Primacy of Practice"

Paradoxically, the more a university or an organization creates a sense of community, and fosters local ties and connections between its members, the more expansive the outlook of the student body or organization. In her work "Community and Diversity" Rebekah Nathan mourns the death of community in the universities of today. Although the university Nathan attended as a pseudo-undergraduate tries to create a sense of shared community by assigning readings to incoming freshmen, and by requiring students to attend workshops that promote tolerance of diversity, these false constructs do little to promote real, long-term student engagement. Rather unsurprisingly, students would rather spend time with their friends, or on homework, then sit in a room with strangers and reflect about what diversity means to them.

However, student groups such as black student groups and Jewish student groups do foster support and encouragement for students of these backgrounds within the college environment. These groups also encourage all students to become more aware of national issues. When South Africa was under a system of apartheid, students encouraged their university to divest stock in companies based in the region. Jewish-American students have lobbied in support of Israel. Arab-American student groups have tried to show the positive face of Islam to the student body and educate others about a little-understood religion in America. Showing that young Arab-Americans can be patriotic, and act as educators, adds a more complex and accurate dimension to the way that this group is perceived even outside of the university community. These examples demonstrate how a strong sense of personal, locally grounded identity and nationality creates connections with the larger world and fosters a sense of greater civic responsibility in the young, and a more profound understanding of the international landscape in the minds of all Americans.

Loyal loyalties do not preclude having a sense of one's greater national responsibilities. In fact, they can foster them, as local support can create a sense of organizational engagement. Think of the campus political action organizations that urge students to register to vote. Many of these students, otherwise absorbed in their own social lives, would never have made the effort to do so, had it not been for local political organizations. Although they may be tuned into international news on their television screens, the push to make the physical effort to actually vote often must take place at the local level.

Also, if a local organization helps a student, for example, a black student to feel more acculturated into a new community, that student is more apt to wish to do the same for others, and to help others. Many black student organizations were highly influential in sending needed aid and support to the poor, largely African-American residents of New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, even though they lived far away from the 9th ward. A sense of commonly shared identity as an 'African-American' promoted a sense of responsibility and activism for the residents of a city many volunteers had never visited or seen.

Exposure to diversity alone does not promote tolerance, in fact, it can do quite the opposite, as exposure to diversity without really acknowledging and appreciating the differences of the 'other' can create hostility. This is the danger of diversity and pluralism -- remember that many intolerant terrorists such as the men who were behind the London Underground bombings were not uneducated, and were exposed to Western, secular influences. But if an individual does not feel as if he or she as a secure identity, the presence of great diversity can feel like an attack upon that person's fragile sense of self, rather than a gift. First, an individual must have a secure, local identity, and only then he or she can move out into the wider community and make a contribution. This is the importance of local affiliation -- it gives am emotional security to individuals, and enables them to feel recognized for who they 'truly' are as people.

This is also why it is critical that local and nationalist organization are not be shunned or feared, despite the rhetoric of 'American values,' and that we are all 'the same.' We cannot do away with community, and the common, human, personal need for local, regional, and national ties. Rather these local organizations should be appreciated for the gifts they give to their participants, and to the larger world. The danger of a false cosmopolitanism is that it can become another word for the melting pot, or the shaking off of any sense of heritage or identity. Today there is great danger posed by atomization, rampant individualism, and the younger generation's disconnection from any responsibilities to others at all. Cosmopolitanism is just another false word for the 'melting pot' when someone who identifies as a citizen of the world sees him or herself as really having no responsibility to others at all -- he or she is, in striving to be all things, really nothing, no ties to place, religion, family, or home.

Cosmopolitanism as defined by Kwame Anthony Appiah, however, means recognizing one's cosmopolitan duties and engaging in political action on the local level, while examining how local issues can impact the national and international agenda. Still, despite Appaiah's enthusiasm for internationalism, true charity must begin at home. This is not to say that the greater 'concectedness' provided by worldwide media such as the Internet does not have its value. The Internet has enabled people in remote locations to learn more about life, and lives, all over the world, that they would never have known about had they not become part of the world virtual community. The Internet allows individuals to communicate their personal lives and struggles through blogs, and enables someone living in Bangladesh to humanize his or her existence for someone living in Ohio. The personalization and one-on-one connection conveyed by local community organizations can take place in the virtual space as well as the real world.