Bayou Business Review, p. 25, February 22, 1999

February is Black History month. Now I’m not sure that its such a good idea to separate Black History from American History, because the two are so intertwined. I’m also not sure if its such a good idea to have one month dedicated to Black History, as it is so easy to forget in eleven months what one pays attention to in one month. That said, this column is really not going to be about Black History as it is about diversity.

Diversity is not inherently a good thing. Diversity in morals has just led our nation into a trying period of its history. Some have raised up "diversity" to be a social virtue in an attempt to gain acceptance for behavior that many find to be unacceptable, just morally wrong. There have been times in both our distant and recent pasts when differences define the lines of hate that diversity has helped bring us to blows with one another, from the brutality that was slavery to the Civil War to Jim Crow, to lynchings and cross burnings, to race riots and to the madness that occurred in Jasper.

Diversity, however, can be a blessing if we can learn to harness it to improve ourselves, our situations and not as a dividing line between the "them" that we perceive to be our enemy and the "us" that we see as our allies. Society does not have to be at war within itself. Cooperation, instead of antagonism, can be the norm if we employ the tools or institutions of cooperation instead of the institutions of antagonism.

The political process, as we have just witnessed, mostly creates both winners and losers. When the issue to be resolved is redistributive, taking from Peter to pay Paul, and it almost always is when it is political, the political process certainly creates winners and losers, engendering hostility between the two. People divide up along some lines to devise ways to take from one another and to keep from being taken, diverting precious time from production to robbery and protection.

Trade, or market processes and institutions, creates winners and winners--no one voluntarily enters into a contract if they expect to lose in the deal. While competition is involved, competition is focused at producing, at offering customers a better deal, instead of taking and protection.

What does trade have to do with diversity? Differences, whether diverse tastes or diverse talents or diverse abilities, create the potential for profit and the potential for trade, in the same way that differences in charges create the potential for the flow of electrons, an electric current. Trade is cooperation, cooperation between buyer and seller to further the goals of both.

In America, we have seen great profits from our mingling of diverse cultures. We see it in the different cuisines we love to sample, in the different music genres we listen to now and when we were young. For instance, the blues is at the roots of just about every form of popular American music.

The best way for me to think about the gains from trade due to our differences is to imagine a large family gathering to share a Sunday dinner of fried chicken. If everyone wanted the same piece, either a lot of folks will not be satisfied, or the family will have to spend much more to buy the select pieces. However, if the family has diverse tastes, with different family members liking different pieces of chicken, more can be satisfied with less than if they all craved the same chicken piece.

Because we have different tastes, talents and abilities, we can profit from these differences if we engage in trade. If our dealings with one another occur more through the political process, the chances are that our differences will lead to resentment.

When we celebrate the diversity of our culture, we should also celebrate the institutions that make diversity a source of mutual gain instead of mutual contention.