4 ms·
I know this observation may infringe on the boundaries of good taste, but this line stuck out to me - "I noticed that the group was one Black guy, one South As
by ALittleLight 6y ago
I know this observation may infringe on the boundaries of good taste, but this line stuck out to me -
"I noticed that the group was one Black guy, one South Asian guy, one East Asian guy, one White girl, and one guy who might have been Hispanic. It was like some sort of promotional photo from an HR department. And suddenly I thought of the Axis powers, and their insane delusions of racial purity and supremacy, and I thought: 'How could you idiots ever hope to beat us?'"
The United States was ~90% white for World War 2 [1]. Other major allied powers, the USSR and the UK probably were even moreso. It doesn't make sense to suggest that modern diversity had anything to do with World War 2.
A better, modern example, might be comparing the modern US to modern China, which is 92% Han Chinese[2]. Only, I'm not sure US dominance against China will be as decisive as it was against Nazi Germany.
1 - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_racial_and_ethnic_demographics_of_the_United_States https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_racial_and_ethnic...
2 - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_China https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_China
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- daniellarusso 6y agoAre you saying it is just a numbers game? I think of ‘Mythical Man Month’ and the notion that having more humans is not necessarily an advantage.
- ALittleLight 6y agoAll I'm saying is that modern diversity isn't a factor in America's performance in World War 2 as the author suggests.
- daniellarusso 6y agoLike the Navajo code talkers? https://www.intelligence.gov/index.php/people/barrier-breakers-in-history/453-navajo-code-talkers https://www.intelligence.gov/index.php/people/barrier-breake...
- dash2 6y agoYou may be wrong about the UK, which fought the war as the British Empire. I believe more than half the pilots that won the Battle of Britain came from the Commonwealth. The Battle of Monte Cassino included New Zealanders and Nepalis.
- ALittleLight 6y agoFair point. I think I'm still right about the US though.
- Apocryphon 6y agoRegardless of racial diversity, WWII-era U.S. had far more cultural and ethnic diversity than Germany. The Soviet Union, with its own hodgepodge of non-Russian minorities, was also quite diverse.
- ALittleLight 6y agoThe quote I excerpted is clearly referring to racial diversity.
- Apocryphon 6y agoDid diversity defeat the Axis powers? No, the industrial might of the two-oceans-guarded U.S. and the raw manpower of the Soviet Union did, among other factors, such as the atomic bomb. The author is putting the cart before the horse by attributing the diversity as the distinction that delivered victory to the Allies. But it's obviously in service of a rhetorical point, as inaccurate as it might have been- Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan was big on homogeneity and supremacy, and they lost; the U.S. is not, and we won. Make a pedantic point, get pedantic replies. I think it's arguable that the racial diversity of the modern U.S. was a natural outgrowth of the cultural/ethnic diversity of WWII era U.S.; by then, this country was already a melting pot. So there is some truth, however garbled, to the article's point. And it was a minor rhetorical observation in any case.
- watwut 6y agoModern diversity is about mixing up. They would not mix up in missisipy despite black population being massive.