They said they want diversity for their children. That has nothing to do with how your environment impacted you. People are allowed to have preferences so long as in the process of acting on them, they don't trample on others' rights.
There isn't an objective reality. Depending on what you personally value, diversity could be a cost, benefit, or neutral for your children. You may not even know the results until much later, and even then it will be hard to discern the causal factors, though you may try to posit them.
It could also just come down to "I like living in a diverse environment because it's more interesting for me, and I'm only going to live once".
An objective reality with child-rearing? Apart from obvious things like not ignoring or abusing a child, there isn't one in my experience, but as they say ... whatever works for you.
> the policies/circumstances, such as being raised in a diverse environment, being allowed to watch TV, studying a lot, always wearing black socks etc. will or will not have impact (positive or negative) on those goals.
At best, perhaps raising kids in diverse environments allows them to be resilient in diverse environments as adults. At worst, it could cause them to harbor resentments against others nearby who are different than them. You can find kind, responsible, emotionally stable adults who were raised in both diverse and non-diverse environments. And you can find the opposite in both types of environments.
What’s the nuanced case for why Americans shouldn’t care that much about “diversity”?
I think any kind of tribalism-oriented bias or skepticism about “the other” is probably something we’re all oriented towards from an evolutionary standpoint. And so getting over that takes “brainwashing”, just like many, many other positive things in society. The concept of equal rights didn’t fall from the sky: we invented it because we thought it’d work better for everyone in the long run. And we have to constantly be reinforcing it or it falls apart.
Regarding the brainwashing - wouldn’t it be enough to explain to children that racism is just an unscientific, morally abhorrent belief? Why is there a need to push the idea that diversity is beneficial? It’s an unjustified belief which leads to comical conclusions, ex. that a two-person team, consisting of a black and a white mathematician! will be better than a team of two black or two white mathematicians.
It feels to me that whoever pushed this agenda went too far. People can feel the weakness in the “diversity is obviously good” claim, which makes them suspicious and sceptical of the whole idea.
I’m skeptical of your assessment that Polish people just aren’t racist at all, and I disagree with your splitting hairs between racism and xenophobia.
But beyond that, I’m baffled as to how you don’t see that in a discussion of the benefits of living in a diverse culture, xenophobia based on ethnicity being linked to a religion and then unfairly conflated with terrorism to justify mistreatment is the exact kind of problem I’m concerned with.
Diversity doesn’t just mean racial diversity, though it appears that Polish people aren’t as comfortable with that either as you’d like to believe.
wouldn’t it be enough to explain to children that racism is just an unscientific, morally abhorrent belief
If history is any guide, no.
Your example about the mathematicians makes me wonder if we’re even talking about the same thing. I don’t want my daughter seeing women mathematicians because I want her to believe their presence will make any team that they’re a part of better (even if true). I want her to see women who are mathematicians so she internalizes the idea that it’s a viable option. The “just tell her it is, even if the world around her tells her the opposite every day” is a recipe for failure. I want her to see it.
The US is not mono-racial by any measure, and has a long and troubled history with race relations.
So even taking the questionable argument that Poland isn't "very racist" at face value, it's wouldn't be applicable to the US anyway.
How do you know if you are successfully doing that, if they (or you) never encounter someone of another race?
I remember when one of the consequences of Alabama's 2011 immigration laws was them ticketing or arresting two automobile executives. (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/dec/02/alabama-car-bo...) I thought at the time that was a (sarcasm) great promotion to international corporations of the benefits of putting an office in Alabama.
As an atheist I certainly wouldn't move into any very religious area, which unfortunately is a fair bit of rural places. (For examples why, see: http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2014/05/24/atheists-in-the-bib...)
Well it certainly has impacted some Poles, considering they can't help but chant 'monkey' when they see a black person[0]
[0]https://edition.cnn.com/2012/06/08/sport/football/poland-rac...
Poland was the great innovator of Western science when Kopernicus looked at the stars, but Poland was remarkably tolerant at that time. Have you read "Poland Was Shockingly Liberal During The 1400s"?
http://www.smashcompany.com/philosophy/poland-was-shockingly...
But all of this exists outside of rural areas, and in fact in many areas close to metro hubs. Just because you're in a more urban environment does not guarantee you to have this utopian neighborhood.