Chris Jepson: The Glorious Diversity of America

I’m a certifiable Iowa-born white boy. My Danish grandparents were of the Scandinavian pale white variety. I’m so white the Pillsbury Dough Boy could be a relative. I didn’t have a black friend until my senior year in high school. My hometown of Sioux City was essentially—in the 1950s and 60s—a community of all-white neighborhoods. I did not encounter significant (for me) racial diversity until I started college in Missouri in 1967.

Regarding sexual-orientation, I am unaware to this day of any of my grade through high school classmates who were gay. That’s on me. I wasn’t the most astute of observers. One’s sexual proclivities were, unlike today, hidden. Oh, I was aware that certain men at the YMCA were, for the lack of a better word, “withdrawn” but I had only indirect contact (“Hi, how ya doing?”) with them.

My first gay friend made a pass at me. He is the only person in my life to actually do so. It was 1979 in Omaha. I was the executive director for the Nebraska Affiliate of the American Diabetes Association. I was at lunch with the most popular radio DJ in Omaha, attempting to recruit him to be chairman of a citywide fundraising event. Before I could make my pitch, he says, “I find you most attractive.” (DANGER WILL ROBINSON!) I didn’t hear the rest of his comments because I’m thinking my gawd, what am I to do? This cannot be happening. He’s saying what? This is going to end so disastrously in failure.

And then the words magically appeared in my mind and I offered, “Dave, I’m extremely flattered but I just don’t swing that way.” And that was that. He essentially said you can’t fault a man for trying. And we became good friends. He was smart, warm, extravagant, theatrical and wonderfully entertaining. We laughed a lot.

I grew-up insulated from diversity of all types. That’s not a personal indictment. It’s neither here nor there, it just is. I wasn’t required to consider diversity because 1.) my exposure was limited and 2.) my thinking then reflected my narrow life experiences. The more I’ve grown as a rational, feeling man, the more I’ve determined our individual differences as human beings are genuinely insignificant and non-threatening. Rather, America’s incredible diversity is enriching us all in unimaginably wonderful (and measurable) ways and must be lauded and applauded from every rooftop, in every political speech.

Do it any way you want is my philosophy but if you want my opinion . . .

My opinion is old white Boomers (and their parents) will inevitably move on (die) and the issues that roil our political discourse today will shift from color, ethnicity, immigration and sexual orientation, to issues more “purely” associated with wealth and economic opportunity.

My opinion is you have a Republican Party with a presumptive presidential nominee in Donald Trump who will hopefully be the last of his Party’s kind, one who disgustingly polarizes America with the groundless Republican fearmongering of “little brown-skinned immigrants and queers.”

My opinion is America is unquestionably better because of the vitality, energy, creativity and humanity of all its citizens. All of us. We are stronger, more resilient as a result. There really is no other nation on Earth quite like the United States. We truly are exceptional and our incredible diversity is sufficient reason to celebrate. It is America. It is who and what we are.