IF I HAD A HAMMER.

At least Inside Higher Ed's diversity pundit Eboo Patel is thinking about the American Creed.

As Jane Addams wrote, “We know instinctively that if we grow contemptuous of our fellows and consciously limit our intercourse to certain kinds of people whom we have previously decided to respect, we not only tremendously circumscribe our range of life, but limit the scope of our ethics.”

Which language – the multiculturalism that speaks principally of white privilege and systems of oppression, or the multiculturalism that speaks optimistically of American inclusiveness and welcome – is a more useful tool to bang the world into shape?

Hectoring, condescending, privilege-checking, deplorable-shaming: contributing to more Trump? “Every time I turned on the TV, there’s a Democrat calling me a racist and I just got tired of it.”  The generalization to campus diversity tsars is straightforward.

Assimilation is a multi-directional, emergent phenomenon, and it might be wise for diversity pundits, particularly recently-arrived diversity pundits, to remember this.  "You're here because where you left, things sucked. Have you considered that things don't suck here because we got a few things right?"

Mr Patel is correct to speak of inclusiveness and welcome: that's the country buying into its new arrivals.  It's also important for the new arrivals to buy into the country.  Banging things into shape is for drop forges.