Is a Lack of Diversity Equivalent to Racism?

If you listen to Liberals and Conservatives you get a strikingly different characterization of our country.  Liberals want you to think that the country has never been more divided and that a divisive narrative is playing out in this country that threatens to doom our democracy; whereas Conservatives will have you think that the Liberal narrative is little more than sour grapes over the fact that Hillary Clinton lost the

2016 presidential election.

I have a theory which is different from the message that we hear from the President, from the Republican leadreship or from the Democratic leadership.  Let's take a look at the makeup of the leadership of the two parties.

Democrats have been preaching diversity for over 40 years.  The topmost leadership of the Democratic party are people who primarily come from New York and California, Michigan and Illinois.  These are states  where every day you are confronted with  diverse people and diverse mindsets, especially within the most populous cities in those states.  In Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York City, Chicago and Detroit, you are exposed to people of all races on a daily basis.  You are literally surrounded by every color of the Rainbow Coalition constantly.  Acceptance of diversity is not a question, it is an imperative.  You either accept diversity or you are out of step with  your community in a most profound manner.  However, even for liberals in Middle America, the daily exposure to a diverse population is less common. you may hold old fashioned attitudes and not be out of step with your community.

Democrats and liberals, in genera,l would have you believe that failure to accept every modality of diversity including every category within the LGBTQO+ continuum is racist and intolerant.  Perhaps this is true and perhaps the liberal leadership is correct, but is it not equally intolerant to call out everyone in the country who is not awake to the LGBTQO+ continuum as racists. Is it evil to be unenlightened?  I think not!  Rather, I think that it is wrong to label middle Americans as racists and anti-diversity solely because they have not been exposed to diversity.  This would be akin to labeling all sea life as alien simply because we cannot survive in a salt water ecosystem!  A fish is no more evil simply because it is a fish.  No more is a farmer in Iowa or a rancher in Wyoming a racist simply because they do not have the same concept of diversity as someone from San Francisco or Chicago.  They may not be tolerant or enlightened, but they are also not racists.

Liberals do not accept that there is a difference between lack of tolerance or lack of accepting diversity.  All are lumped into the efficient catchphrase "racist". It seems to me a rather intolerant perspective to classify everyone who doesn't think the way you do as intolerant, opposed to diversity and racist.  Clearly not all who do not think the same as the liberal establishment are not intolerant racists.  Moreover, isn't it hypocritical to label people who don't think the way that you do? Isn't that a lack of diversity itself?