Wanna Know the Downside of Diversity? Look at the Prison System.

Disgraced Illinois governor-turned-felon Rod Blagojevich recently appeared on “The Joe Rogan Experience,” detailing his experience behind bars. It’s a fascinating interview. But this clip in particular is especially worth your time:

Keep in mind, that Blagojevich was a blue-state Democrat. He cruised to victory in his last congressional election with a whopping 87% of the popular vote and won his final gubernatorial race with a 10-plus point edge. Until his downfall, he enjoyed vast support from minorities throughout the state.

But according to him, after his first full day in a maximum-security prison, the correctional officers called him in and told him to join an Aryan prison gang ASAP. He had committed the faux pas of socializing with black inmates out on the yard and was told point-blank that he needed to “ride” with the whites.

Otherwise, he was gonna get killed.

Prison is a deeply segregated environment. It’s expected that the whites stay with the whites, the blacks with the blacks, the Latinos with the Latinos, and never should they mix.

So Blagojevich met with the leaders of the Aryan prison gang and ceded to some of their demands: He wouldn’t sit with the blacks or Latinos anymore and agreed to hang with the whites. He didn’t like it, but he did it.

“And then they told me something which I respected,” Blagojevich told Rogan. “They said, look, you’re not in the real world anymore. This is not a place where you could be a civil rights advocate or a civil rights activist. This is a prison. You don’t have the same rights here that you have out there. …So, if you’re gonna sit with somebody outside your race in the chow hall, that’s a direct affront to us and there are measures that we can take to make sure that you don’t do those sorts of things. And I respected the fact that they said it was to keep order, and it was the culture, and pretty much everybody in the prison system accepts it anyway.”

According to the Aryan gang leader, segregation is what kept people safe.

It’s curious, isn’t it? Outside of prison, we keep hearing that diversity is our greatest strength — and to be fair, sometimes it is. Sometimes, when diverse skill sets converge, the sum total is exponentially greater than all the individual parts.

But sometimes, diversity leads to wars, violence, hatred, and death. Even in a tightly controlled, highly regimented place like a prison.

That’s because diversity is a net negative in an insecure environment.

Humans are tribal by nature. Our brains and emotions are still running on the same chemical cocktail as our caveman ancestors who clubbed strangers over their heads, abducted women, and placed our personal greed ahead of the collective good. Altruism doesn’t work when people are systemically unsafe, because violent, wicked people will exploit it.

Without safety, security, and shared cultural values, diversity will destroy an empire.

The great error of the Left is putting diversity ahead of safety: Leftists are letting immigrants flood our borders. They’re defunding the police. They’re confiscating our gun rights. They’re decriminalizing crimes. 

It’s a big reason why 73% of Americans now support militarizing the border: They don’t feel safe anymore.

Diversity is a luxury. It’s the icing on the cake of a stable, successful political system. But it’s not a luxury every country can afford. The consequences of getting it wrong are corruption, crime, social disintegration, and a cataclysmic civil war. Look at Afghanistan and remember the haunting quote from P.J. O’Rourke: “The Afghans themselves say that if you put two Afghans in a room, you get three factions.”

That’s not a recipe for stability.

If the Left wants diversity, it must come with security. Otherwise, it just doesn’t work. Instead, you end up proving the opposite point: That diversity is a failed concept. It’s too risky.

You’re undermining your own argument.

Prisons are extremely dangerous. That’s why there’s such strict segregation. So if you truly value diversity — and you’re not just cynically paying lip service to secure votes on Election Day — then you also need to be a fan of law and order. You can’t have one without the other.

Just ask Rod Blagojevich.