Making an example: If A engages in the concensus behavior because they believe it to be proper on humanistic grunds, B engages in the concensus behavior because they have rule-based morality and respect the consensus, and C engages in the concensus behavior because their interpretation of their religion tells them to, you have a functioning diverse society. There are some odd edge cases when one party’s region of tolerence only barely overlaps the region of concensus (Most Intolerent Wins), but we can mostly live with those.
The hard problems are when there isn’t a region of consensus (either because of small-but-vocal group of holdouts or N large non-overlapping groups, which probably require different methods), and the stupid problems are when parties insist on arguing motivations instead of behaviors so even though they do have a region of consensus, they can’t get there (If A and C are unwilling to apply some theory-of-mind, they aren’t going to arrive at a region of consensus, because they aren’t going to get there the same way).
I do actually mostly agree with your part about the risk of arguing for the status quo, but I’m yet to see anyone proposing an alternative to uniform rules and negotiation around cultural baggage that doesn’t just shift around who gets to impose their values for local advantage, and always to a group that happens to include the speaker.
Then there’s your last paragraph where you are fearlessly telling me about white men, because it’s OK for you to judge your (partially incorrect, but since I’m arguing against identity-as-legitimacy I’m not about to invoke it) image of me on your value system, but it’s not OK for me to judge you on mine.
