Skin Deep-Only Diversity
Young Brian J. Bolduc of Harvard University gets to the crux of a complaint against leftist America’s odd obsession with diversity: it’s only skin deep. Why not discriminate against left-leaning students to admit more right-leaning students for political diversity? Why not discriminate against atheists and agnostics to admit more Christians for religious diversity? Or Muslims? Or Hindus?
For those who missed the sarcasm, it’s there if you look.
Bolduc writes (emphasis added):
“This year’s freshmen are the most racially and economically diverse first-year students ever. One-fifth are Asian, one-tenth Hispanic, another tenth black. Two-thirds receive financial aid. To highlight this variety, the Freshman Dean’s Office tomorrow will hold ‘Community Conversations’—discussions in which freshmen will ’situate [themselves] within this diversity.’
“This is superficial diversity. If freshmen resemble their elders—four-fifths of whom voted for President Barack H. Obama—most lean left. Diverse backgrounds do not necessarily mean diverse perspectives. Unfortunately, the readings the FDO has assigned—specifically those by Beverly Tatum, president of Spelman College, Frank Wu, a professor at Howard University, and Felice Yeskel, co-founder of Class Action—reinforce this misconception. The authors offer different experiences but identical conclusions: Groups define individuals.
“Tatum, for instance, praises a white man for recognizing the ‘inescapability of his privilege’ over blacks. When her son asks her how they—middle-class African-Americans—are underprivileged compared to working-class whites, she tells him, “‘as a young black male, you are underrepresented, and that is a different kind of disadvantage.’” Her assumption that blacks’ representation must match their percentage of the population strips individuals of the ability to make their own choices.”
In a classic smoke-and-mirrors maneuver, so-called disadvantage morphed from overt racism against an individual to merely belonging to an “underrepresented” group. You just can’t win or make it in “racist” America.
For more insight on the topic, read the full text of Bolduc’s piece.
