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 ere
are three items chosen from last week's news — not quite at
random but not requiring any very diligent search either. They concern
America's new public religion, "diversity," both its theology
and its cultic rites. Diversity, of course, is the current euphemism
for race and gender preferences in respectable public discourse.
It has replaced "rigid quotas," "quotas," and
"affirmative action," becoming less accurate in what it
describes at every stage. And it now hovers somewhere in the philosophical
stratosphere as an unquestionably good thing in the minds of what
the British derisively call "the Great and the Good."
But here is
the news: (1) "In what is being called the first joint declaration
of its kind, a group of leaders from U.S. businesses, universities
and museums are warning that the country faces a crisis unless it
achieves greater diversity in education and the workplace. "Diversity
is an invaluable competitive asset that America cannot afford to
ignore," said Stephen G. Butler, chairman and chief executive
officer of KPMG consulting company." Houston Chronicle.
(2) "A
decision to depict firefighters of different races in a memorial
statue — based on the famous photograph of three white firefighters
raising an American flag at "Ground Zero" — has drawn
criticism from some who call it an attempt to rewrite history. The
19-foot-high bronze sculpture recalls the scene . . . when New York
City firefighters Dan McWilliams, George Johnson, and Billy Eisengrein
anchored a flagpole in about 20 feet of rubble at the World Trade
Center. FDNY spokesman Frank Gribbon said a statue representing
firefighters who are white, black, and Hispanic more accurately
represents the 343 department members killed in the attacks."
Fox News.
(3) Harvard
President Lawrence Summers issued a statement yesterday endorsing
the university's tradition of "diversity" and agreeing
to reconsider his decision not to establish a Latino Studies Center
following a public row between himself and several Black scholars
at Harvard, in particular Professor Cornel West. After it became
public knowledge that Dr. Summers had criticized Professor West's
extracurricular activities, including his recording of a "hip
hop" album, and the high average grades he gives his students,
some of Harvard's leading black figures threatened to decamp to
the rival Ivy League campus at Princeton. The Rev. Jesse Jackson
and the Rev Al Sharpton both threatened to intervene on Professor
West's behalf and criticized Dr. Summers's lack of support for "affirmative
action. But with the Harvard president's statement, accepted as
an apology by his critics, the row seems to be receding. My summary
of virtually every news outlet in the U.S.
Such items
could very easily be culled from almost any day's newspaper. Indeed,
Americans Against Discrimination and Preferences
collects and distributes just such a list every day. It gives a
daily account of what the practical meaning of "diversity"
is in everyday American life. Accordingly it reveals the vast gap
that yawns between the upbeat "diversity" boosterism of
politicians, CEOs, and university presidents (illustrated by the
first item) and the often absurd or sordid results of it in practice
(illustrated in items (2) and (3).)
For instance,
does the atmosphere of Harvard in item (3) really suggest that its
students will develop the greater "creativity, innovation and
problem-solving skills" touted by Stephen Butler in item (1)?
Are they being encouraged to be true scholars and seek the truth
with neither fear nor favor? Or are they really being trained in
techniques of moral blackmail, racial huckstering, evasion, crowd-pleasing,
socially correct attitudes, and avoiding some truths at all costs.
Universities — the forcing-houses of diversity and multiculturalism
— have some of the worst race relations in America, with outright
segregation of dormitories and student societies.
A diversity
that emerged naturally from competition between able and industrious
minds would be another matter. And it is worth briefly examining
why that diversity is worlds apart from Mr. Butler's questionable
piety. The mutual respect that exists between people of different
backgrounds who nonetheless can recognize worthy rivals and worthwhile
accomplices would indeed be a sound basis for America's economic
advance. But when people rise not through ability and effort but
through legal privilege and a kind of dispersed ethnic nepotism,
they excite jealousy, hostility, and indignation in others and feel
in themselves lack of esteem and a prickly defensiveness —
and that kind of diversity promotes a workplace atmosphere decidedly
hostile to individual achievement and collective cooperation. Which
brings us to items (2) and (3).
Item (2) demonstrates
how diversity can ruin the most obvious of good causes. Thus, the
FDNY spokesman who defended the multicultural forging of the firefighter
photograph did so on the grounds that it more accurately represented
the 343 firefighters killed in the attack. Statistically speaking
— and "diversity" rests upon statistics in every
other context — that is not so. The overwhelming majority of
firefighters, both the total and those who died, were white-as the
department's own figures show.
Still, twelve
black firefighters did indeed die on September 11. And those heroic
deaths would certainly have justified a generic portrayal of firefighters
of different races hastening to the rescue. What it cannot support
is taking a photograph of three living men who acted heroically
and turning them into a racial morality play that never actually
happened.
For a monument
to heroism then becomes just another "virtuous lie" in
the lexicon of the diversity industry. And every group not included
then has a grievance of sorts — why, for instance, was one
of the firefighters not transformed into a firewoman? There are
a few around — and doubtless they are brave enough even if
none of them actually perished on September 11.
Why was such
a needless lie perpetrated? One is tempted to suggest that the reason
was habit. Managers of diversity lie so often and so readily —
about, for instance, the race and gender preferences that are said
to be nonexistent until they are outlawed and a long-established
necessity afterwards — that it is probably easier for them
to lie than to think of a reasonable justification for the practice.
And although
this particular lie was needless, most of them are genuinely essential
to safeguarding what is a controversial notion. "Diversity"
is, after all, a defense of legal privileges that run counter to
the legal equality that was the basis and justification of the American
Revolution. If it were openly avowed with arguments related to its
real character, rational criticism and public indignation might
well undermine it. Hence the feeble and dishonest claptrap that
is usually produced in its defense.
Take, for instance,
the statement in item (1) arguing that diversity in the workforce
is essential to selling goods to the world's diverse marketplace.
It sounds plausible
enough, but it disintegrates upon the most modest examination. After
all, the most successful exporters of the last 50 years were the
ethnocentric Japanese who, despite a complete lack of diversity
in their workforce and management, managed to sell Japanese autos
to a market that for most of the period still remembered Pearl Harbor.
And so on.
And as the
writer Peter Skerry points out in the current (and liberal) Brookings
Review, any dispassionate examination of "diversity" suggests
that it has both advantages and drawbacks. It draws upon the experience
and cultural tastes of a wider range of people and may therefore
bring new ideas into the workplace — as it advocates always
insist. For the same reason, however, it also produces misunderstandings,
even conflict, and maximizes the inefficiency that occurs when people
don't understand each other either literally or figuratively.
Think of how
carefully we have to police the speech of a diverse workplace —
if only to keep lawsuits to a minimum. . Diversity thus needs to
be managed — i.e. it absorbs such resources as management time
as well as augmenting them. No wonder Stephen Butler favors it-half
the advice his company gives to corporations is probably designed
to help them avoid ending up in the courts.
Consider also
the descent of American public debate into a timid and platitudinous
exchange of soundbites. Politicians cannot risk saying anything
serious because a single unconsidered phrase might destroy their
career by exposing them, however absurdly, to the charge of racism
(and related offenses.) And the more we emphasize ethnic separateness
rather than the common American experience, the more a common democratic
debate becomes a minefield of gaffes and inadvertent insults —
and consequently the more "diversity" becomes a description
of mutual social hostilities kept in check by the public imposition
of a political orthodoxy and a generic "niceness."
All of this
may give upper middle class businessmen and bureaucrats the warm
self-congratulatory feeling that they are helping the poor and minorities
triumph over the bigotry of most Americans. What it actually achieves,
however, is to hold back those it claims to assist-by systematically
mismatching Black and Hispanic students with colleges where they
compete with the very ablest Asian and white students and from which
unfair competition they drop out in disproportionately high numbers.
We need therefore
to strip away the false impression of a costless good that clings
to the notion of "diversity" in the public mind —
or at least the grey-flannel mind of the corporate bureaucrat. It
is not costless; it may not even be a good; and it is certainly
not the Good Thing that the Great and the Good imagine in their
Olympian self-satisfaction.
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