Diversity Games
Virtuous lies.

Januray 17, 2002 10:50 a.m.

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.