Sacrificing Truth on the Altar of Diversity

Boston Globe ^ | 30 August 2006 | Jeff Jacoby

[strider44]

Sacrificing truth on the altar of diversity By Jeff Jacoby, Globe Columnist | August 30, 2006 YOU'RE A publisher of children's textbooks, and you have a problem. Your diversity guidelines -- quotas in all but name -- require you to include pictures of disabled children in your elementary and high school texts, but it isn't easy to find handicapped children who are willing and able to pose for a photographer. Kids confined to wheelchairs often suffer from afflictions that affect their appearance, such as cerebral palsy or muscular dystrophy. How can you meet your quota of disability images if you don't have disabled models who are suitably photogenic?

[strider44]

Just couldn't pass on posting this article. This stuff makes me sick. Thanks god for Jeff Jacoby, one of the only conservative voices of reason working for the Boston Globe.

[expatguy]

bttt

[DustyMoment]

``One major publisher vetoed a photo of a barefoot child in an African village," Golden writes, ``on the grounds that the lack of footwear reinforced the stereotype of poverty on that continent."

God knows, we don't want our kids growing up with the knowledge that there is poverty in other parts of the world beyond New Orleans.

It remains one of the biggest ironies to me that the average "poor" person in the US has a big screen TV, cell phone, cable TV, a car and lives in section 8 housing. The median income for many of the world's poor is often less than $1,000/yr. Many of them would love the increase in their standard of living to be poor by American standards.

Put me down as still being sick and tired of PC.

[6SJ7]

Another article exposing the Left's ongoing practice of fauxtography.

[Graybeard58]

a McGraw-Hill US history text devoted a profile and photograph to Bessie Coleman, the first African-American woman pilot -- but neglected even to mention Wilbur and Orville Wright. ``A company spokesman," the Journal reports dryly, ``said the brothers had been left out inadvertently."

The Wright brothers sent to the dust bin of history.

[raybbr]

... and that publishers avoid showing Mexican men in ponchos or sombreros.

Sorry, couldn't help myself.

[arbooz]

Good one. Where's poncho?

[Moonmad27]

Advertising posters from Mexican companies in Mexican grocery stores around this neighborhood show people in sombreros and ponchos, as a reminder of the "old country". Guess it's only white libs or Mexican activists who are offended!

[Caleb1411]

. . . But the ``good" intentions of the diversity crusaders cannot be separated from bad methods they resort to, whether those methods involve racial quotas in admissions and hiring, the assignment of schoolchildren on the basis of color, or photographic fakery that puts healthy kids in wheelchairs. By reducing ``diversity" to something as shallow and meaningless as appearance, they reinforce the most dehumanizing stereotypes of all -- those that treat people first and foremost as members of racial, ethnic, or social groups. Far from acknowledging the genuine complexity and variety of human life, the diversity dogmatists deny it. Is it any wonder that their methods so often lead to unhappy and unhealthy results?

[madprof98]

I think they stopped publishing useful textbooks around 1965. The ones my daughter brings home are like TV shows--junk popping out everywhere, and text that is hype combined with misinformation.

[ArGee]

... and that publishers avoid showing Mexican men in ponchos or sombreros.

I wonder if they asked any Mexicans if that would be a problem? I remember when the Cartoon Network banned Speedy Gonzalez it was LULAC that protested to have him returned to the little screen.

Shalom.