The Racism of "Diversity"

Anti-Subversion, Inc. ^ | March 24, 2003 | Peter Schwartz

[FITZ]

The military has had good success with "diversity" because standards aren't lowered on the basis of race. Blacks and hispanics in the military can move quickly into middle class no matter what their background, diversity is fine but only if it's done right.

[Main Street]

Judge Halts An Army Policy on Promotion
Ruling Says Gender, Race Overly Stressed

_____Special Report_____


By Neely Tucker

Washington Post Staff Writer

Tuesday, March 5, 2002; Page A01

A federal judge struck down the Army's equal-opportunity promotion process yesterday, saying the policy gives undue preference to women and minorities at the expense of white, male officers.

The Army's written direction to promotion boards that urges them to consider the "past personal or institutional discrimination" faced by women and minorities is unconstitutional because the policy does not order the board also to consider possible discrimination against white men, the judge found.

"This undeniably establishes a preference in favor of one race or gender over another, and therefore is unconstitutional," U.S. District Court Judge Royce C. Lamberth wrote in a 68-page opinion.

The decision came in the three-year-old case of retired Lt. Col. Raymond Saunders, a white officer who was twice denied promotion to the rank of full colonel in 1996 and 1997. He retired in 1999 as a judge advocate general -- an Army lawyer -- and then filed suit.

His case is one of several filed by white Army officers, and a fewer number filed by officers in other branches of the armed services, that allege the military has been giving too much consideration to race and gender in promotions.

Lamberth's ruling, which legal analysts said yesterday closely followed Supreme Court precedent, finds that Army policies emphasizing race and gender considerations were not justified because the agency failed to show any history of discrimination against women or minority officer candidates.

If the ruling stands, it would require the Army to remove such considerations from its promotion process. It also would allow Saunders's lawsuit to proceed, and to deny his claim the Army would have to prove that he would not have been promoted anyway.

Relying on Army data, mostly dating from 1970 onward, that showed black officers being promoted at virtually the same rate as whites -- if not slightly higher -- Lamberth's opinion reasoned that there was no factual basis for the Army to take race or gender into account in its promotion process.

"This case will have enormous impact," said Eugene R. Fidell, a Washington attorney who specializes in military law. "It's likely to sound the death knell for military promotion decision-making where there's an actual or imaginary thumb on the scale."

The ruling could affect thousands of promotions in the Army in the past six years, analysts and lawyers involved in reverse-discrimination lawsuits said yesterday, as well as alter the playing field in days to come. The decision would not affect any officers already promoted.

"The court has declared the Army's officer promotion standards to be unconstitutional. A lot of other people are obviously going to be using this as a precedent," said Christopher A. Sterbenz, the attorney representing Saunders and nine other white officers in similar suits. The Army had not reached a decision yesterday on whether to appeal the decision, said Maj. Steven Stover, an Army spokesman. It was not immediately clear whether the Bush administration, which has been cool to some affirmative action programs but has let others stand, would become involved in the case.

The Army rule in question instructs members on promotion panels that the "[s]uccess of today's Army comes from total commitment to the ideals of freedom, fairness and human dignity," and says that they must be alert to past discrimination and take it into account. It also says that the number of promotions given should match the percentages of women and minorities in the pool of applicants if at all possible.

The ruling is not expected to have any implications for civilian affirmative action programs because it is narrowly tailored to the modern Army's recent history, civil rights attorneys said yesterday.

"It's a decision in the tradition of the Supreme Court and of the D.C. Circuit," said John Relman, a prominent civil rights attorney in Washington. "I think it's unlikely the decision would be overturned."

The Army's role in American attitudes on race has been historically profound, and gave yesterday's ruling an added dimension of irony. Black soldiers who served abroad in the first half of the 20th century found it intolerable to return to racism and segregation, and their resolve to be treated equally at home helped form the backbone of the civil rights movement. When the Army became one of the first federal agencies to officially desegregate, it set an example that would slowly be followed by the rest of society.

In the Saunders case, Army hiring reports from the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s showed that racial discrimination in officer promotion had largely disappeared over time, according to the court's finding yesterday. That is significant because the Supreme Court has held that for an affirmative action program to be legal, it must be established in an institution that has a clear, demonstrable record of racial or gender discrimination.

[Salman]

I would say that diversity is a side effect of liberty. It is diversity as an end in itself that is the problem.

[hollywood]

Where there are standards to be met, then my argument comes into play. For schools, the standard supposedly is the diversity of thought/ideas/ways to solve problems. What standards are needed in the military that can only be met by inclusion by one race? Please provide one race-trait association pair. And what do you mean by doing diversity "right"?

[hollywood]

Well said. It's like artificial intelligence: a good tool for learning and refining future actions, but not as an end product.

[Darheel]

"diversity" provides benefits compelling enough to justify using race as a criterion"---Compare with-

"All men are created equal"---or-

"...not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character, I have a dream..."---or-

"...shall not discriminate based upon race, color, creed, etc..."

It seems pretty simple doesn't it?

[hollywood]

Bumping until everyone in the land reads this thread!

[Fredgoblu]

Amen.

Except for, say, the "liberal" arts schools or the philosophy program at the UofM, diversity is a meaningless proposition.

-Does the speed of light or speed of sound in a vacuum vary according to your skin color?
-Are the basic building blocks of the DNA molecule any different in minority communities than they are in majority communities?
-Do the principles of differential calculus depend on how wealthy or poor your parents are?
-Are the economic laws of supply and demand any different in the 'hood than they are in white-bread suburbia?
-Does "Brown vs. the Board of Education" mean anything less to whites than it does to blacks?
-Do Grignard reagents work differently in Jesse Jackson's world than they do in the real world?
-Does Oboe fingering for an F differ in Detroit and Bloomfield Hills?
-What is the airspeed of an unladen Swallow?

I could continue, but...

We're talking fundamental laws, principles, rules, methods of derivation, and the basic thought process at most of the schools at the UofM. These ideas don't depend on your race, creed, sex, religion, or wealth. A diverse classroom doesn't change the underlying lesson AT ALL.

[hollywood]

Yep, it's me bumping again. Read it or bookmark it for later reading.

[hollywood]

I like your angle. Coupled with mine, we could argue before the Supreme Court and remove diversity in 5 minutes. Who knows; maybe the Supremes lurk here already...

[hollywood]

One last bump for tonight before my wife provides me with diverse sleeping arrangements.

[Tamzee]

Well stated, thanks!

[FITZ]

I don't believe in race-trait association pairs so I can't provide one. I don't think "thought/ideas/ways to solve problems" are based on race ---those don't exist in a "race" but in individuals. To solve a problem, you select the individuals best suited to solve the problem, selected on the basis of their ideas and minds not on skin color. For example a great football team ---the goal isn't to look for the proper ratio of blacks, whites, asians, mexicans, women etc, you look at each individual player's ability. You're not going to care if your team ends up being mostly black players or mostly asian.

[LiteKeeper]

read later

[Lando Lincoln]

Bump, again.

[Fredgoblu]

No offense, Fitz, but I think the football skills analogy is a little off.

I think Jimmy the Greek had it right when he argued that certain races had physical attributes that allowed them to excel at sports (P.C. paraphrasing). You should care if you end up with a football team of asians...particularly if you've got to play the black team.

In the realm of education, though, I think it's a slightly different story. We're all given a brain, and with that, the tools to learn. Certainly, some people are "left-brained" and some are "right-brained", meaning that we all acquire knowledge in a different manner. But we all have that underlying ability to learn--if we want to.

The problem with this whole issue is the notion that my ability to learn depends on the guy sitting next to me in the classroom. That's where the BS begins. Certainly, diversity of opinion is necessary to certain curricula, such as philosophy or other "liberal" arts, but even that diversity can be introduced by other means...guest lecturers, debate series, reading from other sources, etc. Diversity of opinion shouldn't mean the lowering of educational standards.

If we would just take the tack that higher education is a "privilege" that is to be bestowed on the best and the brightest (the ones who have demonstrated the greatest capacity for learning), and not a "right", then this whole issue could be put to bed rather quickly.

[fieldmarshaldj]

*Bump*

[hollywood]

Ok, so you believe that solvers of any problem x can come from any race. Fine, but what I am looking for is irrefutable proof one way or the other to help enforce or refute the need for quotas. Again, I'm not taking sides; I'm presenting a logical, A or B, question.

[hollywood]

BFYI.