Posted on 05/06/2003 1:18:15 AM PDT by sarcasm
The University of Michigan Law School justifies its admission policies, which heavily favor underrepresented minority applicants, by the fact that they ensure a diversity of perspectives. However, programs sponsored in the name of diversity fail to accomplish this. And, ironically, the diversity movement itself must be blamed for an atmosphere of stifling intellectual uniformity.
Race-based initiatives target students, most of whom are already assimilated into American culture. For instance, most African American and Hispanic high school students who are qualified for college do not bring with them an especially novel perspective. They have watched American television and movies, listened to American music, played American sports and absorbed American values.
The differences among people of the same color or race frequently exceed the differences between people of different races. It would indeed be intellectually beneficial for students to hear from students from other cultures, but non-white students from the U.S. middle class are not likely to bring perspectives importantly different from the white students. The differences between them are mostly only skin deep.
For these reasons, I do not believe that special programs to recruit minorities enrich the intellectual environment on college campuses. Indeed, there are reasons to think they impoverish it.
First, everyone knows, but rarely admits, that the diversity lobby is selective about which groups it wishes to give a voice. The American professoriate is essentially a left-wing monolith. Typically, more than 90 percent of the professors on a given faculty are Democrats. At University of California-Santa Barbara, 97 percent are Democrats; at Brown, 94.7 percent. It is no exaggeration to say higher education in the United States is essentially education from a leftist perspective. If we are concerned about enhancing the intellectual experience of students, the first order of business should be affirmative action for conservatives. This will not happen, of course, because the diversity lobby has no serious interest in having a diversity of perspectives.
Second, it's taken for granted that colleges and universities should have a diversity of inhabitants, but isn't it also important to have a variety of colleges and universities? Wouldn't it contribute to our national character to have institutions with different personalities and strengths and traditions? The "diversicrats" aim to make every college the same.
For the "diversity" standard actually functions as a filter by which to ensure conformity to the dominant view. Administrators and faculty are under pressure, subtle and otherwise, to demonstrate their "commitment to diversity." The psychological origin of this pressure, as Shelby Steele has shown, is whites' desire to prove that they are innocent of the sin of racism. Instead of executing their proper function as educators, academics pander to that desire, which they also feel themselves. The result is a political orthodoxy that is perilous to challenge.
Third, the push for diversity tends to create uniformity in another way. When we recruit minority students to increase diversity, we assume the existence of a "minority perspective" that each member of a given racial minority will hold. We encourage people to think of themselves as members of a race rather than as members of the human family. This is the same race-consciousness that the civil rights movement initially, and rightly, opposed.
These points are in evidence in a Feb. 10 memorandum in which a University of Washington English professor states his intention of compiling each quarter a list of literature courses that include at least some writers of color (divided into "one or a few," "half or more" and "most or all" writers of color) and those that treat issues of race and racism.
The purpose of the list, to be distributed to advisers and made available on the departmental Web site, is to make the department more welcoming to "undergraduates of color." Anyone in academia recognizes this initiative as commonplace. It gives the lie to the supposed value of diversity. "Writers of color" are supposed to provide the perspective of color, which exists most of all for the "students of color." This division of literature into white and colored, and implicitly the whole ideology of which it is part, will be presented to students under the official auspices of the English department. So much for diversity.
Let it be granted that the most intellectually fertile environments exhibit lots of variety. This is best achieved through a colorblind, passionate devotion to truth. People regardless of race are drawn to any place that is wholly devoted to the pursuit of truth. There's openness and freedom and excitement aplenty in such a place. Human beings encounter other human beings in all their individuality and uniqueness. Skin color doesn't matter.
If colleges and universities want to be places of intellectual growth and discovery, they should ignore race and focus on ideas.
Phillip Goggans is associate professor of philosophy at Seattle Pacific University and president of Washington Association of Scholars (www.wascholars.org)
This essentially true, right up to the time that they are called Democrats. If the truth were know they are to the left of the Social Progressive Democratic Causcus . . . in other words somewhere between a Socialist and a Rabid Marxist.
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