This colorful magazine showed up in my mail the other day to let me know that my local community college now sports a new “Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” (ODEI). Reading through the articles I realized that this office embodies everything I hate about creating diversity for the sake of diversity, a repulsive and counter-productive result of political correctness, guilt and stomping on something positive until it becomes a sad caricature of its old self.
There is nothing wrong with diversity. In this country, unless you refer to your neighborhood as a “compound“, there is no way to escape some exposure to other races, religions, sexual orientations, or a handicaps. One can try to minimize such exposure by choosing a location, a school, avoiding media, screening out entertainment options, but unlike some people I knew in my childhood years, most of us had probably seen a black person or an Asian, a Muslim or a Jew, a person in a wheel chair or with a hearing aid. It wouldn’t be a stretch to say that no matter how hard you try you cannot avoid diversity and that’s most likely a good thing.
I am not sure when educational institutions and corporations realized that diversity is not only a positive development but there is some money to be made from exploiting it, either directly by receiving special funds or government contracts or indirectly -- by piling on titles like the best company for Hispanics or for women, Asians or LGBT employees. While getting on these lists may require some investment in special benefits and recruitment, the payoff is much higher due to an influx of customers from grateful communities. That’s when creating diversity became a goal in itself exploding with consultancies, conferences, magazines, titles and offices such as the one I started this post with. “Virginia Tech committed $1 million over a five-year period to increase ethnic diversity on campus, which includes faculty and stuff” -- says one of the articles. I am sure the best-qualified applicants to Virginia Tech would appreciate a million dollars in the scholarship fund distributed based on merit.
One way to determine if the desire to create diversity is genuine is presence of bragging and showmanship. If you read a sentence: “In a spirit of the office in which we work, we should note we in the ODEI are three straight African American women, two straight White men, one straight woman whose country of origin is Pakistan, two straight White women, and one White lesbian” you know that this office was created with title funds in mind. Are we creating a professional educational institution or Noah’s Ark? Aren’t we supposed to look for the the best-suited individuals instead of trying to get a pair of each race, national origin or sexual orientation? I understand that the diversity of student body and faculty may be important to a new applicant, but would you actually base your decision on the fact that a particular college just hired a transvestite handicapped ex-hooker from Bangkok?
If you believe that diversity wouldn’t happen without being encouraged you are a victim of an ongoing brainwashing campaign by the people who work in the offices like this, so they can keep their otherwise worthless jobs instead of being replaced by faculty who will actually do what college is supposed to do -- educate. Examples of skill-based diversity are everywhere, from the Navajo code-talkers during the WWII to sports , to science, management, education and any field where the best person gets the job. I am sure racism, antisemitism, misogyny, etc., are still a part of hiring decisions but no company in the right state of mind would condone or encourage these practices because they are too expensive to deal with in the aftermath. I was hired by a major corporation after a technical test and a phone interview without being seen in person until after the job was offered to me. I’d like to think that I was hired based on my skill and not because my company didn’t have enough Russian Jews. Being hired or accepted based on quotas and/or to add to “diversity” should be just as demeaning as being rejected because of race, gender, age or whatever other reason. Efforts to artificially create diversity steal money from the real goals such as education, hiring the best professionals, providing the best service, creating a better working environment.
Fake and insincere efforts to enforce diversity always show when someone brags about having the most minority executives or the the most women in management, or the first openly gay office-holder. As long as people are still identified by their race, gender or national origin first and only then by their professional or educational accomplishments there will always be talk about unfairness and bias. When the “Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” would describe itself as consisting of educated professionals instead of a breakdown of their otherwise unimportant characteristics I will know that the real diversity is in place. Being Black or Jewish or Lesbian, or all three combined is not an achievement or an accomplishment. That’s why I wish that people would stop harping about the first black president. Barack Obama is an educated man, a lawyer, a politician, a Senator, a President which are all exemplary accomplishments in anyone’s lifetime. But the only quality he didn’t have any say about -- being black -- is being trumpeted more than all the others combined. Every time is hear another mention of Obama’s race all I see it this:
There is no question that diversity cannot be stopped or contained, but demeaning efforts to artificially expedite and quantify it are not helping along.
UPDATE: Emaw previously shared his views on the subject.
I think having an “office of diversity” actually does more to perpetuate racism than end it. As Morgan Freeman once said, to end racism we need to stop giving so much importance to someone’s race.
Always, always, follow the $$$$$.
Great post!
After generation after generation of racism, diversity has become an unstoppable force. Especially if we stop talking about it.
Excellent news.
My last company (where you work MV) had a diversity goal on your annual development plan. But since they nobody seemed able to define what they wanted you to do, people got away with stuff like sitting in a half day with a person from another unit. Different job function = diversity?
Mu current company has diversity as part of it’s overall business ethics plan. Every year we go over what it means in general and to our jobs in particular. After that you only hear about it when you break it. Or when you read promotional stuff about how diverse we are.
I don’t know which approach was more annoying.
great read, good post.