“Liberal justices stressed the significance of diversity throughout society, while conservatives argued against classifying individuals by race.”
— Supreme Court Hears Arguments on Race in College Admissions, The Wall Street Journal, October 31, 2022
Is this really a conflict of visions, or is it a false dichotomy, not only when it comes to the affirmative action case before the court, but with many so-called political or ideological battles?
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10 replies on “Color-Blind Diversity: The Surprising Real Battle Behind Supreme Court Affirmative Action Case”
When people say within my hearing that they want more diversity, my immediate response is diversity of what?
In a company, do you want diversity of purpose, or do you want all departments pulling in the same direction?
Do you want diversity of appearance? Or diversity of experience? or Diversity of thought?
What is this diversity of which you seek?
If it is just some with uterus and some with teste, some with low melanin and some with high, you will fail.
The following is based upon true events, the timing is shaky as my personal timeline now has a two year gap (like many others) and I cannot reconcile events. I am also too lazy today to look it up.
Years ago, the powers that be of the big orchestra in NYC (philharmonic, Metropolitan opera and the like) were informed that they had too few minorities in their chairs (again, apparently ethic Chinese, Japanese etc don’t count) and the idea was raised that this was due to the audition process.
The process being everyone played their instrument, on the stage, for the director and a few others. Those few then selected who they wanted. Bigotry and nepotism (the friendship type, not necessarily relatives) were cited as reasons that there were “insufficient” black and brown faces.
For several years, the process was amended and people now performed behind a partition and the documentation contained no CV information. It was thought that an impartial system would therefore reward the better musicians and totally remove skin color as a qualifier. This system was remarkable successful in ignoring skin color.
There were less people of black or brown skin tone over the next several cycles. Such that the same people who complained the first time, of course complained again. And the partition was removed so that more musicians of higher melanin level could be selected.
The meritocracy was removed and the PC/Woke police had their way.
So some white or asian musician didn’t get the position (job!!) they had earned so that an inferior one who happened to have different skin tone would get it.
Now all of these are accomplished musicians, very few are likely “poor”, this was done, both times, strictly due to the appearance of who is on stage.
During intermission of a local symphony performance, I was speaking with the bassist (happens to be black) and a choral soprano (happens to be black) and the soprano said to the bass player – four. That was the number of black people on the stage. (BTW – I am in the choral bass section)
I asked her what she was doing about it? Was she going to the elementary schools and telling young black girls and boys about the joys of classical music? The bass player said, well my parents did that for me.
Precisely said I. You can complain or you can do something.
Oddly the creation of Asian colleges would have the effect of lowering the achievement levels , awards etc of the ‘elite’ colleges that are currently discriminating against them
Diversity by itself is not really a good thing. We are evolved to be very suspicious of “the other”. It is only as we matured culturally and learned the benefits of expanding our spheres of trust to include those who had goods and talents we wanted, that we continued to grow and prosper beyond the limits of our own respective group’s experiences and talents. The pandemic clearly showed just how interdependent we have become as a result.
So the real aim is in generating a multitude of ideas as potential solutions to our problems, such that we can evaluate this set of options and thereby improve the probabilities of finding a truly viable and valid solution (until an even better one presents itself). Race is a surrogate for presumed differences in experience, which is a surrogate for supposedly diverse outlooks and ideas. Given that we are now so inter-communicated and integrated commercially, if not always culturally, we actually probably have less occasion for diverse views based on race than on pursuing some other criteria of experience. For example, NASCAR vs. rodeos, ping pong vs. opera, stock clerking vs. surgery vs. Soviet political analysis, etc.
The guys had a lot of good comments, but one area they did not mention was the continued existence of an actual racialist industry that depends on racial discord and on-going racial disparities to retain their hold on influence, power, and income. If they were kicked to the curb, a lot of this would go away, as it appeared to be the situation developing up to 2007, before Obama and Holder reintroduced racialist commentary into their political campaign and administration.
There are a number of books out now examining the real meaning of the 14th Amendment and how it has been distorted to incorporate cultural identity elements beyond the original intent to address racial “equity” and equality. But the focus on making the country racially neutral has been clear since 1865-68.
How do we stop talking past each other and have a conversation? I gave up years ago trying to have conversations with people who start every conversation with, “Shut up, bigot”
I liked the old Dilbert comic that had a diversity session and Dogbert gave the German definition if Diversity – “Da longer you verk here, da verse it gets”
I grew up in the South. My home town of Atlanta is a very diverse community and is heavily black. (I was student body president of a majority poor black high school ;I played in a funk band). For a period of time in the 1960s and 70s, I believe we had more black millionaires than all of Africa. Throughout the mid to late 1960s, black intellectuals like Walter Williams and Thomas Sowell were against Affirmative Action because it codified blacks as “less than”, which, of course, they were not. Activist like Malcolm X were strongly suspicious of any white liberal offering a handout. During the mid-1960’s there was a higher nuclear family percentage in black homes than white. And they all went to church.
The damage that the “Great Society” legislation of 1969 did to blacks in America was nearly on par with the slavery itself. The government paid for women to have children out of wedlock. If the father wanted to become involved, the money went away. The result was a previously 74% nuclear family percentage in 1964 to roughly 18% by 2000. The greatest predictor of future poverty and incarceration is a single parent home. Worshiping in the Church was replaced by the being a slave to handouts from the government. Poor performance at school and increased crime resulted. Disgusting misogyny in black music replaced the romance of earlier times.
There are plenty of smart blacks. Nigerians coming to America are the highest performing minority, I believe. If schools want minorities, be able to attract them to your school. Maybe recruit Africans who haven’t been dumbed down on the ‘voting plantation’ of the Democratic inner cities. US blacks aren’t challenged to perform, instead asked to agree that the white man or the jewish man is keeping them down. It’s ridiculous.
In medical school, in the big classes, there was a back row where students who failed the previous year, (or two, or three) were sitting. All of them were black, “preferentially” admitted for the sake of diversity. It was sad and demeaning to them. Other blacks who got admitted with good school performance did fine. I suspect the same thing goes on at Harvard and North Carolina. It’s wrong.
There’s nothing soft about the bigotry of today’s Radical Left
Ooooooo! Betamax! The cutting edge tech….in 1975.
Honest Scott, I laughed out loud at that. Well done, and well done with the bigot flag quote.
Thanks for the lift, Harry.