Or, Diversity advocates are in the business of seeking a level playing field.
The very existence of “Diversity advocates” as you put it points to percieved inequity in access to resources.
“Please expound.”
Most discussion about “diversity” is within the context of affirmative action. The assumption seems to be that certain people (white males for example) have a built in advantage in soiety. Therefore, laws must be passed, or policies implimented to give certain “disadvantaged groups” some extra help or protection or advantage in order to “level the playing field”.
But, frankly, I see the Diversity argument as a dodge. Affirmative Action, started in the 60s, quickly evolved into policies of racial preferences and quotas. As people started to challenge those policies with a certain amount of success, the argument shifted to “diversity”. We were told that “diversity” was good for society, in and of itself, and that everyone (even white males) benefit from diversity, so we need the same old AA policies to ensure diversity. And yet, as we explored in another thread several weeks ago, there really isn’t any impirical evidence that “diversity” does anything at all. It’s a feel good policy that’s hard to attack. Being against “diversity” is like being against “motherhood” in the current political climate. When was the last time you EVER heard a politician (on the left or right) say that diversity was bunk?
It’s a great tactic. Once you get everyone to buy into “diversity” then you’re only left arguing about how best to attain it. That’s at least half the battle won right there!
I’m not saying diversity is bad. I’m with Jeffe when he said, above:
“So, who should decide what the “right” diversity is? Nobody. Just work on assuring equality of opportunity, and stop trying to implement equality of outcome.”
The list of personal traits we look at when deciding how we’re going to respond to that person is probably a pretty long one. Actually, it’s probably a very long one if we were aware of them all – conscious and unconscious. People with the southern accent of a Strom Thurman probably aren’t favored among the Fortune 500 brass. Neither are really ugly women favored for TV news or grossly overweight people for anything – well maybe comedians. So isn’t the list of the “groups” I come up with really based more on what or who I want to see get a boost through ‘diversity’ treatment. Of all the potentials out there - those on this long long list who actually get pushed to the top and are noticed are more a reflection of my personal agenda than anything real out there in space and time. Why wouldn’t my decision to favor fat ugly girls when admitting to someplace like Michigan just as valid, and maybe even more valid, than your decision to base it merely on skin color? Yet, in real life we see skin color favored in that situation.
So the observation becomes - This is just a big political game with the winners deciding who they want to favor. Nothing more or less.
Can you guys do a favour for me, and probably a lot of other non-Americans?
Namely:
It seems that these discussions about “diversity” usually end up about affirmative action. I get the sense that a lot of cynicism about ‘diverisity’ is really cynicism about AA. This makes the argument difficult for people who have no experience with/prejudices about/interest in AA, to participate in. Can we separate the two, and stop treating them like they are equivalent? Or, if what you’re talking about is AA, then call it AA and not “diversity”?
(I’m not suggesting that this has happened in this thread, yet. I’m just alerting you to a danger you may not be aware of.)
Thank you.
The word ‘diversity’, when it’s used in American politics, means ‘Affirmative Action’.
I hope this clarifies matters for the non-Americans out there.
Not to confuse matters but “diversity” is sometimes AA written in code. Especially at those institutions where the AA programs used have been held unconstitutional.
IMHO - there is no inherant value in placing an individual from a different culture or a different race ahead in school admissions policy or a company’s hiring policy. Why? Well, that individual might not reflect anything of value about that different culture or of that different “race.” In other language, diversity does not look to the ideas that a person has when deciding what is or is not ‘diverse.’ What is it about a person’s physical appearance or whether they were home schooled or lived on top of a mountain for 20 years that makes general assumptions about that individual valid. True diversity comes from ideas not blocks of people. So why are we judging someone based on color or culture when – if the argument were turned some would go into a moral outrage.
Thanks for the “diversity” = “affirmative action” confirmation. It’s what I suspected, and it displeases me, because I believe that it makes discussion very difficult. For instance, this thread could be addressing any or all of the following questions:
What is “diversity”?
Is it inherently a good thing? (ie is Diversity for its own sake something we should aspire for?)
Are different kinds of “diversity” (eg diversity of racial make-up, diversity of musical tastes) more important than others in certain circumstances (eg college applications, radio stations, workplaces)?
Are the goals of AA appropriate to increase diversity?
What kind of diversity does it seek to address? What kind of diversity does it actually address?
Does it have negative consequences?
Do these negative consequences outweigh the goals?
Are there other ways of improving diversity, if that’s what we want to do?
I think these kinds of questions need to be addressed individually.
The reason it’s so important to me (again, as a non-American) is that AA doesn’t mean shit to me - I don’t know anything about it, and don’t really care that much - but diversity really does. If we can’t talk about diversity without talking about AA, then you have eliminated people like me from the discussion.
Um, I’ve NEVER equated “diversity” with “affirmative action” - I’ve equated “affirmative action” with “affirmative action.”
FOR THE SAKE OF THIS PARTICULAR THREAD, can we differentiate between the two? If you wanted to start a thread about affirmative action, you shouldn’t have more broadly brought up the topic of diversity.
IMHO.
Esprix
How diversity = AA
“diversity” = “good thing”
“good thing”= “what can we do to get it?”
“what can we do to get it?”=“affirmative action”
esprix
You want to know what “good diversity” is?
Ever hear the phrase, *Si monumentum requiris, circumspice!"? (“If you would have a monument, look around you.”)
I am perhaps the last person who should make this post to make this point, but it is needful that somebody do, and nobody else has.
Five months ago, I fell on very, very hard times. And a true friend posted the news here on the board.
And there was an outpouring of help for me from an enormous number of Dopers. I was given a computer by a quasi-fundamentalist Christian couple who knew me only from this board. I was given the cost of my car by another man who met me IRL when he drove 200 miles to give me the check for it. Over $2,500 was sent me by a lady whose religious faith makes mine look like small potatoes. And it came from a skinny young gay pagan, a conservative engineer, a housewife and mother with a bizarre sort of metaphysics, literally dozens of people… Some were black, some white, some Hispanic, some Native American, some married, some not, some straight, some gay, some bi, from all walks of life and all sorts of political, religious, and social views. A social worker who had met me once at a dinner offered his spare car; a conservative Christian from California whom I’ve never met offered me his.
Each of us has one thing in common – we’re out to fight ignorance, including our own. And we’ve found that one of the best ways to do that is to share who we are, what we value, what we aspire to, what we despise, on a board with people of such great diversity of views and life experiences, is one of the best ways there is to learn more about the world we live in and the people who inhabit it with us.
I don’t know to what extent lack of quality education in minority areas affects eligiblity for college, capacity to obtain good-paying and challenging entry-level jobs, etc. But I guarantee you that one of the finest ways to destroy what this country has been built on is to make sure that if that is the case, such people have no recourse but to ask, “Do you want fries with that?” or forget their intellectual abilities and use their strong backs to build $250,000 houses for upper-middle-class junior executives and their families at $7.50 an hour, overtime not allowed.
And I speak as a WASP with no claim to minority status other than my blue eyes, which nobody other than constructors of hypothetical cases seems to think constitutes a legitimate minority category.
People who want a country rigidly regimented to where everybody thinks and behaves like them should definitely have their wish – but somewhere other than in America; that’s not what we’ve stood for since 1776.