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February 10, 2004

Why Grutter Is Wrong

Diversity is merely a rationale of convenience, used to justify otherwise unconstitutional race discrimination when the real agenda is to promote those pleasurable side effects listed above. When push comes to shove, diversity takes the back seat. Diversity is, at best, the side effect rather than the goal.

I just finished writing about the retardation of child helmet safety laws when I got an email notifying me about the above over at BTD. So while I take issue with the putative severity of this 'unconstitutional race discrimination', I acknowledge that it's not the first law that gives dainty people comfort.

I've been meaning to write this, but I'll just stick it in here for context. It has been happening recently that some kid who likes to call blackfolks names has been making private chatrooms on XBox Live.

The other night I was XBoxing Live against several other automobile racers in Project Gotham Racing 2. We happened to be in Nuremburg. So this cat from Kentucky was spouting some of the most unhealthy spew I've heard in a long time.

I grew up during a time when at major colleges and universities, you were very likely to encounter Klan propaganda on the bathroom stalls. I've also seen what it's like for cops to pull guns on black kids riding their bikes. I've studied enough about racism to know how destructive it can be. Yet I am strangely tolerant of jokers who brag about how many 'slopes' he killed in Korea.

There is a basic principle at work here. The more devastation one witnesses, the more ridiculous name-calling itself is. Chalk this one in the category of the Failure of Anti-Racism. Class Three is not always a gateway to Class Two or Class One. So who cares about talk? Only dainty people who have decorous conversations.

So here we have people in 2004 decorously suggesting that MLK would be against Affirmative Action because diversity is racist. Are they right? Does racial discrimination for the purposes of inclusion violate the spirit of the Civil Rights Movement? Hell no, but it violates the principle of colorblindness which was the dominant ethic of sensitive white liberals who tiptoed their way through the minefields of Black Power politics in the 70s when crossover was the best that anybody could imagine happening in American culture. But we ought to understand, dammit, that all pop culture is dominated by black popular culture, not because those artists 'happen to be black' but because there is something very powerful and deep going on there. Everything colorblindness is, cannot explain Outkast. And similarly it cannot explain why Justin Timberlake is 1/2 of Michael Jackson and 20 years too late. I'll offer a clue. Black culture isn't racial, but racial segregation made it so. So everything substantial about black culture has been subsumed by race.

Understanding that the substantial power of what black culture is and how African Americans have been its default guardians because of segregation should give us a clue as to what's going on with regard to diversity. But I'm going to take a quick tangent to help folks understand that it's not a specifically black unique phenomenon.

When Frederick Douglass was the man, he would speak about 1/3 of America being African. Those days are long gone and somehow this nation has become something incredibly more powerful in many dimensions. How? European immigrants. The huge difference between America in 1890 and America a mere 50 years later was a couple of wars and as it was popular to say way back when, our German Jewish scientists were better than their German Jewish scientists. 'Racial' diversity and integration transformed this country into something it could never have been without it. Was it racial? You make the case, either way. Try it.

Getting back to Affirmative Action. If you think of it as the internal Ellis Island for the long hated and despised African nations internal to America, then you can see the parallel. Blackfolks change their names and leave the old country of the ghetto behind, they show their stuff and America changes. Was it racial? It will always be interpreted as racial because it was racial ideology that created the gulf in the first place, but the skills, dedication and talents African Americans bring to the American mainstream are not embedded in their race, so it's not really race mixing that is making America better. It's the integration of separate people into the mainstream - people with different dreams of American success that changes the American dream itself. Denzel Washington's success in America changes what American success is. Michael Jordan's success in American changes what American success is. Is it racial? Is it in their genes? No, it's in their separateness - purposefully integrating the separate people makes the difference.

So depending on your position on integration, what Diversity means changes. And this is where race/skin color distorts the entire picture. I'll try to make this simple. Assuming we are talking about University, my position is simple and clear: for undergraduate admissions it doesn't matter. By the guidelines of Bakke, dont' create a separate class, but allow the separate people to establish a critical mass so that University becomes a real melting pot. Meritocracy be damned. There is no meritocracy, there are only markets.

Trying to isolate, refine, categorize and monitor the 'diversity factor' is an exercise in mind-numbing futility. Count noses by color and racially integrate. This requires discrimination. This requires racial preferences. So long as racial integration isn't a reality in the aegis of the promotional entity, be it a university or an employer, there is a public duty to desegregate. Why do we have to be reminded of this? It's nothing more or less than Bussing was in Boston and the reactions for and against it are coming from the exact same sentiments - who 'belongs' and who doesn't - by race. But if diversity is to have some greater meaning than just color integration (and we have the information systems to track it), then it can mean integration by income, by gender, by sexual preference, by anything. If it goes by geography to do some socio-economic integration that's my preference because it alleviates the socio-economic disparities inherent in the legacy of racial segregation, which is what MLK really wanted.

So these are the eggs you need to break in order to make America better by opening the floodgates penning people in ghettoes. Put upon people who feel they get a raw deal because of Affirmative Action have gone ahead and gotten new laws to protect their dainty souls. And if they feel like calling people who support Affirmative Action 'racists', hey by all means let them. But people who have been behind ghetto walls have been called a lot worse and they really don't give a flying fart about that label especially considering the dainty direction from which it comes. They demand Affirmative Action because it's their Ellis Island. It's socio-economic opportunity, and that's very hard to deny people for long.

UPDATE: If this entire essay seems completely tangential to the point of political diversity of academic staff, it only goes to show how sidetracked the entire issue of 'Diversity' has become. I agree with Keiran Healy on his point about stilted labor markets. Again, this is a political question about 'who belongs' in a culture relatively devoid of fungible honor.

Posted by mbowen at February 10, 2004 09:57 PM

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Comments

Posted by: Christopher at February 12, 2004 02:35 AM