Because the good of diversity is most often just assumed (as opposed to being established by an actual argument) there is a lot of room for muddled thinking on the issue. In the most basic sense, there are two broad ways of thinking about diversity. When people talk about racial, ethnic, or gender diversity they have in mind a diversity of appearances. But there is at least one other type of diversity. This type has to do with religious, socio-economic, or philosophical diversity (among others). Diversity in this sense doesn’t have to do with appearances, but ideas. Now of course being diverse in one way doesn’t preclude it in the other, but you can have one type of diversity even if you don’t have the other. Let’s start with the first of the two categories.
Diversity of appearances: is what people usually have in mind when they talk about diversity, but is such a thing really a good? The main worry in championing diversity of appearances is that it looks like it quickly reduces to something called ‘tokenism.’ If an organization looks to add someone to their group simply because that person is part of a “visible minority” then such an organization is guilty of tokenism. Many times the drive behind tokenism is a desire for something to look more cosmopolitan.
The obvious problem with tokenism is that it’s just reverse racism. It flies in the face of Martin Luther King Jr.’s challenge to not judge people based upon the color of their skin (nor, presumably, their gender). If it is obviously wrong to not hire someone based upon their skin color or gender, then it is also wrong to hire someone for the same reasons.
Diversity, of course, is only for whites Wherever only whites gather charges of “racism” cannot be long in coming. On the other hand, it would be tedious to list the racially exclusive non-white gatherings the country takes for granted. If diversity is truly a good thing for all human beings regardless of color, then it should apply to everyone. If diversity is good, then anything not diverse is bad.
It’s not at all uncommon to watch a college basketball game and see that 90 to 100 percent of the players are black. According to the University of Central Florida’s Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport report titled “The 2008 Racial and Gender Report Card,” the percentage of black male basketball players in Division I was an all-time high at 60.4 percent. In the National Basketball Association, almost 82 percent of the players are people of color, higher than last year’s 80 percent. This is the highest percentage of players of color since the 1994-1995 season. The percentage of black players increased to 77 percent from last year’s 76 percent mark. The percentage of Latinos remained constant at 3 percent. Football diversity is not much better. During the 2008 NFL season, the percentage of white players remained constant at 31 percent, while the percentage of black players increased slightly from 66 to 67 percent.
Is the reason blacks dominate basketball and football is that they are better than whites? Careful! That’s an attitude that could win you a charge of racism. It differs little from suggesting that the reason why not many blacks are nuclear physicists is because they are not as good as whites. It should be remembered that the diversity creed holds that we are all equal and would be proportionately represented by race across all activities but for the fact of discrimination and oppression.
The same racial double standard is found in national policies. It is only white nations — Canada, the United States, and Australia — that permit large-scale immigration. Non-white nations are careful to maintain racial and cultural homogeneity and most permit essentially no immigration at all. Some nations, of course, could attract no immigrants even if they wanted to; there is not much pressure on the borders of Bolivia or Uganda.
Hundreds of thousands of poor Mexicans sneak into the United States every year, but even Mexico is attractive to some Central Americans, whose countries are poorer still. Mexico guards its southern border with military troops, and is ruthless about expelling illegals. Not even United States citizens have an easy time moving to Mexico, which has no intention of diluting its national culture in the name of diversity.
Only whites speak endlessly about the advantages of diversity. One of the alleged advantages is so nutty, it is hard to believe it can be proposed by people capable of human speech, but since we are shooting fish in a barrel why not fire a final round? We are told that since whites are a minority of the world population (they are about 15 percent of the total), they should happily reconcile themselves to minority status in America, that such a status will be good training for life on an ever-shrinking planet.
Of course, in a world-wide context, every human group is a minority. There are many more of everyone else than there are Hispanics or Africans, for example. Does this mean that Mexicans and Nigerians, too, should strive to become minorities in Mexico and Nigeria? Like so much that is said about race or immigration, this idea falls to pieces as soon as it is applied to anyone but whites.
Racial diversity, which only whites promote — and always at their own expense — is nothing more than unilateral disarmament in a dangerous world.
Diversity of Ideas: is the much more hidden type of diversity. The type that can be seen. And the type that is much harder to even know, let alone see. If two people come from two different socioeconomic places, are they diverse? If someone comes from the north and someone comes from the south, are they automatically diverse? Will they both have different ideas and views and thought processes? Maybe, but not always. If someone is member of race A or social group B, will they have different views? Again, maybe, but not always. Nevertheless, there is one kind of diversity that is an advantage. A contractor, for example, cannot build houses if he hires only electricians. He needs carpenters, plumbers, etc. — a diverse work force. However, functional diversity of this kind is not what most are talking about. They are talking about largely non-functional differences like race, language, age, sex, culture and even whether someone is homosexual. One might call this status “diversity.” What advantages would a contractor get from a mixed work force of that kind? None. What are the advantages the United States gets from a racially mixed population? None.
At a different level, it is now taken for granted that public services like fire and police departments should employ people of different races. The theory is that it is better to have black or Hispanic officers patrolling black or Hispanic neighborhoods. Here do we not have an example of one of diversity’s benefits?
On the contrary, this is merely the first proof that diversity is a horrible burden. If all across America it has been demonstrated that whites cannot police non-whites or put out their fires it only shows how divisive diversity really is. The racial mix of a police force — touted as one of the wonders of diversity — becomes necessary only because officers of one race and citizens of another are unable to work together. The diversity that is claimed as a triumph is necessary only because diversity does not work.
Just as the advantages of diversity disappear upon examination, its disadvantages are many and obvious. Once a fire department or police force has been diversified to match the surrounding community, does it work better? Not if we are to judge from the never-ending racial wrangles over promotions, class-action bias law suits, reverse discrimination cases, acrimony over quotas and affirmative action and the proliferation of racially exclusive professional organizations.
If diversity were a strength people would practice it spontaneously. It wouldn’t require constant cheer-leading or expensive lawsuits. If diversity were enriching, people would seek it out.
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