Diversity: Seven notes
14th December 2015
Paul Mirengoff at PowerLine lists the problems with ‘diversity’.
Few would deny that some racial diversity in a student body is worthwhile. I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone say they want to see African-American students nearly vanish from elite college campuses.
But it’s easy to question whether a given level of African-American representation in a student body is necessary to achieve diversity as the concept was always understood (see Notes 1 and 2). Stated differently, it’s probably impossible to show objectively that the levels universities strive for are necessary for this purpose.
Attempts to do so, for example by analyzing black representation on a classroom-by-classroom basis, descend into farce. Why must there be a black student in, say, a physics class? What, Chief Justice Roberts wanted to know, is the unique black perspective on physics?
Why, for that matter, is a black needed in any particular class? It would be terrible to attend college and never hear from a black student. But where’s the need to hear from one on the subject of Charles Dickens, David Hume, or the Catholic Reformation? And what if the black student in that class doesn’t speak up?