Diversity is Not Our Strength

Ok, I’ve said it. I have uttered the unthinkable and up to now the unsayable.  But hey, people have asked me (suspecting that I have an idea) why our Country and our people are so divided, and I would point to our current obsession with race and the focus that we have on our differences, our diversity.

“Diversity is Our Strength” has been the mantra of polite society in our educational and corporate institutions for some time now to justify what has become racist and sexist policies. In the era of “words matter”, a starting place is to examine our language to determine what “diversity” really means and more importantly how it is applied.

The term “diversity” and its friends, “inclusion” and “equity”, by themselves appear noble and harmless.  However, we are beginning to understand that the term “diversity” as applied by the thousands of diversity and inclusion programs, officers, consultants and administrators actually results in favoring certain individuals and disadvantaging others based on race or sex.  Before we examine whether “Diversity is Our Strength” or as I refer to it as “nice” racism, is truly a strength and not a source of division, we should take a detour on who we are as a species. 

What is our human nature?  We are a communal society.  We are not designed to live alone.  It is not learned. It cannot be eradicated by will or system-wide education. As we have slowly been drawn into our televisions, phones, and ear pods isolating ourselves from other people, I think we were brutally surprised by the loneliness, suicides, increased drug and alcohol use and other adverse effects caused by the isolation created by the societal lockdowns in our response to the COVID pandemic.

Our prime bond of communal living is the family.  Our mothers and fathers and then sisters, brothers, aunts, uncles, and grandparents all form a strong common bond.  The family is our first and perhaps strongest communal bond.  It is our protector and comforter not only for our material and spiritual well-being but also providing our first instruction of morality.  From the time we are born, our family wants us, loves us, and nurtures us, no matter what.  Hence the phrase “a face only a mother could love”, other than a bad joke, reflects the powerful relationship among family members. 

Now, don’t come back to me about your crazy Uncle Louie or that mass murderer cousin you have.  There are exceptions to every proposition including this one, but we refer to these exceptions as “dysfunctional families” and those who live in them have a high likelihood of being really screwed up.

However, our need for belonging doesn’t end with the family.  We form all types of groups that in the recent books and studies have been referred to as “tribes”.  Belonging to a “tribe” allows us an opportunity beyond our families for a peaceful, happy, and contented spiritual and physical life. In other words, it’s a good thing.

Tribes throughout history have banded together to protect its members, engage in cooperative work, and provide future mates for continuation of the tribe and the species. Tribes are not limited to family and joint security arrangements but extend to the whole range of societal interactions.  We form groups with people that we like and who like to do the same things that we do.  There is church, stamp collectors, dog show people, birders, fishermen, and gamers among many others who band together.  It is amazing how many interests there are that provide us with satisfaction, contentment and joy that would bore the hell out of the rest of us. We are drawn to these groups because of common interests and unity of purpose not because they are diverse.

When we join a group, we are not looking for a fight or to be annoyed.  If we are honest with ourselves, the dog show people do not want someone in their group that keeps wanting to go to cat shows, no matter how amusing or diverse that might be to cat enthusiasts. Actually, to the horror of some (well maybe more than “some”) there are professional cat shows.  See the CFA (Cat Fanciers Association) Annual Show from June 21-25 2023 in Tucson AZ.  With that little factoid for your information and amusement, we move back to the serious issues of diversity and race.

Sports fans are another example of tribes that thrive in unity but have conflict with diversity.  Yankee fans do not recruit Red Sox fans to make their group more diverse. You can be black, brown, man, women, gay or straight. It doesn’t matter as long as you are pulling for the Bronx Bombers. 

We similarly align with our neighborhoods, our cities, our states and ultimately, our Country.  We can be in more than one group at a time.  We can support the Broncos and boo the Raiders on Sunday, and then on Monday lock arms as proud Americans. Free association of groups which are unified by their interests are benign and good for society (and protected by the first amendment by the way).  These people through their groups choose the people they want to hang around with, and if they are happy and not hurting anyone else, it should not be any of our business.

On the other hand, in other organizations for example corporations, sports teams, or the military, these groups not just for companionship or fun and games.  These groups are formed to accomplish certain goals and objectives. The members of these groups are trained and expected to work as a unit to accomplish whatever goals and objectives the organization has.  They are not or should not be looking for racial diversity because success in furthering corporate, team, and governmental goals are not dependent on race.  We have learned that race doesn’t matter.  These organizations are looking to succeed or win and that takes unity not diversity.  People who are on those teams are selected as being the best for accomplishing those goals. Race has no role in determining who is best at winning a baseball game or a war.  

A good example of where race was used to select employees to the detriment of an organization is Major League Baseball in the 1940s.  Blacks were excluded from major league teams not by rule but by practice.  Branch Rickey’s job as President of the Brooklyn Dodgers was to acquire players who could help the Dodgers win baseball games, that’s it. In 1947, Jackie Robinson was added to the Brooklyn Dodgers not because he was black, but because he was better than Ed Stevens the player that he replaced.

What happened in the years that followed was a lot like what Alabama football fans muttered on their way out of Legion Field in 1970 after their all-white, Crimson Tide was pummeled by integrated USC…” we got to get us some of them.”  Acceptance of black players wasn’t because they were black and therefore diverse.  It was because they were better.

In the military, the goal of the unit is success in combat. The stakes are life and death.  Soldiers and airmen are trained to place mission above self, and it doesn’t matter what race, creed, color or ethnic origin your fellow soldier is as long as they do their job and have your back. When you are flying 20 feet off of your wingman’s plane, no one is looking for diversity. You need to be concentrating on what you are doing, not trying to figure out what your pronoun is.  The military should be looking for talent and excellence regardless of the melanin content in your skin.

1964 was a culmination of a long journey which recognized the consensus of Americans that race along with religion, color, creed, national origin and sex did not and should not matter when forming groups that mattered, providing employment, education, housing, and government benefits.  It was more than the passage of yet another law.  It was a culmination in the long journey beginning with the North American slave trade, to the bloodiest war in American history, the Civil War, to free those slaves, and then to integrate them into society during reconstruction. 

But the line to equality of opportunity was not a straight one.  After reconstruction, areas of the country regressed under Jim Crow laws and Woodrow Wilson’s resegregating the federal government.  It was followed by WWII, the integration of the military, by Harry Truman, the integration of major league baseball and football, as discussed above, the abolishment of the separate but equal doctrine in education, the integration of schools in the south, and finally the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Martin Luther King’s dream was to have a day when people were judged by the content of their character not the color of their skin, and the dawn of that dream was at hand. 

A few years later, there began a return to the old ways of grouping segments of society on the basis of race.  This is documented brilliantly in White Guilt: How Blacks and Whites Together Destroyed the Promise of the Civil Rights Era, by Shelby Steele (the black author and columnist, not the civil war historian). If you want to know one of the main reasons why we are so divided, take a look.

As we have drifted toward mathematical purity of racial, ethnic and gender goals and quotas in our educational and corporate institutions, we returned  to the pre-Civil Rights Act days of injustice. With limited positions and governmental funding, there were winners and losers in the diversity lottery.

As a country based on opportunity, no one objected to expanding opportunities for all Americans regardless of status, but when the results did not come as some expected, equality of opportunity was abandoned in order to create systems attempting to assure equity of result regardless of talent, hard work, merit, and character. This philosophy has led to “discriminatory highways”, men participating in women’s sports, quota systems for educational institutions and critical race theory.

We have lost the principle that race doesn’t matter to where now, many only see race or gender. These are the only things that matter. In the name of tolerance and eliminating racism, we have become as racist as we ever have been, and as has occurred in the past, those who do not believe in granting societal benefits based on race are beginning to fight back. 

A battle in this war is coming up this month in the Supreme Court in Students for Fair Admission v. Harvard College which challenges racist practices for admission to Harvard and the University of North Carolina in order to create diverse student bodies based on skin color.  The problem is that to accomplish statistical racial purity to maintain a diverse student body, it significantly diminished Asian student opportunities for the limited spaces in the university classes.  In Grutter v Bollinger, despite the absolute prohibition against racial discrimination in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 without exception, the Supreme Court approved a process that would allow for the consideration of race to maintain a diverse student body …sanctioning “limited” racism…for a while.  Justice Sandra Day O’Connor opined that while this racist preference was ok, it may not be appropriate in 25 years or so.

The reinstitution of racist selection criteria on college campuses is not the only area where elements of our society are attempting to reimpose old racist and ethnic practices.  This gets us back to the mantra that “Diversity is our Strength’ which is merely code language to reimpose those racist policies in employment, education, and the provision of governmental benefits. That different racial and ethnic groups are disadvantaged this time: Asian, white, men and straight, merely applies the same racist practices to different groups.

In order to justify these new racist policies to provide equal results rather than equal opportunity, we are twisting our values such that we are told that “hard-work” is a white value, that Asians study too much, that tests which reveal mastery of a subject are invalid, and that 2+ 2 no longer equals 4.  The presumption that only white people and men can be racist and are therefore unprotected from injustice is creating a scramble for individuals to create new groups (transgender, intersex, non-binary, genderqueer and two-spirit for example) positioning themselves as perceived victims giving them a better opportunity for economic and social advancement over currently non favored groups.

This column has taken us on a long journey to answer the question why we are so divided and is “Diversity is our Strength”.  For a long time, we have allowed the race baiters to have their way, avoiding conflict in order to be viewed as part of a decent tolerant society.  However, seeing the extent of racial and gender preferences, the advancement of critical race theory, and the awarding of government benefits based only on skin color, we are waking up to the implications of the re-imposition of racist and ethnic doctrines on American institutions and our way of life.  From school boards to the military, to corporate board rooms, we find that our institutions are infected with racist thinking that divides us as people. Others are beginning to fight back not for advantage but for equality of opportunity for all.

A decision for all of us is whether to join the fight or not and if so, what side should we be on.  Will we examine who we have become and realize that we are making the same mistakes as our ancestors did who viewed race and sex as defining characteristics? Will we revert to our old selves which divides us by race, ethnic groups, and gender depriving society from the talent, energy and character of those who are currently the wrong race, ethnic group or sex or do we join the side that insists that racism and ethnic differentiation has never been acceptable, not now, not for a short term, not ever.

Diversity is not our strength.  As it is applied currently by the diversity industry, it weakens and divides us. Unity is our strength. If we are to come together and finally overcome racism, we should reject differentiation based on the color of our skin in all circumstances without exception.  We need to spend less of our time figuring out how we are different and much more time realizing how much we are the same.