Joanne Jacobs has an excellent post about an excellent article by John McWhorter in City Journal endorsing colorblind college admissions. Read both.
As evidence of the resentment many minorities feel about the service function “diversity” calls upon them to perform, McWhorter quotes the undergraduate-written Black Guide to Life at Harvard: “We are not here to provide diversity training for Kate or Timmy before they go out to take over the world.”
Alas, as pointed out here many times, according to the doctrine “diversity” that is precisely why they — or rather, any of them who would not have been admitted without racial preferences — are there. If, in the absence of racial preferences, they had not been admitted and gone to a less-selective but still integrated institution, they would still have received whatever benefits diversity has to offer. It is Kate and Timmy alone who would have been deprived of the “difference”-emanating benefit of their presence.
McWhorter makes a compelling case that merit and diversity, properly understood, are not inconsistent, and why colorblindness is necessary for both.
“We are not here to provide diversity training for Kate or Timmy before they go out to take over the world.”
So we, the Kates and the Timmys of the world, are here to provide Shaneekwa and Jaamil the chance for intellectual conversation and a glimpse of matching china before they take their places in the Post Office?
ah, how the axiom of equality is tested at every step…all groups must be equal in intelligence…
Actually, Kate and Timmy are here to further the interests of Kate and Timmy, and Shaneekwa and Jaamil are here to further the interests of Shaneekwa and Jaamil, respectively.
It’s a beautiful thing.