The Market For (And Of) “Diversity”

I have commented several times about obnoxious race-based school transfer policies (see here and here). Rich, suburban Montgomery County, Maryland, for example, once denied an elementary school transfer request from the parents of a Chinese-American student because allowing it would have reduced the number of Asian-American students at her current school below the number the county required for racial balance — in other words, it would have reduced the number of Asian-Americans to which the other students would be exposed.

I find it hard to say anything good about these policies, but they do at least have the virtue of honesty. They are based on a belief that “diversity” is such an overriding value that promoting it justifies not only abandoning the (heretofore) fundamental principle barring discrimination based on race and ethnicity but also overruling private choice. Thus Montgomery County argued that the desire of the Chinese-American student to transfer to a school with a French immersion program had to be subordinated to the public good of “diversity,” i.e., of providing the students in her current school with a sufficient number of Asian-American students to which to be exposed.

Now consider the contrast between how “diversity” is justified in college and graduate education and how it is actually practiced. The disversiphiles (as Peter Wood calls them) also argue that “diversity” is as essential to education as water is to life, that without it education as we know it would shrivel up and die. But if that is so, why is the practice of “diversity” not much more regulated than it is? After all, we don’t allow the distribution of water, or even baseball franchises, to be determined by unregulated market forces.

Avid readers with elephantine memories may recall that on a number of occasions I have said things that appear to conflict with the above. “‘Diversity’ is, among other things, the regulation of the race/ethnicity ‘market,” I wrote here. And, from here: Diversity is “a principle that requires constant monitoring and regulation of the racial/ethnic/(and later, religious) market to bring about the proper mix.” Moreover, I argued here, “the Constitution of a society” that elevated diversity over non-discrimination “would locate rights in groups, not individuals, and it would be the duty of the government to regulate the racial and religious ‘market’ to ensure that all were fairly represented.”

But when you stop and think about it, the “diversity” market in higher education is in fact largely unregulated (Didn’t you “stop and think” before writing all the above? – ed. Okay, then, when you stop and rethink about it….) The current racial and ethnic mix on campuses across the country results from the interactions among countless admissions committees and individuals. As with any unregulated private market, the most powerful institutions are able to dominate, using their superior resources (money, reputation, etc.) to get more than their fair share of a limited resource (high-scoring minority applicants).

If Michigan et. al. practiced what they preach, they would emulate Montgomery County. The American Council on Education, the National Academy of Sciences, the National Science Foundation, the American Association of University Women, all the universities that signed on to defend Michigan’s discrimination, etc., etc., et. al., should all come together to call for a National Diversity Policy that would, among other things, recognize that high-scoring minority applicants are a valuable national resource and provide for drafting them into a new Diversity Corps whose members would be distributed to various campuses and programs on the basis of their need.

Liberals certainly have no philosophical inhibitions against regulating markets, and it’s surprising that they have allowed the market in minorities to return to the unregulated status it enjoyed before the civil rights legislation of the 1960s temporarily interfered with private choice in these matters. Michigan and its friends, of course, argue vociferously that of right this market must remain private, with the government keeping its dirty hands off the academic freedom of universities to determine their own racial mix.

If the needs of “diversity” should trump the desire of a third grader to enroll in a French immersion program, after all, why should the private desires of privileged applicants and institutions — and the closed-door deals resulting therefrom — be allowed to dictate “the shape of the river” (to borrow from diversiphiles Bowen and Bok) of “diversity”?