In the post immediately below, an official of Vanderbilt University was quoted as saying that it was necessary to erase evidence of the university’s past sympathetic association with the United Daughters of the Confederacy — by sandblasting the word “Confederate” off Condfederate Memorial Hall, built partially with funds donated by the UDC — in order to make the campus more “diverse.” Whatever the justifications for such politically correct erasures may be (and I agreed there are some), enhancing “diversity” isn’t one of them. Such measures are aimed at producing uniformity, not diversity.
In the same Vanderbilt vein, an article in today’s Washington Post discusses how the changing nature of popularity in high school also reflects a new diversity and, unintentionally, the now rampant confusion over what “diversity” means.
On thousands of high school football fields across the country this month, crowns and tiaras find a place on the hair-sprayed heads of chosen teenagers. But as most homecoming traditions — from bonfires to pep rallies to football games — have endured, the criteria for selecting who’s cool in school has not….
“This year, homecoming’s going to be a little different,” announced Angela Briggs, president of the Student Government Association [at Annandale High School, in suburban northern Virginia]. “It is not a popularity contest.”
The result was a homecoming court absent of cheerleaders. Most of the nominees take Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate classes. None of the selected girls is blonde. And nine of the 10 members of the court are not white.
The success of Annandale’s “anti-popularity” experiment and the diversity of its homecoming court speak volumes about teenagers today, said Bill Strauss, co-author of “Millennials Rising: The Next Generation,” about those born after 1982….[Emphasis added]
“The more diverse kids are looked at as popular,” he said….
Exactly what is a “diverse kid”? Maybe in an effort to indicate their popularity, kids should start writing in “diverse” on the ubiquitous forms seeking their racial/ethnic identity.
According to the WaPo article,
about 38 percent of Annandale High School’s population is white, 15 percent black, 23 percent Asian and 23 percent Hispanic. English is not the first language of about half the school’s 2,500 students.
Perhaps in a future edition the Washington Post can explain how a ten person homecoming court that is 90% non-white at a school that is 38% white can be described as “diverse.”
