Forced Diversity?

I have long thought, and often said, that one way of thinking about the diversity wars (not the best way, certainly, but one way) is to regard race and ethnicity as commodoties that must be distributed.

If one accepts, at least for the sake of argument, that race actually exists and that arguments over “diversity” are in part arguments about its distribution, then one can see that the debate over “diversity” involves a familiar debate between liberals and conservatives over government regulation. On this view, conservatives favor what could be described as a free market in race, with the government’s role being limited to insuring that there is no discrimination, while liberals favor active and aggressive government regulation to insure what they regard as a desirable outcome.

It would appear that Jeffrey Lehman, former dean of the law school at the University of Michigan and now president of Cornell, agrees with this formulation. In a recent speech at Cornell,

Lehman concluded his remarks saying that … we do not yet live in a society where diversity happens by accident, but must still be forced through planning.

Lehman’s unfortunate but revealing phrasing suggests that another way to think of “diversity” is as busing, now grown up and gone to college.

Say What? (4)

  1. Chetly Zarko March 9, 2004 at 6:17 pm | | Reply

    John, what a remarkable quote.

  2. Laura March 9, 2004 at 9:09 pm | | Reply

    Yes, it is a remarkable quote.

    It’s one thing to say we should embrace and appreciate diversity, and realize how we benefit from it. It’s another thing altogether to say it doesn’t occur naturally and must be forced. Maybe we should just leave it alone, do you think?

  3. Nels Nelson March 9, 2004 at 11:44 pm | | Reply

    To be fair, John is quoting the reporter’s analysis, not what was spoken by President Lehman.

  4. KRM March 10, 2004 at 6:23 pm | | Reply

    If we’re going to force diversity, we should go whole hog and not wait until kids hit college. Perhaps we should begin reassigning children among families, randomly, at birth. Such that any child born in the USA on any given day has an exact equal chance of being raised in any household where a birth took place that day. We would soon jumble the mixes within each individual family unit and eventually eliminate disparities. Or perhaps requiring only interracial breeding, so as to achieve a uniformly brown population in a few generations.

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