Based on this long article summarizing an even longer study, it seems to me that no one is quite sure.
What I found most striking about the article was the complete absence of any discussion of exactly what “diversity” means, beyond the obvious concern with epidermal appearances. Consider, for example, this paltry attempt to define:
Chief diversity officers are best defined as “change management specialists” because of the importance that they place on strategies designed to intentionally move the culture of their institutions.
Change what to what? Move “culture” to where?
According to one officer that we interviewed, the presence of a title like “vice provost for diversity and academic affairs,” in combination with a portfolio of units and responsibilities in both areas, signals that the officer is “more than simply a resource on matters of diversity and suggests a fundamental connection between diversity and academic excellence.”
So, whatever “diversity” is, chief diversity officers are supposed to make it “infuse” the whole institution.
The most influential of these officers is also distinguished by ability to infuse diversity into the most important academic issues of the institution. For example, the chief diversity officer may collaborate with the academic senate to develop a general education diversity distribution requirement; lead international negotiations for establishing a sister campus in Dubai; or develop incentives to develop new programs and initiatives that infuse diversity into the curriculum and co-curriculum. These types of initiatives are distinct from the traditional responsibilities of affirmative action officers, although chief diversity officers may play a key role in resolving sexual harassment and workplace discrimination complaints, or supervising the unit that performs this function.
Well, I suppose a sister campus in Dubai might, somehow, bring some “diversity” to Dubuque or Detroit.
In the absence of any clear sense of what “diversity” means, how should institutions go about finding the right person to lead this “infusion” process? You might think that discussing qualifications for the position might lead to some sense of what actually is being sought. If so, I think you’d be disappointed:
In gearing up for a search, a number of tough issues are often bantered by senior administrators and others designing the position and thinking about the type of knowledge, skills, and abilities that define a qualified candidate. These issues include whether the individual should possess a Ph.D. or other terminal degree; qualify for tenure in an academic department; have a legal background and experience with federal and state compliance issues; and whether or not the person charged to do the work must be a member of an ethnic, racial, gender, or other minority group, to name a few of the most common challenging topics for discussion.
Call me biased, but I see much more confusion than infusion here.
In the former SOVIET UNION we use to call them KOMMISARS!
Now they are here!
SAD! VERY SAD!
If the ‘diversity’ industry believed and practised what they preached, no doubt they would reflect the community by being composed of 70% white, 13% black, and 13% hispanic practitioners.
As Thomas Sowell as stated, ‘diversity’ is a term that should be considered void for vagueness.
“Chief diversity officers have responsibility for guiding efforts to conceptualize, define, assess, nurture, and cultivate diversity as an institutional and educational resource. Although duties may include affirmative action/equal employment opportunity, or the constituent needs of minorities, women, and other bounded social identity groups, chief diversity officers define their mission as providing point and coordinating leadership for diversity issues institution-wide.”
What does not count as a “bounded social identity group” and why?
I cannot believe the language in this article. It reads like a parody.
For example, the chief diversity officer may collaborate with the academic senate to develop a general education diversity distribution requirement
Is that the new and approved term for the “not-a-quota” quota? :o)
Federal Dog..
The article is indeed a laughable parody, but I can give you an example of one “bounded social identity group” that does not count–white males. Or does anyone think there is a “diversity officer” in the country who would advise and mentor a group of students who wanted to call themselves the “White Students Assn.”?
In my experience, the “diversity officer” is in charge of creating the very problem that he or she was hired to solve, thus ensuring that he or she will continue to have a job.
Den,
You are quite right about their reasoning, but I still wonder why they believe white males re not “bounded.”
What are white guys — infinite?
Good point Den.
White males have had a tough go of it in this country and their presence is rarely reflected in politics, business, and entertainment.
White males suffer disparity in lending and health care and are routinely stigmatized as having some group pathology when one of them does wrong.
There has also been a long history in this country and abroad of caricaturizing white males by exaggerating their features (nose, eyes, teeth, and buttocks) in cartoons and other forms of entertainment and they are often times portrayed as buffoons or comic foils. Step-n-fetch-it and minstrely are images that will haunt white males for years to come. That is to say nothing of the long history of pseudo-science that has attempted to prove white male intellectual inferiority.
You rarely see a white male as a romantic lead or as the hero in literature and film. We rarely see white males as three-dimensional characters portrayed with any sort of depth.
White males are also disproportionate victims of sexual abuse, rape, and harassment. We have yet to see a white male president. The numbers of businesses run by white males are few and far between and white males have very little power in hiring decisions.
We routinely associate white males with crime and depravity. And I know I’ve seen many white males harassed by police officers and given poor service in restaurants and such.
Let us also not forget the struggle of the white male throughout history. White males were enslaved and emasculated in a concentrated effort by this government. After overcoming slavery, white males were butchered during Reconstruction and segregated during the Jim Crow era.
Wasn’t there a white male interrment during WW2?
Also, how could I forget that white males were driven from their native land; relegated to reservation life; and caricatured by sports teams to this day.
White student’s association? Great Idea!
I’m employed at one of the schools listed as hiring its first Chief Diversity Officer. The person chaired a committee that produced a very long (and vague) diversity proposal.
During several “listening” sessions that I attended the most frequent comment made was that the term “diversity” was not defined. The lengthly proposal constantly called for us to add diversity but doesn’t tell us what that is.
The CDO said the next draft would be more specific.
The 2nd draft is out now and it too fails to contain a definition of “diversity.” I suspect “diversity” will be what ever the CDO decides it is on a case-by-case basis.
Hull,
Your argument is not for diversity but for reparations. If you want to argue that blacks should be admitted to universities under separate and unequal criteria as part of a reparations program, please make that argument.
However, diversity coordinators are suppose to create a “positive” education experience by creating a “diverse” education experience.
Of course black-Americans make no such demand of those black students who attend Historically Black Colleges and Universities. The HBCU’s do not have diversity coordiantors any more than they have white students unions or asian engineers societies nor do they attempt to provide a diverse education expereince for their overwhelming black student bodies.
Hull…
It’s good to hear from you again. I needed you to provide my weekly dose of racism and racial animus, and I’m glad I spurred you to remind us of how truly useful it is to make us all racial creditors and debtors. Guess I’ll just have to cower ashamedly in the corner somewhere, flagelating myself for my sin of being white, rather than try and correct and rebut all of the ahistorical half-truths and irrelevancies in your well-written rant. I’ll just let your words float down to earth, like dust, where they will be less likely to obscure the vision of the rest of us who just try and get along in life without ascribing the perceived bad behavior of eons ago to people living in the here and now.
Except for one thing… I just cannot resist asking, with regard to your last paragraph, am I an insensitive r-word, as a descendant (with considerable ethnic admixture) of those (eons ago) in the Emerald Isle who migrated to our shores, if I don’t have a sense of grievance about Notre Dame and it’s cute little mascot, not to mention the name the school actually has the temerity to use? Should Swedes in Minneapolis protest at their NFL games too, and Boston’s white NBA fans as well? Or do we all just need more, or better, sensitivity training?
“Superdestroyer,” I don’t think my post alluded to or mentioned any of the things you have ascribed to me. Still, nice straw man. I think I’ve addressed the HBCU issue with you before, but you appear eager to flog that horse into the afterlife. As I and others on this forum have noted: White scholarships were required in consent decrees or other legal settlements to lawsuits in North Carolina, Mississippi, and Alabama at HBCUs. (Thanks John)
That said, I agree, there should be greater diversity at HBCUs. However, as Cobra pointed out IN THIS EXACT SAME DISCUSSION (dead horse) no one is clamoring for admission to HBCUs and graduation from HBCUs does not garner the same or similar economic reward as graduation from the so-called elite universities of this country. If you are concerned with the diversity of HBCU’s, by all means fight that fight. I support you effort 100% as I am, like you, a strong proponent of diversity ;)
Den, it’s funny that you mention a white student’s association then in practically the same breath accuse someone else of providing racial animus. The idea of a white’s student union presupposes that whites are a vulnerable group that need to join together so as not to be overwhelmed by an oftentimes hostile majority. Indeed, since most schools are predominantly white and most of their organizations are overwhelmingly white one wonders how you could miss the overabundance of “white student unions”. The same can be said of “white history month” (history class) and a White Entertainment Network (aka basic cable). Your points make it increasingly clear exactly why we need diversity. Were it not for diversity efforts we would see little or no representation from non-whites in business, entertainment, education, etc.
I don’t know you so I won’t hazard a guess about whether you are an “r-word” (that’s a funny and interesting concept though: “r-word”). But, Jim Crow did not occur “eons ago” and the racism that preceeded it did not evaporate into ether the day the Civil Rights Act was signed. Civil Rights activist, Tim Wise has an interesting take on your position regarding the mistreatment of Irish peoples versus Native Americans:
“indigenous persons, unlike Irish Americans, continue to be marginalized in the United States. A substantial percentage have been geographically ghettoized and isolated on some of the nation’s most desolate land, while those off the rez have largely been stripped of the cultures, languages and customs of their forbears by a boarding school policy implemented against their families, which policy’s stated purpose from the 1800s through much of the twentieth century was to “Kill the Indian and save the man.”
To be Irish American is to be a member of the largest white ethnic group in the nation, and one of the most accepted and celebrated at that. It wasn’t always that way, to be sure, but it is now. For Irish folks to be stereotyped as fighters simply doesn’t have the same impact-given the power and position of the Irish in this society-as when stereotypes are deployed against subordinated groups. Objectification only works its magic upon those who continue to be vilified.”
http://www.counterpunch.org/wise08102005.html
Hull,
My permanent home is in Woodstock, NY, although I also have a place in Manhattan.
In Woodstock, white men rise to positions of prominence by doing as you do… donning the hair shirt. In fact, the white man with the itchiest hair shirt rises fastest and highest.
This has created a culture of lying. Most of the residents of Woodstock who weren’t born here moved here to… escape the pathologies of black inner city culture.
The liberal culture of Woodstock has had a profoundly negative effect in damaging the black community… not through racism, but through the promotion of liberal welfare nostrums. Killers of white cops, like Mumia, are heroes to those same Woodstockers who fled NYC to escape the pathologies of the black community.
So, I’ve heard a lot of the kind of your kind of talk. You’ll have to forgive me for saying that I no longer believe that such talk is the result of good intentions. You should take your problems of conscience to the confessional. The hair shirt you’re wearing doesn’t do anybody any good… unless you’re running for office in a liberal, white community like Woodstock… and that sanctimony really hurts blacks.
What does a “Chief Diversity Officer” do? Collect a fatter paycheck than a garden-variety Diversity Officer, for one thing.
Has anyone else noticed that most of Hull’s list is truly insignificant? Leading men, cartoons, a presence in entertainment, poor service in restaurants, caracatures in sports.
Other parts are more the responsibility of blacks than whites. Victims of sexual abuse, rape, harassment. I wish blacks all the success in the world, but it’s doubtful that white success in businesses such as IT, or medicine, was done at the expense of blacks.
America’s behavior in WW2 was horrendous, but certainly less so than that of other countries at war (Japan), or even other countries at peace (Sudan).
And so on. But at bottom, what we have here is a post about diversity, and one of the early comments is about, apparantly, reparations.
Hull–
Calling Tim Wise a civil rights activist is a little like calling Al Sharpton a minister; I suppose they are each happy with the appellation, but it certainly doesn’t begin to convey the full essence of each.
Mr. Wise’ books, like “White Like Me” and others, can be read and judged by the readers of this site for themselves. IMHO though, his self-flagellation and dime store quasi-Marxism are quite useful in building what is, I expect, a comfortable living in lecturing and bookselling to gullible children and their committed leftist professors on campus.
Can I ask you a couple of questions: how are American children born from, say, 1986 to ’88 the victims of Jim Crow, and earlier lamentable social systems?
Maybe put it this way: if your grandfather and his brother, way back when, punched and spat upon my grandfather, for no reason other than because they could, is it ok for me to do the same to you today, you know, to make things right, and even up the score? Is it racially correct? Seriously.
Den writes:
>>>”Can I ask you a couple of questions: how are American children born from, say, 1986 to ’88 the victims of Jim Crow, and earlier lamentable social systems?”
Because of SYSTEMIC Institutional racism. Now, I’m not going to go back to 2004 and type in a 7 page detailed article on how minorities, particularly African Americans are discriminated against TODAY. It’s John’s blog.
But if you want to take this discussion to the email world, I’ll be HAPPY to fill you hard drive with data, research and academic study on institutional discrimination in law enforcement, housing, health care, hiring, wages, & government contracts.
Hull is absolutely correct in his assessments, and his 9:42AM post deserves a curtain call.
–Cobra
You are absolutely wrong, Cobra. You enjoyed the advantage over me for your entire life.
No such SYSTEMIC racism exists. Well, blacks are racist too. Racism, as I’ve stated repeatedly, is a fact of human existence and always will be. Efforts to completely eradicate it are worse than the purported problem.
And, yes, there is a whole industry of cranks out there making a living out there trying to inflame racial hatred. You won’t have any trouble finding it, since you stuff yourself with it daily.
My suggestion… quit reading those crackpots and find something better to do with your time.
Den writes:
>>>”Can I ask you a couple of questions: how are American children born from, say, 1986 to ’88 the victims of Jim Crow, and earlier lamentable social systems?”
Den,
If a child is born in 1986 or 1987 and his parents were 30 years old when they had him, then his parents probably attended segregated schools (i.e their parents were children between 1956 and 1964 when the Civil Rights Act became law). Their parents very likely had a substandard education as a result of segregation thereby limiting their earning potential. If your parents have a sub-standard education that can have a detrimental effect on you. That is a concrete example of how American children born in the mid 80s are still effected by segregation.
Hull,
You can repeat the reparations talking points but it still does not answer why the white students at U.of Michigan and virtually any other majority white university needs a coordinator to support black history month while at the same time the students are Grambling never are exposed to the cultures of South America, Asia, Europe, or the middle east.
If black america really though a “diverse” education was inportant then there would be Asian, Hispanic, and Arab culture event would be covered as much as Grambling as Black History Month is covered at U. of Mich.
“Superdestroyer” I said this earlier, but I’ll repeat it: I agree with you. There should be more diversity at Black schools. It’s good to have you on the pro-diversity team.
Gee, two racial grievance purveyors to spar with, why, it must be Christmas mornin’….
Cobra–
Institutional racism exists in this country, and it is chronicled every week in this blog, in particular in academic institutions, sometimes explicitly anti-white, usually only implicitly so. It is therefore particularly amusing to read your assertion about “systemic racism” here. American institutions, public and private, academic, charitable (e.g., the Gates Foundation’s explicit discriminatory policies), and governmental are interminably hectoring, urging, financially incenting, and otherwise seeking the hiring of non-whites over whites. The very start of this blog thread was an article on figuring out what a small segment of this industry actually does. From mission statements of law firms to the personel department policies of public and private companies, to whole divisions of major government agencies, the institutions of our time are committed to advancing the hiring of minorities, and when they can’t fill places thusly, they call women minorities and look for them, all in stark violation of the explicit language of the ’64 CRA. Open your eyes and read the promotion policies of many employers–they are tied to hiring people of a certain color, rather than without regard to color, all too frequently. If you are going to cite to me reams of material on how American society is institutionally against the employment of black people you are living in a dream world. Reality is chronicled on this site and others on a weekly basis. If there is disproportionality in housing, government contracts, law enforcement, wages and hiring it is because of differences in qualifications. You can’t possibly have proportionate numbers of doctors, lawyers, Indian chiefs, firemen or anything else if you have hugely disproportionate dropout rates, which is the start of the rebuttal of virtually all of your ‘institutional racism’ statistical claims.
Hull–
I must first point out to you something: when you raise a hypothetical, i.e, imaginary, case, and then describe it, it does not become a “concrete example”. It remains a “hypothetical,” but I digress.
As to your more general point, if you wish to posit that many Americans have parents whose educations were not very good, by their parents’ contemporaries’ standards or certainly by ours, but that those Americans, black and white, native born or immigrant, have and continue everyday to overcome their parents’ humble circumstances, to whatever dubious extent it really mattered in almost all cases, then I will heartily agree. One way of looking at American society is social and economic fluidity. For every case you put forth of how Jim Crow in the ’50’s affects kids now I can plausibly hypothesize ten cases of contempory Americans who are solidly entrenched in the middle class whose parents faced similar circumstances. And what about immigrants, say from Vietnam and Cuba, who didn’t even speak our language when they came here. Do they not have middle class, or even wealthy, children?
No, what you want, really, is racial reparations, and I am happy that you continue to argue for same, so that more and more Americans of all stripes can reject the arguements for such disasters.
Hull,
I’m a first generation American (my mother was an immigrant). My father was raised in the 1930s in the hills of WVa. Neither graduated from high school. Yet 2 of my parents’ 3 kids graduated from college and one graduated from law school. Given your hypothesis, it should have been virtually impossible for these children (born from 1958 to 1964, at the height of Jim Crowism) to better themselves this way. But according to you, the fact that we were white must have trumped the fact that my parents were poor and never graduated from high school. Thank God they didn’t think it college and law school were out of reach for this daughter of an immigrant. And I’m sure my experience is not anecdotal.
A couple of points:
On the effects of segregation –
Yes, different people/families have different opportunities and everyone comes here with different backgrounds and capabilites. But, segregation was sanctioned by this government. In other words, it is one thing to say “my family comes from humble beginnings.” It is quite another case when this country imposed laws that REQUIRED a family to have substandard school, health, services, etc. Those laws were not repealed until 1964. That is not ancient history.
Systemic or Institutional Racism – First, let’s dispel the notion that institutional racism does not exist. If you want to take the anti-preference argument (like Den) then there is systemic racism against whites by way of racial preference programs.
If you want to take the truthful argument, there have been tens of thousands of class action suits that have successfully proven that racial discrimination occurred within organizations; not as individual instances of racial slights, but as patterns and practices of discrimination. In other words, these suits show that some organizations (institutions) have discriminated as a rule. One quick example that comes to mind because we have discussed it before is NAACP v. Allen. As I noted in another thread:
“in NAACP v. Allen, (http://www.eeolawyers.com/cases/naacp.html) the Alabama Dept. of Public Safety was accused of a pervasive practice of excluding Blacks from employment. The Court said:
“Plaintiffs have shown without contradiction that the defendants have engaged in a blatant and continuous pattern and practice of discrimination in hiring in the Alabama Department of Public Safety, both as to troopers and supporting personnel. In the thirty-seven-year history of the patrol there has never been a black trooper and the only Negroes ever employed by the department have been nonmerit system laborers. This unexplained and unexplainable discriminatory conduct by state officials is unquestionably a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. . .”
The dearth of Black troopers and supporting personnel did not come about because there were no qualified Blacks to take those jobs. Whites were not simply “better” at all of the jobs Blacks were excluded from for 37 years at the Alabama Department of Public Safety. The employment picture in Allen came about because there was a practice of racism, not one individual person making racist decisions. This was a rule within this organization. That is a concrete example of instituional racism.
Between 2000 and 2005 over 14,000 racial discrimiantion suits were settled with the EEOC (http://www.eeoc.gov/stats/race.html). While a settlment is not an admission of guilt, it does indicate that the complainant had a strong argument that discrimination occurred.
I think non-minorities have trouble with the entire concept of institutional racism because it is something that is rarely exerted against them. On the rare occasions when it appears to occur (like racial prefernce) you can hear them scream it from the mountaintops for all the world to hear. But, the fact that it doesn’t happen to you often does not mean that it doesn’t exist and it certainly does not mean that it isn’t a plague for other groups.
I’m not trying to filibuster the converstation, but on Sharon’s point about her family history:
The status of your father in WV was not determined by law. The status of Blacks in this country WAS determined by law. Do you understand that there is a difference between your family’s situation and an entire people being forbidden by law to attend a certain quality of school or receive a certain quality of services? Now, you can say, “But my family did it!” And that’s great, and there are many many Black people who overcame THE LAW of this country to succeed, but the fact remains that there is a drastic difference between adversity by choice and adversity by law.
Hull
I am happy that you cited NAACP v. Allen; it is a shining example of what this blog in particular and anti-racial-preference types in general inveigh against on a daily basis: solving cases of discrimination with–surprise–more discrimination, against people who didn’t benefit initially and in favor of people who weren’t denied themselves anything. The federal judiciary, republican and democrat appointed I’m sure, imposed a strict one for one quota, and simply ignored pesky little arguments about “equal protection” and “title VII violation” and such when brought by whites, in order to “remedy past discrimination.” They also didn’t seem to much care whether equally qualified candidates of each race could be found. I’m not an expert on the case and I think the pleadings are voluminous, as is the commentary over the past 30 years, but I believe this: quotas violate the Constitution, the CRA and are a recipe for civil discord, and the Allen case is a good example of all of this.
The bringing and settlement of an EEOC case absolutely does NOT mean that a good case existed; been there, done that, on behalf of an employer or two. I’ll let more recently experienced labor lawyers reading this thread-if anyone else still is-add to that. I believe the proprietor of this blog has some experience with non-meritorious large class-action race cases. I’ll just say this, class action cases have become infamous for being driven by lawyers fees rather than underlying wrongs, and race discrimination class actions are no different. The idea that nowadays large companies–say, oh, Walmart, to just pick one out of the air–are victimizing employees because of race or sex is preposterous, but then such a view is much better argued these days by innumerable books, articles and blogs that most of us are familiar with.
And that would be the “truthful argument”.
Hull,
You exaggerated the EEOC cases. The chart you linked to showed that two-thirds of the cases were without merit. Any reasonable person would read that chart and determine that too many blacks are out there flopping the race card down every chance they get.
Also, the idea of group guilt is not constitutional even though the courts keep trying to implement the idea. If black Americans really want the idea of group guilt, then lets pass a constitutional amendment allowing such group guilt and group remedies along with all of the assorted regulations with the first one being defining who really is black.
PS, You may support diversity at HBCU but the HBCU’s themselves seem to go out of their way to discourage any form of diversity.
Hull,
You can argue that my father’s life was not determined by law, but this is different from your original point that poverty, etc. determined one’s ability to succeed. And don’t be so patronizing as to tell ME about the 1964 Civil Rights Act. I’m old enough to have been told on multiple occasions that I couldn’t participate in this or that because I was not a boy/man and that I should do this or that because I was a girl/woman. Funny, it didn’t stop me from graduating from law school.