The editors of the Kalamazoo Gazette ask their readers to
Imagine a world where the playing field is level, where all people — without regard to race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin — are hired solely on the virtue of their merits.
Imagine a world where people can compete on an equal footing for college admissions and government jobs.
Imagine a world where, to paraphrase the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., people are judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their characters.
To the editors, such a world is just that — imaginary, a “utopia.”
Because the editors view that world is an imaginary utopia, they oppose the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative, which would require state agencies to treat people without regard to their race.
O.K., editors, now why don’t you imagine a world where people never kill each other out of anger or greed, where all children are treated with love. Such a world, also, is an imaginary “utopia,” isn’t it?
So lets get rid of all our laws against murder and child abuse.
ADDENDUM
Here’s a thought. According to the keepers of the Kalamzoo Gazette, racial preferences are necessary because “diversity” is essential:
If our public schools, colleges, universities and governments don’t reflect the growing diversity of the communities they serve, we will not be as effective competing globally.
If college student cannot be adequately prepared to enter the world of work unless they have been exposed to “diversity” while in school, surely prisoners can’t be successfully rehabilitated and prepared to enter that same world of work if their prisons aren’t adequately “diverse.”
And, of course, they are not. In Michigan, according to this 2003 report, blacks make up 14.2% of the population but 48.9% of the prison population. Since, according to the Kalamazoo Gazette editors, Michigan colleges can’t operate effectively without more blacks and, by implication, Michigan prisons have too many blacks but not enough whites, why not institutute a furlough or exchange program to cure the demographic deficiencies of both sets of institutions?
If our public schools, colleges, universities and governments don’t reflect the growing diversity of the communities they serve, we will not be as effective competing globally.
This, of course, is the boilerplate justification for the diversity fetish. I’m never clear what on earth it is supposed to mean, however. (I know what it really means, which is “We’ll look bad if we don’t have enough of the right kind of minority.”)
Why won’t we be as effective competing globally? How does letting an additional black person into my college class instead of an Asian-American make me “less effective” at competing? (Less effective than what? Competing with whom?)
… and don’t bring up the always inconvenient bit about HBCs …. !!
That diversity is somehow a competitive strengh is something that the left says with infinitely more conviction than with fact. It is an entirely baseless contention that is refuted by experience in the real world.
How do these leftists account for the fact that China and Japan are cleaning our clocks competitively and are also among the LEAST diverse societies on earth. India, also an up and coming competitor, has recently been sorting out its own experiment in affirmative action in a pretty brutal way that should serve as a lesson to us here. (Google “india” “affirmative action” and “Thomas Sowell”_
Agog writes:
>>>”How do these leftists account for the fact that China and Japan are cleaning our clocks competitively and are also among the LEAST diverse societies on earth.”
Japan has a national healthcare system, freeing the manufacturer from exess costs in production. China is a Communist nation employing socialism vigorously throughout their system.
Which do you suggest the United States emulate to gain competitive balance, or is it just about race in your opinion?
>>>”India also an up and coming competitor, has recently been sorting out its own experiment in affirmative action in a pretty brutal way that should serve as a lesson to us here. (Google “india” “affirmative action” and “Thomas Sowell”_ ”
Would you prefer the CASTE system in India to what they attempted to do with Affirmative Action?
–Cobra
How do these leftists account for the fact that China and Japan are cleaning our clocks competitively and are also among the LEAST diverse societies on earth.”
I don’t know how “these leftists” account for it, but this libertarian accounts for it by poiinting out that your premise is more incorrect than Cobra ever is. Assuming for the sake of argument that Japan was ever “cleaning our clocks,” it hasn’t been doing so in about 15 years. It has been mired in a recession for almost all of that time. And while China has been growing rapidly, it has been doing so from a tiny baseline; it’s still a desperately poor country.
Cobra, Agog’s point is not very good, but you should take it for what it is worth. He is not arguing that anyone should emulate China, or Japan, or India. He is saying that these countries are not racially diverse, and do not want to be racially diverse.
Again, I don’t agree with his point, but nowhere does he say we should emulate these countries.
One measure of where both China and Japan are “cleaning our clocks competitively” is balance of trade and market share. Japan’s share of the North American and world auto markets has continued to grow despite the aforementioned fifteen year recession. Toyota is poised to soon pass GM as the largest car maker in the world. This is in no small part because Toyota is perceived as producing a superior product to GM, Ford and Chrysler.
Please, if you disagree, give an example of how the US’ supposed competitive advantage from its far geater diversity shows up in any real world example.
I think Agog makes a good point. Where is the evidence that “diversity,” as implemented by racial discrimination in hiring and college admissions, helps us compete globally? But what if there were some evidence; would that mean the discrimination is justified? If so, perhaps the govt should give tax breaks to compannies that fire all their Jewish employees because doing so would increase the amount of business those companies could do in the Arab world.
Japan’s share of the North American and world auto markets has continued to grow despite the aforementioned fifteen year recession. Toyota is poised to soon pass GM as the largest car maker in the world. This is in no small part because Toyota is perceived as producing a superior product to GM, Ford and Chrysler.
Toyota is not “Japan.” Toyota is a company whose main corporate headquarters is in Japan. Many of their cars are built here in the U.S. by American workers; others are assembled in Mexico or Canada by Mexican or Canadian workers.
If your argument is that it’s the upper management that matters, well, most of Chrylser’s upper management is German, not American.
Trade balances have little to do with “competitiveness.” It’s a category error to treat national economies the same as companies.