Faltering Defense Of “Diversity”?

Prof. John L. Jackson, Jr., whom we have encountered many times here as the Chronicle of Higher Education’s designated BOC (Blogger Of Color [my term, not the Chronicle’s]), is troubled today by the increasingly ineffective (I would say pathetic) defenses of “diversity.”

He writes that we know what critics believe is wrong with diversity.

The naysayers have many answers: that it discriminates against white males; that it rewards mediocrity/incompetence; that it perpetuates minority underachievement; that it threatens the integrity of higher education; that it is undemocratic and unethical; that it runs counter to all of our loftiest ideals of equality. Diversity, they argue, is the euphemism of choice for quotas, which should be considered unfair and unconstitutional.

That’s not a bad summary, except for the first point’s implication that criticism of racial favoritism is driven not by principled opposition to racial favoritism but by sympathy with white male victims. To believe that you’d have to be blind to the fact that virtually all critics of racial favoritism (and literally all prominent ones) are equally outraged at the injustice done to Asian men, and women, in the present and the injustice that was done to blacks, men and women, in the past.

“We know what the detractors think,” Jackson continues, “but how do diversity proponents counter[?]”

What’s the defense of diversity, not just as an abstract principle, but as translatable into concrete decisions about, say, student admissions and faculty hiring?

Given the extent to which recent Supreme Court decisions have demonstrated growing judicial hostility towards race-inflected admission decisions/formulas (and with the increasing thematization/politicization of academia as ideologically Far-Left), are advocates conceding too much? Are they trying to have it both ways? That is, might academia be falling into a trap when it attempts to ostensibly cloak its programmatic commitments to diversity (one of the criticisms leveled at many academic interventions)? Is it enough to re-name programs that used to be explicitly marked as race-specific initiatives and still deploy them in service to similar goals, walking on egg shells all the while?

Put slightly differently, are academics still fighting for a version of diversity with real institutional teeth? Or has that battle already been lost?

Race-inflected admission decisions/formulas? Just what we needed: another euphemism for racial favoritism. But leave euphemism aside (if you can). What does Jackson mean by trying to have it “both ways”? What is the “trap” diversity-defenders are falling in to?

I’m really not sure what Prof. Jackson is trying to say here, but I think what he’s saying is that defenses of “diversity” without openly and robustly defended racial preferences and assertions that quotas are “fair and constitutional” have no teeth.

Clearly some of the early commenters on Jackson’s piece have no hesitation offering a toothsome defense of quotas. “Feldmann” writes that he or she would welcome “equal opportunity” (feldmann’s quotation marks to indicate belief that that concept is no more than conservative myth) … as soon as everything in life has been equalized — the old “level playing field” metaphor that we’ve encountered many times. So, feldmann concludes, “Yes, I want to see equal results….”

Or take “perplexed,” who asserts in the confident manner of academics ignorant of the evidence supporting arguments they summarily reject,

In a democratic society composed of numerous and somtimes overlapping communities defined in multiple ways (e.g., ethnicity, gender, etc.) everyone’s sense of justice requires that the best and brightest of their communities are able to attain desirable outcomes. Communities so denied will not long contribute productively to society.

So, “everyone” supports race-normed quotas. And anyone who doesn’t is, well, nobody.