Once again it seems that the evil “what is diversity?” question rears it’s ugly head. Why exactly is it that whenever anyone says that they favor diversity they really mean that they are in favor of promoting the interests of everyone but hetereosexual white males.
The reasoning for diversity seems to be two fold. 1) because it’s good for a person’s education to interact with a wide variety of people and 2) there are so many poor women/minorities etc… that we need to help them. About the first point I can make no agrument. I don’t know thing one about the educational value of diversity. But I do have to say if you want to meet different people you shouldn’t just in your hometown and wait for them to come to you. Take a semester abroad or maybe just go to school in another state. I spent half a year in highschool in El Paso Texas and learned what it’s like to be the only white kid.
On to the second point. If we want to help people who grew up poor to get out of the cycle of poverty then why not just offer scholarships to students from low income families? I never really understood why in all of the “Giant book of scholarships” the only way to get a scholarship was to be a jewish black female. okay that’s a gross exageration but my point is that if the aim is to help poor people then we should help poor people. If we want to help people from inner city schools then we should help people from inner city schools. We should not design a scholarship to help poor kids from inner city schools and then make it open to only people of a specific skin tone and expect it to work.
Ultimately it seems to me that people and schools and governments only talk about diversity when they are trying to make themselves look more openminded then the evidence might otherwise indicate. If the goal in the end is for all races, genders and nationalities to be treated equally then why are we enacting policies that don’t. It’s like trying to balance on a see saw. You don’t get balanced by pushing hard. You get balanced by sitting in the right place and making very small and gentle adjustments.
Hyrum AndersonMaterials Science and Engineering
“The world is ruled by letting things take their course. It cannot be ruled by interfering.”Lao Tsu- Tao Te Ching