The 116th Congress was just sworn in, and much is made of how it’s the “most diverse in U.S. history.” NBC News opens a piece with “Congress just got a lot more diverse,” while back in November already the Guardian ran the headline, “Photo of new House members shows big gap in diversity between parties.” It’s said that what’s assumed is learned best, and it certainly is assumed here that diversity=good and, hence, Democrats=better. But is diversity really a strength?
Let’s begin with some thought-provoking questions. First, if you needed a medical team to perform brain surgery on your child, would you choose it based on diversity measures, on quota? Or would you choose the best?
Next question: People never emphasize achieving diversity when at issue are pro soccer, basketball, or track teams. But that drum is beaten — and anyone opposing it is socially beaten down — when at issue are politicians, CEOs, actors, or academics. (Why, California just enacted a law forcing publicly-traded companies to put women on their corporate boards.) Why the difference?
Areas where diversity goes unmentioned have something in common: Performance in them can be easily and irrefutably quantified. (E.g., the stopwatch tells the tale about runners’ competence.)
In contrast, areas where diversity is required are ones in which performance cannot be easily and irrefutably quantified. (There is no scientific measuring device to show how sound thinking beats philoso-babble.)
If an NBA coach indulges diversity doctrine and ensures his roster is half female, a certain percent Jewish and Asian, and in general “Looks like America™,” his team will lose, viewership will decline, the owners will bleed money, and he’ll be fired.
But the association between cause and effect in, let’s say, academia isn’t so clear — or at least, it’s easily blurred. Sure, the socialism Professor Marx preaches at Jacobin U. has failed far and wide, but, don’t be dense, that’s “just because it hasn’t been implemented correctly yet.”
As author George Orwell put it in 1984, “In philosophy, or religion, or ethics, or politics, two and two might make five, but when one was designing a gun or an aeroplane they had to make four.”
The problem is that not understanding cause and effect doesn’t make bad effects any less destructive. It just ensures the destruction will be repeated.
So here’s yet another question: Can you think of any field in which diversity has been shown to improve quality? Apropos to this, there are ongoing complaints about how pro sports’ senior management lacks diversity; as the Undefeated lamented about the NBA in 2016, while “75 percent of its players are black … only one team president and three general managers are.” The idea is that the boardroom should look more like the court (filled with 6’8” men?).
But did anyone ever consider making the court look more like the boardroom?
The response to this would be laughter, shaming, and accusations of prejudice, but this reflects prejudice itself. Why assume that diversity would surely make the teams worse but not the management? Again, the only difference between the two groups is that with the former, performance — important in all endeavors — is more easily quantified.
Remember, enforcing diversity in basketball, tennis, soccer, football, or track diminishes performance because insofar as focus on diversity is emphasized, focus on quality is deemphasized. Is it logical to suppose this phenomenon ceases being operative just because performance in a field is harder to quantify?
Every endeavor involves competence in a given area. Does it make sense thinking that diversity reduces quality in every undertaking where performance can be quantified, but, as is dogmatically claimed, has only positive effects in every undertaking where it cannot be?
“Diversity” has never been the norm in endeavors. As economist Dr. Walter E. Williams has pointed out, there is no example in all of history, anywhere, of groups being represented proportionately across every field. In fact, while one can debate the causes, groups exhibit characteristic strengths, with even minorities often outperforming the majority.
For example, Jews are only 0.2 percent of the world’s population, but between 1901 and 2010 were 22 percent of its Nobel Prize winners. Moreover, as Dr. Williams wrote, “During the 1960s, the Chinese minority in Malaysia, where Malays politically dominate, received more university degrees than the Malay majority — including 400 engineering degrees, compared with just four for the Malays.”
“Diversity” is such a flawed and untenable concept that not even its proponents actually try to achieve it. The proof is that they only apply its “principles” selectively. Diversity is emphasized for Western countries — where it’s called a “strength” — but never for wealthy non-Western nations such as homogeneous, immigration-averse Japan, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, or Singapore. Perhaps these Diversity Police don’t care about strengthening non-“white” lands.
Diversity is also self-righteously pushed in white U.S. neighborhoods, and the growing minority population nationwide has been applauded as the “browning of America”; in contrast, an increasing white population in a minority area may be derided as a “bleaching out,” “gentrification,” and a loss of local culture.
As for the sexes, there’s great agitation for more female CEOs, lawyers, STEM experts, academics, and politicians. But there’s no talk about increasing the number of female garbage collectors, iron workers, loggers, or oil-rig personnel, the dearth of which in such fields is why men constitute 92 percent of workplace deaths.
What explains this selective diversity? There’s prejudice, of course, and a desire to increase power, pocketbook, and prestige. Generally speaking, it’s largely a ploy, used or shelved based on how it advances certain agendas.
Diversity isn’t emphasized with NBA teams, for instance, because it would cost money and offers no upside. So what’s different about entities such as Congress, Western nations, media, academia, entertainment, and boardrooms? Political gain can be had.
Note that the diversity-pushed groups in the U.S. vote Democrat by 70- to 90-percent margins, and they support leftists all throughout the Western world. In contrast, non-Hispanic whites provide 90 percent of the GOP’s vote and generally are the most, as is said, “conservative” segment of all Western nations.
Moreover, white men are the most conservative of all. This helps explain why they’re the most maligned.
Interestingly, the term “diversity” comes from, in part, the Old French word “diversete,” one meaning of which was “wickedness, perversity.” While it’s certainly used to justify such today, don’t worry about it being a permanent societal fixture. Our selective diversity would be applied just until it no longer brought gain, which would be when the Left achieved total power.
At that point leftists would likely emphasize conformity — with their agenda — perhaps at the end of a gun.
