SamSaid!

FULL DIVERSITY

     A few days ago I read an op/ed piece by Mr. Richard Atkinson. President of the University of California system. It was entitled, “Full Diversity: UC System not there yet”. Of course, his purpose was to support Affirmative Action in college admissions and to urge the US Supreme Court to sanction Michigan's practice of granting bonus points to black and minority applicants. That got me to thinking, “what is full diversity, and who ordained that concept as an operating goal for a huge tax-supported Educational  bureaucracy”? I guess I hold to a possibly Neanderthal view that Educational institutions exist for education, not social realignment. Was there a law passed to elevate diversity to priority status? Was there some kind of edict, and if so, from whom? And mind you, not just diversity  –   FULL diversity, whatever that is.

     Our US population is the greatest example of diversity known to man. Diverse from the standpoint of skin color, eye color, hair color, height, weight, affluence, ethnic origin. religion. race, smarts, sexuial orientation (with all of its eccentricities), political views etc., ad nauseam. The country didn't start off that way; rather, diversity evolved from the interaction of various segments of the population over time. Some of it did not come easily. But it occurred. And it is occurring now. But there is a huge difference between a natural evolution toward diversity and adopting a policy of “diversity for diversity's sake” which is what Cal and other parts of the world of academe now support. It is a sham. Now that the courts are ruling against quotas and race conscious admissions policies, the big guys in the ivory towers and their social elitist companions extoll the virtues of “the richness of diversity”. If I hear that term again, I think I'll barf.

     They just won't admit the inevitability of the math. With a finite sized body, if you shoe-horn 5 less qualified applicants in the front end of the bus, you shove 5 more qualified applicants out the back door. They just don't like that logic, and the preferred answer nowadays, is –  diversity, diversity, diversity. Mr Atkinson says that minorities are underrepresented at Cal, i.e., not enough blacks and Hispanics. Translated, that really means that there are too many whites, Jews and Asians. Solution??  Easy. Find a way to get around the academic credentials and reduce the count of whites, Jews and Asians. And that gets us back around to the current sacred cow  — diversity. Ah yes, the Atkinsons of the world turn to the the richness of diversity. Baloney. Cal is just saying to us, “we will accept who we want and teach what we want. Just keep sending the money (and by the way, we need more)”.  

     Our Constitution is color blind. I hope the current court doesn't buy the notion of making it technicolor. Mr. Arkinson should be ashamed to renounce academic standards right in the heart of the California system. But academicians are very good at “spin”. I wonder if he relies on diversity to explain why half of the Cal football team is black? What would be wrong with 135 pound Korean defensive tackles??

     Mr Atkinson should stick to academic matters. Diversity isn't one of them.