Diversity as Racism
April 20th, 2008 • Comments »
The post-modern application of the concept of “diversity” frequently results in legislation at federal, state, and local levels. Laws and regulations requiring diversity within any human population are racially discriminatory by definition. Legislated diversity resulting in the exclusion of one individual or group of people in favor of another on the basis of race or skin color is racism.
Taken literally, the concept of diversity is a relative quantification of the degree of heterogeneity of any given population. Each individual within a group is inherently unique and thus fundamentally different from every other group member. From personal experience and subjective ideas to emotional expression and developed intellect, the differences between any two or more individuals are both vast and profound.
Given these differences, the degree to which members of a group benefit from the diversity of others depends on individual willingness or desire to be influenced by others. For example, if John could care less about learning from his classmates, it really makes no difference if the people in his class are different in any way whatsoever. On the other hand, if Habib wants nothing more than to absorb the differences of his group, he will no doubt benefit, even if every member is of the same race, nation, and socioeconomic status.
The problem with the post-modern application of diversity involves the fact that you can’t legislate or otherwise “force” someone to want to embrace and learn about the endless differences of others. Even worse, typical “diversity” or “fairness” (or whatever they want to call it) legislation focuses exclusively on racial attributes, blatantly disregarding the inherent differences within the target population.
The irony of this is fantastic. First and foremost, the government has absolutely no business wasting time and resources trying to fix something that isn’t broken. Diversity legislation is unnecessary because people are inherently different in many, many ways. Secondly, in order to mandate diversity, the innate complexity of individuals is reduced to physical characteristics. Ironically, every effort to diversify populations requires the dismissal of inherent differences in favor of the superficial classification of people based on race.