| Monday, September 22, 2003 |
13:29 - Meaningless mantras
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I started thinking this morning (a dangerous pastime, I know) about the concept of "diversity". I'd been wondering just where all this Western self-loathing has come from-- this collective national guilt at sharing citizenship with the evil rich white males who run the wooorrrld-- and just sort of found myself pondering what leads people to plaster bumper stickers on their cars that plead for "diversity" above all other goals. If a rainbow-colored "Celebrate Diversity" sticker is alone on the back of a car, without even a "peace" symbol or that blue square thing with the yellow "equals" sign to accompany it, does that mean the person considers "diversity" to be the absolute most important thing this country has to work on? Or is it just a passive, feel-good way to say "Hey, I'm not a racist, not that you were gonna accuse me of being one or anything, oh, and I'm so sorry for being white"?
I'd like to know just since when a lack of diversity has been a problem, though? (I mean, we already have people from every planet on Earth in this state.) On NPR the other night, Sound Money was interviewing the chief of a Socially Responsible Investment mutual fund; and she said that one of the three big planks of what makes an SRI is that it buys companies that actively work to "promote diversity". Okay, um... maybe I just haven't been in the workforce long enough or worked at enough companies to notice, but-- it seems to me there's plenty of diversity in companies today. The engineering team at my company has members who are black, white, Indian, Pakistani, Chinese, Hispanic, Australian, Texan, and Hippie. In surprisingly equal measure. Know how many outreach programs the company engages in so as to be "socially conscious" in keeping ethnic balance in its hiring practices?
Okay, well, maybe that's because it's a technology company, and we hire anybody who's competent, because economically we can't afford not to. But I can drive down the street and look in the windows of businesses in strip malls, and you know what I don't see? Signs saying NO IRISH NEED APPLY or WHITES ONLY. Wonder why that could be?
Maybe because "diversity in the workplace" was a genuine goal that needed to be pursued about a hundred years ago, but now it's just a silly conceit. Like holding a picket rally demanding for cars to have four wheels, or supporting federal funding to get more kids to use the Internet.
The beauty of it is that no matter where you look, you see evidence that it must be working!
Whenever I see a "celebrate diversity" bumper sticker, then, or hear about some mutual fund that seeks out companies that actively try to "promote diversity", I get unbidden mental images of just what that means. Maybe I'll show up at work one of these days with a big cake, decorated with candy people in all different colors holding hands in a big circle. I'll go around and hand a piece to each member of the team, and say, "Boy, I'm sure glad you're (race) ! Thanks for being part of this company!" Then I'll go home and tell the guy who spent this morning with a couple of subcontractors jackhammering out the big concrete slabs from behind the house, "Hey, way to hire Hispanic people for menial labor! Kudos to you! I bet they'll appreciate it even more if you learn a few more than six words of Spanish!" And I'll pass out beers. Maybe I'll go back to my college, where Asian students outnumbered White ones by a pretty good margin, and demand that Admissions give more favorable treatment to Caucasian applicants. All in the name of Diversity!
It reminds me of a time when I was working at an ISP back in my hometown. There was this one customer, a thin, mousy guy on those arm-crutches that spoke of a past injury or malady-- your heart just went out to him. (This was in 1996, so the Internet was brand-new, and home users walking in to sign up typically had not the slightest clue what "going online" was all about. It was still the age when people had 286 boxes they'd bought in 1986, and they'd heard about this "Internet" thing that they could get on and have sex.) So this guy comes in and signs up for an account; he asks us in this slow, careful, halting voice that makes you wonder whether he's got some kind of mental impediment what all the details are to the process of getting information that's on these "web sites" he's heard about. He wants to find out information about healthful water systems, herbal healing, that sort of thing. He wants a regular user account; he wants unlimited hours. He even signs up for a domain name, which he plans to use in selling herbal holistic remedies or something. We spend about an hour teaching him how to do everything he's going to need to do, how to search for information on the Web, how to find the important sites for the interests he has and the business he wants to run; he keeps asking the same uncertain questions, sounding scared and overwhelmed. He takes his time to convey crucial words, like "in-for-mation"; he clearly has something very important in his head, and he's determined to get it, but something's just not quite gelling. Eventually, though, he seems timidly satisfied, pays for the account and services, stands up, and quivers his way back out of the office.
A week later, he appears again at our door. He has more questions. Specifically, he wants to know about "bulletin board systems". He's heard about BBSes as this other "thing" you can do with your modem. We look at him, brows furrowed. Well, we're an Internet provider; we don't have anything to do with BBSes. What do you want to go on them for, anyway?
And he wobbles, looks pleadingly from one of our faces to another, and says uncertainly, "Because... they have... in-for-mation..."
It's just a word he'd latched onto. Something that was already on the Internet in abundance beyond historical precedent, but that, to him, was something he always needed more of. Like diversity.
Look: "Diversity" is not something we need to actively work towards. Racist hiring practices are not a palpable problem anywhere in this country. If an incident of such a thing is discovered, it becomes-- or, I daresay, would become-- a huge scandal. We get far more negative blowback because of affirmative action and a desire to have "diversity" above all else (witness Jayson Blair) than because of anything that even hints of the things that affirmative action was supposedly supposed to combat. The cure has gone well into the worse-than-the-disease category.
And if someone tries to get me to buy into a "socially conscious investment" mutual fund, one whose paramount goals include stamping out that pervasive racism problem in publicly traded corporations' hiring policies in America, I'm going to smile, nod, and go and seek funds that are more interested in making money than in solving a problem that no longer exists.
UPDATE: John writes to say:
If you strive for excellence as your primary goal, you will attain diversity by default.
If you strive for diversity above all else, excellence will suffer.
Unless you are the NBA.
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