by Jason Stotts
The proponents of diversity, common though they are, are uncommon in one aspect – each and every one of them is completely superficial. Now it’s not as though superficial people are rare; it’s unfortunately all too common trait. Yet to imagine that a whole superficial ideology strains ones credulity, at least it should.
Given that one must be rational in order to operate in reality, one should be able to safely assume that any particular ideology, in order to gain any sort of wide recognition, would have to be rational as well in order to garner adherents. Yet Diversity (the ideology) is premised upon a completely irrational premise, namely: difference is good. This is the core of the diversity delusion (to borrow a phrase from Peter Schwartz), the idea that difference is intrinsically good.
Diversity adherents usually try to mask this by using other arguments such as: blacks have been oppressed in this country so they deserve proportional representation now. Now it is one’s immediate (and indoctrinated) thought to agree that blacks should have things like affirmative action – but the fact is that they shouldn’t. This is not to be racist, but that is what the diversity advocates would have you believe. The problem is that they want the diversity to be of superficial things like skin color – it is, after all, a difference. But what is the important difference in jobs and in education? What is the diversity delusion trying to mask? The idea of merit.
Black people, qua black, are no better and no worse than any other color person; one’s skin does not determine one’s moral character. Ergo, to claim that some people should get a job because they are black is to try and institute racism as a standard of judgment – but a kind of racism that tries to include every race. Racism, as a concept, means merely that one judges another based solely on their race. It does not mean that one then acts in a negative way, it would be just as racist to then act in a positive way. Racism just means that you are judging them solely on their skin color.
To try and institute Diversity in the workplace means that workers who are productive should be balanced out with workers who are different, i.e. lazy, incompetent, stupid, or criminal. A consistent Diversity adherent would have to advocate this – after all, they are different, right?
That is the switch, to take a superficial characteristic where the difference is morally irrelevant (race, gender, etc) and to try and extrapolate a general principle that is then applied to characteristics that do have moral significance (competence, intelligence, etc).
Thus, all diversity adherents are superficial.