Diversity: Operation White Guilt

Mention diversity to a liberal academic and watch their eyes light up.  It’s cute like baby farts.  Diversity is the hippy-dippy buzz-word of universities these days.  Google the word “diversity” by itself and look how many search results link to a dot-edu site.  This diversity issue is another example of libs placing their feelings over reality, or as I’ve said before, looking at reality as they’d like it to be rather than as it actually is.  Or even more simply, libs are on crack.

With every university harping on diversity, I knew there had to be mountains of evidence showing that as a university becomes quantifiably more diverse, grades and retention rate show a marked increase as well.  I was sure somewhere in the bottom of a filing cabinet there was one of those CSI pubic hair baggies sitting on top of a coffee stained manila folder labeled “Evidence” and all I had to do was find it.  They wouldn’t just make something up, right?

The first scholarly article I found said:

Educators in U.S. higher education have long argued that affirmative action policies are justified because they ensure the creation of the racially and ethnically diverse student bodies essential to providing the best possible educational environment for students, white and minority alike. Yet until recently these arguments have lacked empirical evidence and a strong theoretical rationale to support the link between diversity and educational outcomes.

I’m sorry, I slipped into a coma.  Allow me to strip this of its self-congratulatory syntax and zero in on the key parts.

“Educators have LONG argued that… diverse student bodies [are] essential [for] the best educational environment for students.”  (Of course it’s for students did anyone bother editing this thing?)  “Yet until recently these arguments have…” been baseless claims we pulled straight out of our collective ass. (Caps-lock shouting and italicized smarm mine)

Essential?  Like water is essential for life, essential, or maybe they meant something like “perhaps possibly of some minor benefit to be exposed to a not-so-representative cross-section of the few cultures with people who can actually afford to study in our universities which are increasingly overpriced thanks largely to artificial inflation brought on by the explosive diarrhea rate at which the government craps money out in the form of student loans”?

I would say the ability to decipher a professor’s heavily accented ramblings would be essential for the best educational environment, not which exotically dressed person is responsible for today’s distractingly weird smell.

Diversity.

~Wide-eyed amazement~

How cute.

After reading that article I began to wonder about those institutions that take a hard turn at diversity and either officially shun it or, at least—to continue the smelly theme—turn their noses up at it.

How do women’s colleges and universities feel their lack of diversity affects their students?  Do they just bury their heads in the sand while mumbling something about misogyny?  This collegeview.com article said that “women at single-sex institutions were more engaged in effective educational practices…” and this Guardian article said girls do better without boys in the class.  This Science 2.0 article also claims that single-sex classrooms are better.

I can hear the academic decision makers now, “Well… that’s sex or… erm… gender… grumble grumble grumble”.

So maybe diversity doesn’t extend to sex.

Okay then, what do historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) have to say about diversity?

This National Bureau of Economic Research article says that minority students do better if taught by a minority professor.  And in this Urban Education article Clark and Crawford say "the greater the compatibility between the student and the institution, the higher the probability that the student will complete all degree requirements" suggesting, again, that a lack of diversity (at least between professors and students) is to the black student’s benefit. 

So what happens when the liberal diversity advocates meet the often liberal women’s colleges and HBCUs?  Is it some sort of an unstoppable farce meets an immovable feeling?  Does it get resolved or does everyone get a trophy?

Lucky for you, dear reader, I have an answer.   A high school in Pennsylvania tried segregating black students.  Angela Tilghman “suggested that the school separate black students and pair them with black homeroom teachers of the same gender” because there was actually supporting research as opposed to what the universities use, which from the outside appears to be The Force.  By the way, the fact that a k-12 school used any research at all before plowing willy-nilly over the nubile minds of today’s youth with some moronic, hair-brained scheme is wholly deserving of a handshake and a smile even if you completely disagree with them.

But the idea of segregating the students sent the nation into a tizzy of white guilt and confusion over why the hell the blacks would want to segregate themselves so the school canceled the program.  Who cares whether the homeroom segregation helped the students, it’s not about what works, it’s about what made the administrators feel good, right Professor?

This is why I keep saying that as long as we tip-toe around race and refuse to talk about it openly, we will never identify those areas where race may play a critical role.  Even if we agreed to collectively sweep race under the rug, that doesn’t mean that it’s going to happen.  Consider this: the racist mentality isn’t necessarily about race.  It’s the fundamental operational mechanism of the human mind to lump people into groups (think the Wal-Mart crowd as brought to us by The People of Walmart).  What if that simple homeroom segregation plan helped those black kids more than any other hackneyed program that’s been vomited up by these people?  If the research said it might work, why not try it?

It’s not fair to entirely blame the liberals for this, but it certainly does feel good.  ~wink~