The Intolerance hidden in ‘Diversity’
Most of us survive on small portions of grace: a holiday comes and with it a child for a few wonderful days. You watch the sun flashing on a radiant young face and wonder what kind of future will confront him. The years pass and you struggle to make a world less bad than the one that is unfolding.
Being a teacher as well as a parent, a student of culture and history and I watch the future being made and consider such questions often. Some months ago I caught a troubling glimpse and the framework being locked into place; it grows more inflexible every day.
Ten colleagues had gathered on a weekend afternoon for an informal discussion of each other’s work. In many ways it was a charmed moment. There was cold and snow outside but bright sun streamed through the windows. There were refreshments and a stimulating mix of interests, it seemed.
A young professor read some of her fiction. It was skillful, with verve with and distinctive characters. When she finished reading we complimented her warmly. Someone asked what she was hearing from her publisher. “Oh, you know,” she answered. “He likes it but he wants me to put in more violence. You know, men like violence.”
Well there it was, matter of fact and no bones about it: “men like violence.” Not publishers like violence; or most people like violence in fiction; or some people like violence generally but simply, broadly, “men like violence.”
No one said anything. Ironically, the five men present, although diverse in personality and specialty were all truly gentle men. Partly for that reason conversation resumed as if nothing had been said, no routine accusation and insult made.
After all, the young professor who read was a “woman of color” and the roomful of white liberals, men and women didn’t dare say anything. Some of them may even have agreed with her. So in one verbal coup de grace men, all men had been stereotyped and put in the wrong and on the defensive: accused with a charge to which one, nowadays, only can surrender, at least in academia.
Future historians will note that in America in the 1990’s ‘diversity’ means accepting that women are superior to men morally and in most ways, that all men, especially all ‘white’ men are alike and had better own up to their generic faults. Attitudes like this already have been codified in law and their consequences will produce a cruel and unjust future.
Whether our ancestors were from Italy, Poland or Greece, Germany, France or Finland, Scotland, Hungary or Portugal; whether they were Protestant, Catholic or Jewish; poor, poorer or poorest as white men they are all the same: violent exploiters whose grandsons should accept being shuffled to the end of the line for ‘diversity’s’ sake and to expiate the supposed ‘sins of the fathers,’ one of those clichés that has displaced thought in the age of feminism and the self-destruction of the West.
I wonder, do those who believe that men are basically violent think that little boys also are essentially violent? If they do, what do they think should be done, in the name of non-violence, naturally, to ‘cure’ them of their problem? We know part of the answer: attacks of many kinds, — from divorce courts to promotion of same-sex ‘education’ — on the very fact of being male. This seems to be part of what they believe should be done to prevent boys from becoming those violent monsters, men.
Reverse racism and sexism pervade higher education. At a department meeting, a faculty member looks around the room and announces, “I don’t see enough black faces here” as if academic quality or justice can be found in quotas tied to skin color. (Those who make such self-serving professions of politically correct faith never offer to resign and be replaced by a “black face”).
What ever happened to the principle, “it’s not the color of your skin but the content of your character”? If that good rule was applied, Colleges and Universities would be emptied of most faculty and administrators and genuine diversity might appear.
What most places of higher education lack is this most important diversity: range of opinion rationally articulated and open to discussion. Instead we have the Stalinism of skin color and genitalia. But rather than dialog our campuses too often feature a leftist monolog, a Bronx cheer that drowns out and ejects dissenters; what we have is a monopoly which prompts remarkably offensive, foolish, and oppressive remarks and attitudes.
Other examples: a tenured professor denounces a colleague with whom she disagrees on a policy issue. Seeking slogans to express her rage (as a feminist she need not reason, or be polite) she sputters, “he’s a piece of human flotsam; a worthless white man!” The faculty union official who received this opinion had no comment…
An administrator demonstrates pc credentials by expounding on the inferiority of Western to Chinese culture. He fails to mention human rights and civil liberties, restraint on central power, accountability of the governors to the governed, tolerance of dissent, Western principles rooted in the belief that man is imbued with a divine soul; principles that have not penetrated China.
Another professor asserts that “men are incapable of empathy” which for those of you not among the elect is an article of faith among the politically correct.
Would not the salary of such bigoted bullies be better spent on eight or ten annual student scholarships? Our students come from families of modest means and do not even have a decent gym. How sad that many in academia will be more troubled that I have exposed these attitudes than by the attitudes themselves.
And so the story ends. The Professor of diversity delivered her politically correct epigram / accusation and the afternoon wound down. And school continues and the agenda marches through classrooms, the media, into the lives of us and our children.
At what point one wonders will the double standards stop? It is not yet in sight.
In 2006, eleven years after this was written, three players from the Duke University lacrosse team were publicly vilified and effectively convicted of assault and rape. A zealous DA and scores of faculty at their school publicly denounced them and made a hash or presumption of innocence and due process. The accusations were false but none of the accusers conceded their error or the damage it had done and might have done. Divorce courts have continued to grind fathers into the earth, desolating their children and producing future profits for psychologists and drug companies. As I wrote almost twelve years ago, it is “a kingdom of ashes” and the grounds for a new feudalism have been and are being created by political correctness. Why were there no professors, before or after the accusations to speak up publicly on behalf of principles designed to protect the innocent and avoid lynch-mob mentality? Because no such people will remain in or be admitted into Academia that is more politically intolerant and intellect-deadening every year. And with the deadening of critical faculties comes an atrophy of empathy, kindness and courtesy. Perhaps feminism has been a disaster for civility and civilization. Perhaps the war on its roots is an illness encoded in the West and feminism is one of its toxic flowers…