Note: I understand people are busy, so here are some cliffnotes for the rant:
- Diversity Initiatives aimed at black students tend to assume that all black students are African American and have a shared background.
- Diversity is more than a skin-color. The Persian or Korean student may have more to add than a “black” student who grew up in a “white” environment, but there is an arbitrary preference for the black student.
Today’s reading assignment for Employment law involved Title VII workplace discrimination claims.
I was reminded of the “I am not Tyrone” post that I wrote during the law school admissions process when I was worried about law schools balking at my lack of stereotypical African-American “blackness” because that was exactly what some schools were recruiting me for.
After the first day of orientation, my housemates pointed out that I was the only black person in our year.1 This was a recurring conversation during my 1L year, and I was amused that the lack of “diversity” bothered2 white students more than it did me.
This year the law school gave fee vouchers to black applicants and (surprise, surprise) we have more black students.
Several of our 50-some-odd transfers are also black. Of course the Black Law Students Association is thrilled, but I think the black students serve a dual purpose by giving the white students a piece of mind.3
Congratulations. You can feel like you go to a “diverse” school now.
Out of the seven 1Ls at the BLSA meeting, I think only one of them wasn’t mixed (ie, half/white or Asian) but Americans who want diversity for diversity’s sake care primarily about appearance of African-American ancestry.4
The most obvious example of this is our president, and the reaction of the African-American community to his election.
No one stopped to ask whether the son of white woman and an African immigrant bore anything more than a superficial relation to the African-American community.4 Obama is not the progeny of the people who have been oppressed in this country for 400 years any more than Bobby Jindal is.
And what about an Indian candidate? Would Jessie Jackson be as excited to see Bobby Jindal win the presidency? What if Jindal was married to a black woman? Would we have Jindal T-shirts at Urban Outfitters then?
The answer is no.
The civil rights movement opened the door for Jindal just as it did for people of every race and sex, but we would not have the same homecoming celebration for anyone that did not “appear” African-American because the focus on diversity is as superficial as the discriminatory practices it aims to counter.
Anyhoot, before I start parroting Michelle Malkin, let me just get to the holding5 of the post:
A diversity initiative is bigoted and backward if it simply seeks people of a particular skin color irrespective of whether that person truly represents the historically oppressed group that the diversity initiative is trying to promote.
If a Haitian-American student is eligible for the “black scholarship” then why not an Asian American? The only difference is that we didn’t historically oppress as many people that look like the Asian as much as we did people who look like the Haitian. Why should the Haitian benefit from this?
Sure, we aren’t going to inquire about a black person’s background to determine whether they are African American like we ask for tribal affiliation of a Native American. So why bother?
What is the point of recruiting black students, or persons of any minority status at all? Under the current system the half-black student raised in a white household gets a fee voucher and a tour, but the Persian or Korean applicant is ignored.
And I’m not saying that I don’t appreciate the diversity of my school., because I think it’s fascinating.
But to me the diversity includes the ignored minorities (the Persians, Koreans, Chinese), the variety6 of black students, and even the white students who come from different parts of the country and have different education/vocational backgrounds.
And I think it is sad that this diversity is lost on the students and administrators who are only looking for more brown faces.7
1 There are two others, but they were not as readily identifiable.
2 It annoys me that people refer to the lack of one minority group (blacks) as “a lack of diversity.” Nevermind the East-Asians, Indians, Hispanics, and Native Americans we have in our year – everyone wants to see Tyrone.
3 Not to say that being half-black somehow makes one “not black” but what I’m harping on is the assumption that all black people share the same African-American background, which is the only assumption that can justify the focus on the community. Do people really care about the Ethiopian or Somali students? If so, why are these people not equally thrilled by the amount of East-Indians and Koreans at our school?
4 Community organizing and marrying an African-Woman helps. I’m not saying that he’s not special for his own reasons, but the phrase “the first black president” implies “the first African-American president” rather than “the first Kenyan-American president.”
5 If blog posting interrupts my legal research I can use “Holding.”
6 Somali, Caribbean, black-white, black-filipino, black-Cuban…Africans…etc. Really this is a forest/for the trees statement. The “black” community is more diverse than your average person cares about.
7 These are the same people that don’t realize that Hispanics in Miami look more like Gloria, Enrique, and Pitbull than Carlos Mencia.
