The DEI hucksters and hypocrites are in the process of giving diversity a bad name (also equity and inclusion, but those are for another day.) Like so many other features of life and human existence, diversity can be a very good thing, and it can be a detriment to legitimate goals and objectives in different contexts, or even at the same time.
Stipulated: what is unethical about the current DEI fad/obsession/scam/hustle/mania is that its goal isn’t to achieve diversity in settings where it may be beneficial to society, but rather to use the deceitful rhetoric of diversity to excuse engaging in otherwise illegal discrimination and prejudice for the benefit of particular minority groups, usually the groups that the DEI warriors belong to themselves.
I had an eye-opening experience recently. I was teaching the ethics component of a three day training program for program for paralegals and legal professionals who work in large firms. When I got in front of the class, I was immediately struck by the demographics of group, which was about 80 in number. More than 90% of the attendees were black women between the ages of 25 and 45, with just a few men and about the same number of white women, less than five. I haven’t tried to analyze why the paralegal field has shaken out that way in this legal community, but here was what struck me: the group’s dynamic was completely different from and better than the usual professional groups I speak to, which are typically more male than female and overwhelmingly white.
The women were vocal, unrestrained, energized and aggressively interactive. I usually have to push my attendees to ask questions and debate. This group vocalized approval and dissent while I was talking—which I like and need—echoed the opinions of those who spoke out—“Right!” “Uh-huh!” “Yes!”—laughed frequently and were spectacularly expressive with their facial expressions and body language. They were relaxed and acted without inhibitions, as if they were all friends. (They were not: those I spoke to told me they only knew one or two other attendees at most.) With one exception during the session, the men and white women in the group were silent and restrained.
I loved that group! I have seldom felt more comfortable and appreciated in a training appearance. Because I was feeding off their energy and positive vibes, my performance was better, and the participants benefited. Their energy, moreover, was clearly a consequence of the lack of diversity in the class.
The experience caused me to consider in a different light an episode highlighted in William Jacobson’s conservative blog, Legal Insurrection. His Equal Protection Project (EqualProtect.org) had confronted the Ithaca City School District Superintendent, Dr. Luvelle Brown, and Board of Education President, Dr. Sean Eversley Bradwell, regarding the Student of Color United Summit 2024, which took place on May 31. In its letter, the Project noted that in 2021-2023, the SOCU Summits were restricted to to students and staff “of color” and that the then upcoming 2024 Summit had been promoted in the same manner, excluding participants by race. Prof. Jacobson had flagged the discriminaton in the post, Ithaca (NY) Public Schools Must Desegregate “Students of Color” Summit, Demands Equal Protection Project. After the news media got wind of the Projects protest and demand that the event be opened to all, the school district responded, a mere day before the event with this announcement:
Greetings Students and Staff,
The Students of Color United (SOCU) Summit will be held this Friday, May 31, from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. at Ithaca High School.
Please know that SOCU is open to all of our secondary students. We apologize for any previous communication that included exclusionary language about the event. Anyone who wishes to attend on Friday is welcome!
Let the front office at your school know if you want to attend by the end of the day today, Thursday, May 30, and transportation will be provided as necessary.
Jacobson, Legal Insurrection and the Equal Protection Project treated this as a victory, and they should have. However, I have several problems with the episode.
Is an event called the Students of Color United Summit suddenly no longer exclusionary because it says everyone is welcome? Doesn’t the title of the event as well as its stated purpose that it was “for students of color to interact with each other….” automatically discourage whites from attending? Doesn’t the grudging “You can come if you want to, but this event isn’t for you white people” nature of the last minute invitation make it inherently dishonest?
If that allowing “ students of color to interact with each other” was the purpose of the event, doesn’t opening it up to what the school district called “allies”–isn’t that a nice cover-word for “honkies”!—undermine the event’s goal? If the goal is a legitimate and ethical one, and I think it surely is, how can any school event achieve it without engaging in illegal and hypocritical discrimination?
Ethics Alarms has previously championed all-female colleges. The absence of diversity in a group can be as beneficial as diversity, or more so. Can society only derive the benefits of those circumstances and environments where homogeneity confers tangible advantages when the lack of diversity occurs by happenstance rather than design?
Ethics Alarms 
Idaho bar sparks fury for declaring June ‘Heterosexual Awesomeness Month’ and giving free beers and 15% discounts to straight men | Daily Mail Online
Do you have to be marginalized to be recognized? Evidently.
Saw a funny article the other day by a woman cataloguing all the various obscure things of which she had to be “aware” based on all the emails she was getting from various advocacy groups. She also wondered what the benefit to anyone was of her becoming “aware” of these things.
If you were a minister, would you rather give a sermon at a white Episcopal church or a black Episcopal church?
My point: you’re not an ordinary ethics lecturer.
Easy one, as you can guess.
Not about the point of your post, but the anecdote reminds me of one of the few conference workshops that stuck with me decades later. The idea, although participants like myself weren’t necessarily aware of it at the time, was to examine the very dynamic you describe: interactivity among groups according to (perceptions, at least, of) power/prestige structures.
I did the workshop primarily because of the presenter, who was somewhere along the border of acquaintance and friend; she was a close friend and colleague of one of my good friends.
We were in a large ballroom, with room enough for the participants, perhaps close to 100 of us, to have room to move around. After a few introductory remarks, the presenter had us move to different parts of the room according to something objective about our profiles. She told us just to go to the appropriate part of the room and she’d be back with us in a few minutes. So we did. After a few minutes, she’d change the criteria and we’d all move again. This was pretty much the entirety of the workshop; the presenter didn’t say much during all this moving around.
There were enough different variables–race, gender, degree, rank, tenure status, institutional affiliation, amount of institutional funding to attend the conference, and so on–that virtually all of us were in the privileged group sometimes, the (relatively speaking) disenfranchised group at other times, and perhaps in some intermediate group at other times.
So, at the time I was a white male without a terminal degree in a tenure-track (but not tenured) assistant professor position at a private four-year non-R1 college which paid over half but not all of my expenses to attend the conference. One of my friends who was also in the workshop was a white woman with a terminal degree but not a PhD; she was a dean, but at a community college, etc.
With a few minutes left in the allotted time for the workshop, the presenter asked us about the experience. What we found, unanimously, was that when we were in the privileged or more prestigious group, we just stood around awkwardly. We might chat with someone we already knew or perhaps introduce two participants to each other, but that was it.
When we were in the lower-status group, though, we’d make casual conversation with complete strangers, introduce ourselves, ask about each other’s school, and so on. So it surprises me not a bit that the black women in your seminar, especially since they were in the majority, were more interactive than their fellow attendees.
I think this might be the underlying concept behind the use of the word “community” to describe groups of people who have traditionally been relegated to the sidelines, discriminated against, or ignored altogether… or at least who perceive themselves that way. There is no “heterosexual community,” for example, but there is an LGBTQ+ community.
Interestingly, the word “community” in this context signals a self-image of being under threat–not physically, necessarily, but social, economic, moral… Thus, whereas there is generally speaking no such thing as a Christian community or an artistic community, those terms get trotted out when there seems to be antagonist to the group’s identity or livelihood.
Apologies for wandering off on a tangent.
“Community” gets my vote for the most loaded, fraught, weaponized, passive-aggressive term in the progressive lexicon. “[Community gets] trotted out when there seems to be antagonist to the group’s identity or livelihood.” Correct and well said. At a cocktail party on Friday night, a neighbor said she was proud of the way people in our neighborhood tended to look out for each other, particularly in the case of illness. The word’s appearance got my hackles up, but I don’t believe she meant to use it in its current, hijacked meaning.
Oops. I failed to say the neighbor referred to the neighborhood as a “community.”
Not for nothing do conservatives refer to Ithaca as the “city of evil.”
Of course, the ethics seminar was diverse, kind of like so many professional sports, such as the NBA and NFL and track and field are diverse. But hockey’s not diverse, nor are golf and tennis. And of course, meritocracy and achievement and competition are oppressive, white supremacist constructs.
Now, this us delicious:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13486293/Pro-Palestine-protest-Philadelphia-pride-genocide.htm
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