Diversity Indoctrination
By Margaret Snyder (07/29/03)
If you are sending a child off to college this fall, know that it is likely you are sending him or her to an indoctrination that takes precedence over much of the curriculum. If your child is white, he or she will be taught, probably during the orientation period, that he or she has benefited unfairly from “white privilege”. “Facilitators” will attempt to make your child feel guilty on that account.
If your child has been classified a “minority”, he or she will be told that “institutional racism” will be waiting to rear its ugly head around every corner.
The ostensible reason for this strange ritual is to “improve interracial relations”.
Of course, it achieves nothing of the sort and in fact does just the opposite.
White students will respond in one of three ways:
1. They will be understandably resentful of being expected to pay for the sins of dead people whose ancestors came from the same continent as the students’ ancestors. Inducing members of the majority population to resent the minority is not an improvement in interracial relations.
2. They will understandably avoid unnecessary contact with “minority” students, whom they used to think of as persons much like themselves but who they have now learned are in fact fragile beings likely to take offense at some innocent remark that the speaker never would have imagined to be offensive. It is just safer to avoid anyone you might offend without wanting to. This does not constitute an improvement in interracial relations.
3. They will be successfully indoctrinated to feel guilt and will treat their “minority” peers with a combination of deference and pity. While this may be what the facilitators of “diversity training” have in mind, I would argue that it does not constitute an improvement in interracial relations. This is a patronizing attitude, a presumption that “minority” students are weak and needy.
Meanwhile, what is the effect on the minority student? Minority students are encouraged to find racism everywhere they look. They are told to see obstacles everywhere. The student who comes to college eager for the adventure of higher education is told that he or she will be constantly struggling against racism. You can’t credibly encourage young people to work hard and to take advantage of opportunities when at the same time you tell them they must be ever vigilant of racism.
When someone offends a member of the majority, the offended party thinks, well, maybe she was having a bad day, or maybe she didn’t mean it to sound like that, or maybe I did something to offend her, or maybe she’s just a jerk or…maybe I’m a jerk.
But “minority” students are provided with a one-size-fits-all explanation for everything bad that happens to them: it was racism. How does this benefit them or improve interracial relations?
Yes, there is racism. But not to such an extent that it makes much difference in the lives of people who direct their attention elsewhere than to look for it. Of course, if you are encouraged to make it the centerpiece of your existence, you can do that, but it doesn’t leave room for much else.
Author and talk show host Larry Elder tells of a black caller to his show who insisted that he (Larry Elder) just was not aware of how much racism was out there. Mr. Elder asked the caller to tell him about the single worst instance of racism he had ever experienced. The caller said that, well, as a businessman, he traveled a good deal and one time when the airline for some reason needed someone to change from first class to coach, the stewardess asked him to move. “That’s it???” asked Larry, incredulous. “That’s the worst thing that has ever happened to you? How do you even know why the stewardess asked you? Maybe she thought you were the pleasantest looking guy there and wouldn’t mind. How can you say that racism is a big factor in your life?”
I know worse things happen to lots of people, but those whose focus is elsewhere do not build their lives around these things and are happier and more successful as a result. Not to mention that by so being, they are helping to reduce the total amount of racism out there.
The people who suffer most from the effects of diversity indoctrination are not the majority students who, after all, are in the majority so long as we keep classifying people by race. The people who suffer most are the “minority” students who have their perspectives narrowed instead of broadened and are made the objects of pity and patronizing attitudes.
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