HEATHER MAC DONALD
The Diversity Principle
When
President-elect Clinton announced his intention to form a
Cabinet that "looked like America," he put the power of the presidency
behind the diversity principle. He needn't have bothered. With or with–
out presidential backing, the diversity movement has already transformed
American society.
It
is impossible to overstate the strength of the movement. Every
day, another organization comes under attack for its demographic com–
position. Research science, mathematics, medicine - all must now scram–
ble to come up with a satisfactory number of minorities and women.
Public officials, business leaders, educators, and arts administrators are all
expected to proclaim their commitment to diversity upon taking office.
Public employees at every level of government are being sent to
"diversity training" at taxpayer expense, and governments are adding yet
another layer of bureaucracy to monitor their racial and gender mix.
The diversity principle is nonpartisan. The Reagan Labor Department
pioneered the practice of race-norming, w hereby the general aptitude
employment test scores of minorities are adjusted upward - leapfrogging
those of higher-scoring whites - to ensure that a proper number of mi–
norities be selected for private and public emp loyment; President Bush's
Labor Secretary, Lynn Martin, promulgated the "Glass Ceiling
Initiative," designed to increase the pressure on businesses to hire and
promote minorities and women; and Los Angeles's recently elected
Republican mayor, Richard Riordan, has scrupulously observed the new
race and gender rules in hi s appointments ("Mayor's choices for citizen
panels include six Latinos, five African-Americans, four Asian-Americans,"
proclaimed the
Los Angeles Times
in a headline, add ing that "exactly half
of the twenty-eight appointments are women. ")
Library collections, museum holdings, historical records - all are vul–
nerable to attack. Diversity censuses are planned for the art collection in
the U.S. Capitol building, whose failure to display the requisite number
of minorities and women has already drawn criticism. Contract and
property law must be rewritten to take race into account, argue diversity
theorists. The conviction that white judges and juries are unable to mete
out equal justice to minorites has spawned an aggressive movement to
diversify the bench. Race and ethnicity are central to voting rights, the
recent Supreme Court ruling against racial gerrymanderin g notwith–
standing.
The business world is awash in diversity; it long since eclipsed the
academy in the production of materials on multiculturalism. CEOs of the
