HEATHER MAC DONALD
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opportunities and advancement, while nearly all the managers felt that
blacks had an even
better
shot at promotion than nonblacks, an opinion
that seems well-grounded, considering the media's aggressive diversity
efforts. It does not take much imagination, however, to guess which set
of perceptions will form the basis for future diversity policy in the news–
paper and broadcast businesses. Said Dorothy Gilliam, a columnist for
The Washington Post
and chairwoman of the survey task force: "Our
members are operating in an atmosphere, in an environment, of frustra–
tion and fear."
Now it is just possible that these widespread reports of bias are the
result of defensive misperception and racial thin skin, thinned by years of
hearing that American culture inevitably victimizes minorities.
If
a black
is not promoted, perhaps it is because he is simply not qualified. Given
the ubiquitous and costly efforts at minority recruitment and retention
throughout the economy, it is remarkable that we continue
to
credit
each and every charge that minorities are not given a fair deal. That no
one questions the objectivity of the complainants is all the more ironic,
in light of the assault on objectivity and truth by the same forces of mul–
ticulturalism which are now charging widespread racism. Postmodern rel–
ativism is all very well and good, it seems, as long as it's not
my
percep–
tions you're relativizing.
However ungrounded, the accusation of racism severely disrupts or–
ganizations, as the library of the University of California at Irvine learned
to its distress. A gay Chinese-American librarian with known pedophiliac
tendencies used to post political clippings on his cubicle, in violation of
library policy. Eventually, he was asked to remove them . When he came
up for tenure review, he charged the library with racism, based on the
clippings incident. He cited as further evidence the fact that several mi–
nority librarians had recently quit. Far from being racist, the library had
already put a major effort into minority recruitment, hiring librarians
who were at best marginally competent, at worst, incompetent and dis–
honest (one Korean librarian was caught falsifYing his cataloguing statis–
tics). Nevertheless, leftists on the faculty turned the case into a major
campaign, eventually gaining the attention of the national press, which
duly reported on UC Irvine's racism. The University Librarian was ulti–
mately forced
to
resign , and the chancellor gave the librarian tenure,
even though all his previous peer reviews had recommended against it.
Incidents like these explain why so many organizations are preemp–
tively rushing
to
play by the diversity rules. The spread of diversity is
aided as well by the skill with which minorities manage to parlay just
about anything that happens into an argument for more diversity.
Speaking before the National Association of Black Journalists last July,
