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PAR.TISAN REVIEW
American Jewish Committee, a Hispanic, a black female, a training co–
ordinator for the Gay and Lesbian Police Advisory Task Force, and a
former Bradley appointee - but no Asians.
Nor is there much inclination to share victim status with nonracial
groups. "A lot of blacks are upset that the feminist movement has
pimped ofT the black movement," said Lou Palmer, a black radio show
host in Chicago, to
The New York Times.
"Now here comes the gay
movement. Blacks resent it very much, because they do not see a parallel,
nor do I."
The feminist movement does not necessarily have any warmer feelings
toward the black movement. A white female professor of social work
successfully sued the University of South Florida for discrimination earlier
this year for having hired a similarly qualified black man at a higher salary
and rank. A federal jury awarded her $318,212 in back pay and damages.
As President Clinton's unsightly struggles to fulfill his own diversity
pledge have shown, the diversity principle wreaks havoc on institutions
by blocking their ability to select the best available candidate regardless
of race or gender. Fortunately, quotas begin to lose much of their at–
traction as soon as someone else asserts them against you. Since
Americans are unwilling to rebut head-on the underlying premise of the
diversity movement - that America remains a deeply racist country - one
can only hope that the victim groups will ultimately reject diversity out
of expediency, on the ground that doing away with preferences entirely
is better than having to share the spoi ls.
STEVEN MARCUS
Soft Totalitarianism
It
may only be another confirmation of the discouraging state of affairs
in society today, but a good part of the phenomena that fall into the
category of political correctness was already clearly described in its gen–
eral outlines more than forty years ago. I am referring of course
to
George Orwell's classic essay of 1946, "Politics and the English
Language," and to his expansion and elaboration of its insights in 1984,
particularly in the Appendix on Newspeak. Although the epoch of
Hitler and Stalin has long since passed, and totalitarianism in the forms
