November 29, 2002
Heather McDonald does diversity
The inimitable Heather MacDonald takes on the collegiate diversity industry. MacDonald has been reporting on the diversity movement since the early 1990s, and is well positioned to comment on how that movement manages to thrive on endlessly recycled claims. The central paradox of diversity, indeed, is that its success is predicated on its continual failure: rampant racism and sexism on campus are the administrative rationales for throwing money at diversity; continued--or even worsened--racism and sexism are the administrative rationales for throwing even more money at diversity over time. In other words, campus diversity initiatives entrench themselves deeper all the time by effectively announcing that they are not successfully addressing the "problem" they were created to resolve. Behind the lines, one can detect diversity's dirty little secret: that it is itself in the business of exacerbating the tensions it presumes to alleviate, and that it teaches the intolerance it claims to decry.
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