When diversity doesn’t come naturally, mandate it

When diversity doesn’t come naturally, mandate it

EDITOR:

I have a lifelong friend who confessed to me recently that he occasionally experiences bigotry and/or racism for up to several days at a time and has, on several occasions, in his adult life. I told him that I never would have known of what he calls his “suffering”, and I asked him what, if anything, in his past life might have triggered these occasions.

He said, “Cecil.” Just that. Cecil.

When he began to discuss his relationship with Cecil, it came out something like this:

In third grade, at the age of 9, my Caucasian friend was “best buddies” with an African-American boy named Cecil. They were inseparable. Until, one day, and again and again over a period of months, Cecil and my Caucasian friend were taken to the cloak room by their African-American teacher, “Mrs. A” for short, and they were beaten with the wooden end of a broom, brutally, on the buttocks, the shoulders, and the backs.

My friend’s parents soon withdrew him from the Youngstown grade school and moved the family to the suburbs.

Now, in his fifties, my friend maintains that “Mrs. A” was a black separatist. He says he cannot think of another reason for the numerous beatings.

My friend is not an expert on “affirmative action” or “diversity”, but he claims we (Caucasians) owe minorities, and especially black Americans, more than just words or thoughts. He cites the University of Michigan Law School ruling by the Supreme Court and the recent AMA announcement that amounted to both an apology and a promise to do better in terms of medical school acceptances and graduations of our black brothers and sisters and other minorities (e.g. Hispanics, Native-Americans, Asian-Americans).

My friend agrees that “quotas” are going too far, but that some sort of diversity should be litigated where there is still unquestionable inequality in the various schools and “working professions.”

Entrance into engineering departments, fine arts schools, business schools and so on should be skewed in favor of minorities where the current enrollment is “unequal” (”un-diverse”). (Let’s say that all colleges and universities should graduate at least, oh, half the percentage of minorities in the general population — at least — not as a fixed number but as a sort of rule of thumb). The point being that further rulings may be necessary on the part of legislators, the courts, and school systems and businesses themselves, as to the “exactitude” of diversity.

Increased representation of minorities (but without “forgetting” the Caucasian population) in public schools, colleges and universities, graduate schools, and, yes, in businesses from ice-cream shops to mega-employers such as GMC, IBM, Xerox, and all across the board is the goal.

Eventually, claims my friend, thought processes driving Caucasians (and all races) will “catch up” to mandated diversity.

LOUIS DeTORO

Youngstown