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Thread ID: 11555 | Posts: 4 | Started: 2003-12-20
2003-12-20 17:09 | User Profile
Title: Racism By Any Other Name Author: Peter Schwartz
[url]http://www.politicallyright.com/article152.htm[/url]
Texas A&M president Robert Gates should be praised for announcing that race will no longer be a factor when applications are considered, and that students "should be admitted as individuals, on personal merit--and no other basis." What is needed now is for him, and others, to go further in challenging "diversity." They ought to declare their categorical opposition to racism--and, therefore, their repudiation of the entire policy of "diversity," which is simply an insidious form of racism.
Unlike the valid policy of racial integration, "diversity" propagates all the evils inherent in racism. According to its proponents, we need "diversity" in order to be exposed to new perspectives on life. We supposedly gain "enrichment from the differences in viewpoint of minorities," as the MIT Faculty Newsletter puts it. Admissions should be based on race, the University of Michigan's vice president insists, because "learning in a diverse environment benefits all students, minority and majority alike."
These circumlocutions translate simply into this: one's race determines the content of one's mind. They imply that people have worthwhile views to express because of their ethnicity, and that "diversity" enables us to encounter "black ideas," "Hispanic ideas," etc. What could be more repulsively racist than that? This is exactly the premise held by the South's slave-owners and by the Nazis' Storm Troopers. They too believed that an individual's thoughts and actions are determined by his racial heritage.
Whether a given race receives special rewards or special punishments is immaterial. The core of racism is the notion that the individual is meaningless and that membership in the collective--the race--is the source of his identity and value. To the racist, the individual's moral and intellectual character is the product, not of his own choices, but of the genes he shares with all others of his race. To the racist, the particular members of a given race are interchangeable.
The advocates of "diversity" similarly believe that colleges must admit not individuals, but "representatives" of various races. These advocates believe that those representatives have certain ideas innately imprinted on their minds, and that giving preferences to minority races creates a "diversity" of viewpoints on campus. This is the quota-mentality, which holds that in judging someone, the salient fact is the racial collective to which he belongs.
This philosophy is why racial division is growing at our colleges. The segregated dormitories, the segregated cafeterias, the segregated fraternities--these all exist, not in spite of the commitment to "diversity," but because of it. The overriding message of "diversity," transmitted by the policies of a school's administration and by the teachings of a school's professors, is that the individual is defined by his race. It is no surprise, then, that many students associate only with members of their own race and regard others as belonging to an alien tribe.
If racism is to be repudiated, it is the premise of individualism, including individual free will, that must be upheld. There is no way to bring about racial integration except by completely disregarding color. There is no benefit in being exposed to the thoughts of a black person as opposed to a white person; there is a benefit only in interacting with individuals, of any race, who have rational viewpoints to offer.
"Diversity," in any realm, has no value in and of itself. Investors can be urged to diversify their holdings-but for the sake of minimizing their financial risk, not for the sake of "diversity" as such. To maintain that "diversity" per se is desirable--that "too much" of one thing is objectionable--is ludicrous. Do brown-eyed students need to be "diversified" with green-eyed ones? Does one's unimpaired health need to be "diversified" with bouts of illness?
The value of a racially integrated student body or work force lies entirely in the individualism it implies. It implies that the students or workers were chosen objectively, with skin color ignored in favor of the standard of individual merit. But that is not what "diversity" advocates want. They sneer at the principle of "color-blindness." They want decisions on college or job applicants to be made exactly as the vilest of racists make them: by bloodline. They insist that whatever is a result of your own choices--your ideas, your character, your accomplishments--is to be dismissed, while that which is outside your control--the accident of skin color--is to define your life.
We need to identify "diversity" for what it is: a malignant policy that harms everyone, because it is the very essence of racism.
2003-12-21 11:46 | User Profile
[QUOTE]These circumlocutions translate simply into this: one's race determines the content of one's mind. What could be more repulsively racist than that? This is exactly the premise held by the South's slave-owners and by the Nazis' Storm Troopers. [/QUOTE]
Set aside for a moment that the author is a Schwartz, and chuckle with me that an article nominally attacking quotas-for-blacks does so by bashing Southerners and Germans.
Diversity is wrong - because it hurts blacks. This is the kind of 'conservatism' that leads to more federal programs.
And has there ever been a race of people more publicly sobbed over than blacks? [B]Ever? [/B] So why do I think that no one would expend this torrent of crocodile tears towards people who [I]don't [/I] have a propensity for criminal savagery? Well, you know what they say: [I]it's the squeaky wheel with a knife at your throat that gets the grease.[/I]
2003-12-21 19:20 | User Profile
The Supreme Court has recently idicated that racial preferences (discrimination against whites) is good, just as long as it isn't overt. Texas A&M is already inventing new ways to discriminate against whites without anything so blatant as "blacks get 20 points" toward admission. Now,
20 points if Ebonics is used in your entrance essey. 20 points if you don't know who your dad is. 20 points if you know how to turn coke powder into crack. 20 points for an athletic scholarship. Automatic admission if you graduated MLK Jr. High School.
1 point for a perfect SAT score. 5 points from being from the same state. 10 points, plus a tuition waiver, for being in the country illegally.
2003-12-21 20:32 | User Profile
There is nothing quite so nauseating as expressions of white 'guilt' toward blacks.
When blacks complain about slavery, every white needs to be able to give a simple answer: you ought to be glad we freed your people.
But, of course, this doesn't happen. The left thinks any interactions where everyone didn't immediately sit down and share everything they had are evil, wrong, and a sign that we need to steal from white people, and kill them off as a people. The mainstream right can't bring itself to declare moral inequalities that did not involve inherited wealth (or immense corporate talent)operating under an overbearing, rights-respecting state.
Thus no mainstream voices have anything to say about the fact that whites deserve what we have because we were stronger and more civilized than any other race, and we took land and slaves according to principles that had widespread, global acceptance.