Earlier this week, I gave a quick link to the story about Boston's governmental integration plan. I didn't have that much to say about it - but John Rosenberg of Discriminations has much, much more on the story:
I find two things noteworthy about cases of this sort. First, they reveal quite clearly that minorities are used -- often, in fact, held hostage -- to provide "diversity" to others. Several of the cases linked above involve Asian-American students who were not allowed to transfer to another school because it would have reduced the number of Asian-American students at their base schools, thus depriving the other students there of a sufficient number of Asian-Americans to whom to be exposed.
The second thing I find noteworthy are the differing responses to the first thing. To me, those "diversity"-based transfer policies are thoroughly obnoxious, the essence of racialism run rampant, a reductio ad absurdam of race-based "diversity." And yet they are applauded and defended as embodying and implementing "civil rights."
Good stuff. I've always thought the "diversity" angle was a bit condescending to minorities - the implication is always that non-diverse folks (i.e., whites) benefit from "exposure" to minorities, but you rarely see anyone suggest that it should work the same the other way 'round.
And don't miss the comments on his site, either.
Posted by kswygert at June 13, 2003 03:46 PM