Societal Busing

 A medical friend of mine says he is now involved in 'the diversity and equity space'. Ignoring the administrative double-speak (what is a 'space'?), diversity is one of the catchiest of catch-words in American society right now. The church where I sing has posters about diversity. AARP magazine has an article about diversity. Movies go out of their way to feature gay characters, black leads, women in positions of power, multiple languages, varying work clothes.

Some of this seems good and right to me. I work under three administrative supervisors, one white man, one Asian man, and one white woman. I supervise men and women of diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds. I care for people who are predominantly poor and of every background you can think of in America. Everyone gets treated politely; my workplace is one of the most ethical, pleasant, welcoming places I've ever known. All this is right, both in the practical and moral sense of that word.

But on what is diversity and equity based? Surely it isn't race or sex. Ability, behavior, and effort have to be the determining elements. If a person of ability and manners is excluded because of race or sex (or all the other elements, which I'm not going to keep listing) that is prejudicial, and wrong. Should people be advanced simply because of sex and race, without consideration of ability? That seems like a different kind of prejudice to me. No one seems willing to call out the behaviors and choices of 'oppressed' groups. 

Some of these choices are applauded by society. Mothers take more time off from work, spend more time with their children, work fewer hours. Men work more hours to provide for their families. These are all choices (at least for some women) that are for the betterment of children. It's tough to argue such voluntary choices are prejudicial, and there is no call for 'maternal diversity'. Other choices and activities are not so favorable.

Inner city neighborhoods are devalued by defacement of buildings. Schools need armed guards and metal detectors and have gross disorder in classes and hallways. Independent 'states' are declared within the boundaries of major US cities. Violence in many US inner cities is so pervasive that urban 'protest' (read riot) has become the expected response to any police shooting of a black man, regardless of context, and calls forth no comment in our media. Somehow these neighborhoods are taken as evidence of systemic prejudice, of systemic racism. To even mention inner city disorder is to be labeled a racist, as is calling out our recent political 'protests' as riots.

I don't see how diversity efforts address any of the problems in black and hispanic neighborhoods and schools. And yet, to question the efficacy of 'diversity'  produces shunning as intense as being labeled a communist in the 1950s. If you make any data-driven racial comparisons you are immediately labeled a racist, and the data dismissed as the product of systemic racism, that ephemeral explanation of every outcome that is not 'equal'. Articles and letters addressing these issues are not published unless they support a diversity guideline and admit systemic racism. There are officers and offices at universities for diversity that make sure, among other things, that publications not supporting the diversity mantra are suppressed.

White people in America once actively oppressed black people, no question about that. The stories are disgusting and shameful. Anyone hearing them ought to be disgusted. But none of that is happening now, not one bit. Redlining is long over. No black person, or hispanic, or anything else, is kept out of a school. Anyone can move into any neighborhood they can afford. No one is kept out of college or jobs by their race or sex, and  claims to the contrary miss the real driver of such choices.

That is behavior. My neighborhood, a wealthy suburban subdivision, has numerous black, hispanic, and Asian families. No one gives a damn. No one I know treats black co-workers differently, sends 'coded' messages or dogwhistles. Nowhere have I seen a black man denied service, or a black woman presumed to be a hooker. The families who live in my neighborhood take walks in the evening with their children and dogs, dress appropriately, don't deface houses or blast music into the street, don't roam after dark looking to steal or score. Some Indian families wear traditional Indian clothing, others western clothing. 

 No one wants to live in a neighborhood where the parks are destroyed, people shit in the street, scribble on the walls, or break lights, trash cans, and play sets, where people scream and play music all night long. No one wants to go to a school where there is chaos in the classroom and halls, where drugs are bought and sold and weapons carried. No one wants to live in a city where 'protestors' scream epithets at diners in restaurants and smash store windows.

What I see is not judgment based on race or ethnicity, but on behavior. Those promoting systemic racism claim behavior is simply a coded way of enforcing racism. They have that totally backward. It is one's behavior that labels them, not their skin. I assure you, if you come into a job interview ill-spoken, ill-dressed, late, and rude, you are not going to get considered. These behaviors are unequivocally more common, much more common, among the poor of all races and areas. There is nothing unique about being black and poor.

Racial identifiers do still get used as surrogates for bad behaviors, but it is not racism that drives these decisions. It is regrettable experience. All these demographic items are associated with poor language skills, social non-conformism, and violence. It is not the individual's fault this is true, but it is true, and it is not racist to make judgments based on real-world experience and data.

Interestingly, every bit of the diversity agenda is directed at white people. There is no effort of which I'm aware to address the many behavioral issues in the black community. Instead, every problem is presumed to be the result of white animus toward blacks and hispanics. The 'diversity' and 'equity' movements seem to me as nothing more than societal busing. We're supposed to mix people purely on the basis of color and ethnicity; Specifically, we're supposed to get poor people of color into wealthy 'white' neighborhoods, because all those evil white people are keeping them through systemic racism. Well that's been tried repeatedly in schools. And it fails every, single time. There is no magical, white cabal excluding people of color. If you want a nice school and a nice neighborhood absolutely no one is preventing that. No one.  You can have it tomorrow, you can have it right now. And no amount of 'diversity training' can or should change the judgment of a person based on their behavior. That's not prejudice. That's rationality.

I have no interest in diversity, only in honorable behavior, appropriate manners and comportment, and gainful work of any legal type. And everyone I know feels the same way. 

Ted