Perversity Thy Name is Diversity...

I just returned from a conference in Denver, Colorado where we discussed the "state of our union" over the last year and I was amazed at the depth of my anger when a tall, lanky, pale, older man stood up and stated in a voice tremulous with insecure self-righteousness "we need more racial diversity" and then sat back down apparently pleased with himself.

Being a white, thirty-something female might make some wonder why I was so angry. I wondered myself until I looked around the group of people I had been working with over the last two years. There were men and women of all ages and shapes and sizes and colors, and while we were certainly no gathering of the UN, we were already a diverse group drawn together in a common goal and mission, a group of passionate people, passionate about our work and I found myself boiling at the knee-jerk assumption perpetrated by our politically correct climate of hate and fear cloaked in liberal doublespeak that if there aren't the "correct" number of this race or that sexual orientation then whatever endeavor any group spends its days and nights perfecting is inherently flawed.

I do not believe that there should be any barriers to entry in any work field or study for anyone willing to do the work honestly and passionately, but I am opposed to watchdogs coming in and deciding who should work where so that it looks better, that it fits some abstract notion that is currently the rage. Bryant Gumbel and his ludicrous grumblings about the "paucity" of blacks in Winter Olympic Sports being why he won't watch them is more of the same. Travel sometime to Minnesota and Alberta and Switzerland and all other cold weather cities and regions where winter sports are practiced and played and you will see that a large majority of black people do not live in those regions. Should we force black people to take up skiing and curling and snowboarding, etc. just so it looks better? Black people are not being turned away from winter sports, it's just more accurate to say that the overwhelming majority prefer summer sports and there's nothing inherently wrong or racially biased about the Winter Sports because of it and the Summer Sports are no more noble because they are more racially diverse.

Diversity for diversity's sake is no way to build bridges or strengthen business. Never in the history of human endeavor will you ever see a group of people walk into any organization and say there's something wrong with it because there are not enough white people in it. I should not be made to feel guilty or ashamed for being born white as I do not condone any person for any reason to be passed over for a position because of race, color or religion. And yet no one ever turned down a position because it was given to them to fulfill a quota. What kind of person wants to get ahead in life by ill-conceived mandates and not by honest to goodness hard work?

In spite of all this there still remains a good ole boy's network which favors friends and family and cronies above qualification and yet a bias for is not necessarily a bias against. Hiring employees is not just about a resume, it's about personality, how the individual fits in the group. One department's "bad fit" is another department's "bias" and the fact is that there is always a bias towards one thing or another and the fact that one person is chosen over another is not a rejection of race or creed but a choice to find the best person to fit the existing group. Why is it when I am not hired for a position it's because I was not a good fit and yet when a black person doesn't get the position it's because that corporation is against black people in general?

Winter Sports and corporate boardrooms are not going to become more successful because more black people enter them. Until we quit trying to force the world to fit into a politically corrupt snapshot of what diversity looks like we will never be free. Yelling that something is diverse doesn't make it so and forcing something to be diverse doesn't make it so. True diversity will come when no one talks about it anymore, when everyone is working and no one is wondering if this or that group or organization has the requisite amount of colors or shapes or religions. Trying to enforce morality in this country continues to fail and the fanatics who cry for diversity for diversity sake unfortunately have the loudest voices. I suppose there's a reason why the voice of God is in a whisper and not in a windstorm. It is in the still, quiet voice that wisdom lives.