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In The Diversity Delusion: How Race and Gender Pandering Corrupt the University and Undermine Our Culture, Heather MacDonald, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute and contributing editor of City Journal, painted a grim picture of the damage done by university administrators desperate to diversify their student bodies at all costs. Identity studies programs, MacDonald made clear, exist not only because of the desire of progressive professors to promote postmodern ideology, but also because such courses, which involve little more than complaining about purported oppression and parroting inane jargon, are far easier for underqualified students to wrap their minds around than something serious and useful. In the same way, the introduction of “critical race studies” provides a handy route through law school for black kids who’d never be able to negotiate a traditional legal curriculum.
Of course, low-achieving black and Latino applicants also get admissions preferences – which in the long term aren’t really good for them, since those for whom the bar has been lowered invariably fall behind. One of the more frustrating aspects of this rank injustice is that Asians, who effectively get punished for being smart, working hard, and earning high test scores, have a right to kick up holy hell but rarely do, while many blacks and Latinos who get special treatment – not just affirmative action, but scholarships and other benefits – can’t stop raging about racism.
The Diversity Delusion came out in 2019. On May 25 of the following year, a thug named George Floyd died during an unpleasant encounter with the Minneapolis police, and pretty soon everything MacDonald wrote about in The Diversity Delusion got even worse. Suddenly it was all about race: America had stepped into the looking glass and entered the harebrained world of Ibram X. Kendi and Robin DiAngelo, whose strange new road rules – and their dire consequences – are the subject of MacDonald’s new book, When Race Trumps Merit: How the Pursuit of Equity Sacrifices Excellence, Destroys Beauty, and Threatens Lives.
After Floyd’s death, needless to say, came a summer of race riots, all premised on the claim that white cops are killing innocent blacks in massive numbers (a lie that MacDonald, by the way, debunked in her 2016 book The War on Cops) and that America was born out of a deep-seated racism that has never abated. Instead of rebutting this falsehood, a veritable army of high-ranking establishment figures – from university presidents and corporate CEOs to the editors of medical and scientific journals – affirmed it, issuing ardent mea culpas in which they accepted the ridiculous charge that the underrepresentation of blacks in their respective institutions was the result of white racism – and nothing else – and promised that they would act immediately and decisively to alter this inexcusable state of affairs.
MacDonald isn’t having it. With a blizzard of statistics, she pulls back the curtain on the reality behind subpar black performance. For example, some figures on high-school seniors: in 2019, 28% of whites and 37% of Asians – but only 7% of blacks – were “proficient” in twelfth-grade math. The numbers for reading are similar. In 2015, 60% of those students attaining very high scores (between 750 and 800) on the math SAT were Asian, 33% were white, and 2% were black. In 2004, the average LSAT score of students admitted to the top ten law schools was 165; only 1% of blacks (a total of 108 individuals) scored that high. Fully 22% of black law-school grads never pass the bar after five tries, compared with 3% of whites. In 2020, the average score on the GMAT (for prospective graduate students) was 463 for blacks, 573 for whites, and 601 for Asians.
Why are these results so poor? Is it racism? Is it because blacks still suffer from the historical legacy of slavery, 158 years after the 13th Amendment, and of Jim Crow, 59 years after the Civil Rights Act? If that’s the case, then why do recent Asian immigrants who’ve just escaped some of the worst living conditions in the world manage to soar so quickly? Could it be because Asian parents tend to value education and encourage studying, while too many black kids grow up hearing that being studious is “acting white”? Could it be because too many black kids live on welfare payments in single-parent homes, in neighborhoods plagued by gangs, in a subculture defined by booty calls and baby mamas and the idolization of rappers and drug dealers and thugs? “One third of all black males,” MacDonald notes, “have a felony conviction.” Over 70% of black babies are born out of wedlock.
Nor is it just black kids who teach each other irresponsible behavior. In 2020, the National Museum of African American History & Culture declared that rationality, hard work, delayed gratification, politeness, self-control, and other admirable attributes (all of which predict academic and professional success) are “white” traits. In the same year, a leading charter school network eliminated its motto “Work Hard. Be Nice.” Thus do supposedly respectable black-community establishments actively discourage young black people from being civilized. Given all this, it’s a wonder that black kids’ test scores aren’t even worse than they are.
The reason for broad-based black failure is obvious and difficult to overcome: the black subculture – which in the 1950s, despite white bigotry and socioeconomic inequality, had a strong foundation in religion and family – has been going to the dogs ever since LBJ’s Great Society, and is in drastic need of radical change. Destructive cultural pathologies have long been crying out to be addressed. But to address them would mean acknowledging them. And in the post-George Floyd era, that’s harder than ever. To suggest in the year 2023 that any problem in the black community is the fault of anything other than crushing, systematic white racism is to reap the whirlwind.
And so the culture of lies endures – and the fervid attempts to correct for an utterly illusory racism intensify. In 2021, the University of California system barred the use of ACT and SAT scores in admissions on the grounds that the tests are racist. As of 2022, about 36% of grad schools no longer use the GRE. Around th e country, primary and secondary schools, rather than trying to improve education for blacks, have sought to stick it to whites and Asians by killing off programs for gifted and talented students.
So it goes. The state of California now mandates that corporate boards contain a certain percentage of minorities – ignoring the fact that in many instances there simply aren’t enough minorities who qualify. Since 2021, the National Institutes of Health has demanded that researchers explain how their work will “empower” blacks; the National Science Foundation has instituted similar requirements. Yet in 2021, for all the “anti-racist” initiatives in STEM fields, not a single black person in the entire U.S. was awarded a Ph.D. in certain disciplines, among them number theory, robotics, and structural engineering. Meanwhile scientists who might be looking for the causes of cancer are instead studying, say, the role of racism in black obesity.
This issue doesn’t just arise in STEM. In the post-Floyd era, in the name of “anti-racism,” museum curators have been quick to declare that traditional European art forms are racist. Arts administrators pronounce that the underrepresentation of blacks in arts organizations is racist. Leading figures at orchestras, opera companies, and conservatories attribute the whiteness of their milieux to racism. Musicologists seek to take Beethoven down a few pegs and try to revive lousy, long-forgotten classical composers who happened to be black. And here, perhaps, is the topper: New York Times music critic Anthony Tommasini actually condemns blind auditions – which ensure a focus on merit and not on race, sex, or other irrelevant factors – as racist.
The folly – and danger – of this new dispensation becomes particularly clear when you examine the medical profession. In 2021, the American Medical Association issued a plan for “racial justice” that, in MacDonald’s words, reads like “a black studies department mission statement.” Yale Medical School has instituted pass-fail courses. At the George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences, one dean decided that a certain student’s poor academic performance was outweighed by her “passion for social justice.” As if this would make any difference in an operating room.
Sane dissent from this irresponsible madness is punished severely. In 2020, when Dr. Norman Wang of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) proposed in the Journal of the American Heart Association that doctors be evaluated using colorblind criteria, he was savaged by the president-elect of the AHA, the JAHA withdrew the paper, and he lost his job at UPMC. On a 2021 podcast sponsored by the Journal of the American Medical Association, a JAMA editor who’s a surgeon at UCLA spoke up for equality in medicine but criticized the profession’s obsessive interest in racism – in response to which JAMA took down the podcast and yanked his editorship, while back at UCLA he faced a “show trial.”
I’ve been treated by doctors with a wide spectrum of skin colors without giving it a thought. But reading about the systematic relaxing of standards in medical education, I have to say that I’d now hesitate to see a young black doctor in the U.S. about anything more urgent than a hangnail. I can’t help thinking that my late father, who was a doctor, would’ve been appalled to see his profession take such a stupid turn. It’s no surprise to learn from MacDonald that these harrowing developments are leading a great many gifted white physicians to quit medicine altogether. A terrifying thought.
While American institutions are currently in the grip of this calamitous claptrap, what’s up in China? There, the best students are identified at an early age and are channeled into special classes. Kids learn self-discipline and responsibility. Classroom time is never wasted on jawing about racism – or, for that matter, gender. The result: while Chinese students score highest in the world on PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) tests, the U.S. comes in at #25. And while the rankings of American universities, which have long been considered by far the world’s best, are declining, China’s are on their way up.
How tragic that while the tyrannical regime that focused, half a century ago, on indoctrinating everybody into the ideology of Mao’s Little Red Book has turned that Communist dictatorship into a scientific and technological powerhouse, the United States of America – once the laboratory of the modern world – has exchanged Einstein and Madame Curie for the mediocre maunderings of Kendi and DiAngelo. And what’s worst of all is that none of this nonsense – not one bit of it – is helping black people climb a single step up the ladder. It’s only bringing all of us down. And fast.
When we hit bottom. China will fill the well with their fossil fuels.
Here in Australia they have a special education program for aboriginals so they can get into university to study medicine because some of them apparently find it hard to get a high enough score in our secondary scho0ls to qualify for medical school. I don’t know if the universities give them an easier path to becoming a doctor, or what sort of doctors they turn out to be, but surely all doctors should have to learn at the same level or you end up with a lower standard of doctors, and who would want one of them as ones GP? probably the Aboriginals who would prefer to be treated by an Aboriginal which is being racist!
Having said that, there are some Aboriginals who are bright enough to become doctors without needing the leg-up, but they are few and far between.
Why would so many corporations kowtow to this tactic of using race? (north of 83 billion)
The Marxist-Left figured out how to bilk these billions thru a “self-feeding extortion loop” (you can look that up on ChatGPT)
Thru guilt trips, social media shaming and threats of urban violence, they can overthrow the entire country.
Groups around the world are dog-piling on.
Bawer wrote: The US “has exchanged Einstein and Madame Curie for the mediocre maunderings of Kendi and DiAngelo.”
As Victor Hanson alluded to recently, they’ve successfully “institutionalized mediocrity”
And history has proven, that Marxist mediocrity leads to struggle sessions, forced labor camps and mass graves.
Maybe the US military needs to change the “Legion of Merit” and the “Meritorious Unit Commendation” medals to something less offensive.
“For conspicuous mediocrity, and mediocre intrepidity”
This is what the end of merit and American Marxism looks like in practice
The Japanese Imperial Navy were specialists at night warfare. In the battle of Savo Island, at the time of our landings at Guadalcanal, their long range torpedos, powered by kerosene and LOX [liquid oxygen, O2 gas under enough tremendous pressure to liquify ] took out four allied heavy cruisers and killed two allied admirals.
The JIN won because their ranks, for years, had been screened for statistically rare, exceptional night vision. These men, with exceptionally dense rod cell counts, were lookouts.
It gave them victory.
Plus the Japanese lacked radar, at that battle.
“How tragic that while the tyrannical regime that focused, half a century ago, on indoctrinating everybody into the ideology of Mao’s Little Red Book has turned that Communist dictatorship into a scientific and technological powerhouse…”
I highly doubt that communist-fascist China is a scientific and technological powerhouse. A totalitarian state is essentially a slave pen, a serf pen. Slaves and serfs do not produce groundbreaking scientific and technological innovations. The fundamental discoveries and innovations all come from the semi-free West most of all America. China simply has borrowed, begged, stolen, imported, or been given its technological lifeblood by altruist sympathizers, appeasers, and compromisers from the West most of all America.
“No one can turn a man into a cog of society; not a THINKING cog. All that one can accomplish by the attempt is to destroy man. A collectivist system, therefore, like any form of irrationality, is necessarily self-defeating, no matter what its specific policies or leaders. Evil is impotent in every version and in every field, politics included.
Ayn Rand is more realistic than the panicky anti-communists of the Cold War era, who trembled before the alleged practicality of dictatorship. The best symbol of this issue is the contrast between two projections of a collectivist future: George Orwell’s “1984” vs. Ayn Rand’s “Anthem” (which was published more than a decade earlier, in 1938). Orwell regards freedom as a luxury; he believes that one can wipe out every vestige of free thought, yet still maintain an industrial civilization. Whose mind is maintaining it? Blank out. “Anthem’, by contrast, shows us “social cogs” who have retrogressed, both spiritually and materially, to the condition of primitives, When men lose the freedom to think, Ayn Rand understands, they lose the products of thought as well.” – Leonard Peikoff
“No one can turn a man into a cog of society; not a THINKING cog.”
Thinking cogs like you will end up in a concentration camp where you will be worked to death as a cog of society
That’s 100% true. I’ve been to China. It’s a shit hole.
Has race really triumphed over merit? What’s the prize, door number three on the Price Is Right?
The notion that blacks are oppressed here in America is a blatant lie, as demonstrated by the fact that black and brown people risk life and limb to enter this country illegally. In addition, blacks enjoy special privileges, benefits and programs at the expense of white people. These advantages have been going on since the 1960’s.
As Economist Paul Craig Roberts put it recently:
“A system of racial privileges for blacks was forced on universities, employers, and the population. Less qualified blacks were given preference over more qualified whites in university admissions, employment and promotion. Freezes are used against white admissions, employment, and promotion until racial balance is achieved.”
Where in human history has a racial majority (whites) surrendered it’s power to a racial minority (blacks) and allow discrimination against themselves in favor of the minority? Anywhere blacks have been in charge they have led brutally oppressive regimes.
Would the Chinese, Arabs, Japanese, etc, discriminate against themselves to favor blacks?
Just a pathetic state of affairs.
I first saw this in 1970 in law school admissions and it has been going on ever since. These programs provide little or no benefit to anyone. When I took the bar exam in 1974, not a single black who took it passed. They sued claiming the bar exam was “racist.” The lawyrer representing them was quoted in the newspaper saying that the exam tested reading, writing and analytic ability which he claimed were “white skills.” In the event, the State bar waived them all in rather than contesting the frivolous lawsuit.. So that’s great. Now the State had a whole cadre of incompent lawyers out there doing a poor job for their clients. Way to go. Now we’re doing this in engineering, medicine, and all other fields. What could go wrong?
Looks like one of those semi-literate lawyers decided to make a name for himself by going for Donald Trump.
And who are these lawyers representing? Most likely the communities they came from. It’s a downward spiral looking for all the wrong solutions to stop the descent. Who knows if this has anything to do with the rates of incarceration for blacks?
“When Race Trumps Merit: How the Pursuit of Equity Sacrifices Excellence, Destroys Beauty, and Threatens Lives”
Things to consider; reason versus unreason, how does reason versus unreason tie in with altruism, sacrifice, racism versus individualism, and egalitarianism?
Reason the human faculty by which we establish the facts of reality tells us that in reality only individuals really exist. Unreason denies objective reality and tells us individuals are not really real but race is really real.
“Since nature does not endow all men with equal beauty or equal intelligence, and the faculty of volition leads men to make different choices, the egalitarians propose to abolish the “unfairness” of nature and of volition, and to establish universal equality in fact—in defiance of facts. Since the Law of Identity is impervious to human manipulation, it is the Law of Causality that they struggle to abrogate. Since personal attributes or virtues cannot be “redistributed,” they seek to deprive men of their consequences—of the rewards, the benefits, the achievements created by personal attributes and virtues. It is not equality before the law that they seek, but inequality: the establishment of an inverted social pyramid, with a new aristocracy on top—the aristocracy of non-value….
Sorry T. I don’t think I’ll be wasting my time today considering “reason versus unreason, how does reason versus unreason tie in with altruism, sacrifice, racism versus individualism, and egalitarianism.
There are way more important issues to consider like, what am I having for lunch today versus tomorrow.
It is amazing to me the stuff you waste your time on without accomplishing anything.
Continued….
To understand the meaning and motives of egalitarianism, project it into the field of medicine. Suppose a doctor is called to help a man with a broken leg and, instead of setting it, proceeds to break the legs of ten other men, explaining that this would make the patient feel better; when all these men become crippled for life, the doctor advocates the passage of a law compelling everyone to walk on crutches—in order to make the cripples feel better and equalize the “unfairness” of nature.
If this is unspeakable, how does it acquire an aura of morality—or even the benefit of a moral doubt—when practiced in regard to man’s mind?” – Ayn Rand
WTF are you talking about?
Reminds me of Milton Friedman’s reply to an officer presiding over a communist-run construction project where everyone had a shovel, and which was described as a “jobs program.” To which he replied, “If it’s a jobs program, why don’t you give everyone a spoon?”
About 15-20 yrs ago a friend worked for a large metropolitan police dept. The demographics of that area were mostly white and Hispanic, as well as blacks. Almost all the Sgt’s, Lt’s and above were white. That’s because when a test for Sgt came out the results were always the same. Whites scored first, Hispanics second and blacks last.
A group of blacks wanted to sue stating the test was racist. All the typical black groups like the NAACP, black representatives from government, etc, were complaining about the racist test. So, it was agreed upon to make a new test devoid of “racism.” At the table to assist making the new test was blacks from various groups.
Eventually, the new and approved test was given the green light. Finally, blacks were given a fair shot. Guess what happened when the next testing date for the Sgt exam occurred? Whites scored first, Hispanics second and predictably blacks last, Again.
Again more excuses, more claims of racism from blacks. The dept then changed it’s entire testing procedures to pacify the unqualified blacks. Instead of the one typical list with the ranking of the highest scores, now you had three separate lists. A list for whites, a list for Hispanics and a list for black AND you had to pick one candidate from each list regardless of their score. So, if the top score on the black list was a 78 then that person got promoted. Despite the fact that other whites or Hispanics scored much higher.
Note: A study was conducted on why blacks weren’t able to score high enough on the exams. Surprise! It wasn’t due to racism. The study showed whites studied about 6-8 hours a week and used study groups. Blacks studied maybe 1-2 hours a week and didn’t utilize study groups, or other means to assist them.
On a side note, I read “The Bell Curve” one time and unfortunately one time only. Its a dense book chuck full of statistics that for me would require at least a second reading.
The thing that turned me off about the book is that it treats Hispanics as one gene pool. Hispanics or Latinos are not a race and they can not possibly be treated as one gene pool. That in itself made me doubt the book’s premise that DNA is the most powerful and intractable factor in human intelligence.
From what I can see laziness, lack of serious dedication to learning and education, lack of intellectual ambition, and a cultural, relative indifference, to education is what keeps most Latinos from achieving on a level with whites or Asians. But “The Bell Curve” argues that those cultural traits are the result of intractable, DNA determined, low intelligence.
If DNA is the key factor then how did Jaime Escalante accomplish what he did in fact accomplish with his inner city, ghetto, kids?
Beaners tend to be dumb. That’s an obvious fact.
Years earlier in NYC there were three passing scores for promotion (Fire Dept.) for the same three groups. A candidate from Panama failed and tried to change his selected group from Hispanic to black (which he appeared “qualified” for) because that would have made his score passing. His request was denied. His first choice stood.
Mediocrity is officially the benchmark of demoncrats and leftists.
How low can we go?
Bawer remains a national treasure, even though he lives in Norway.
BLM and CRT and just the codewords for Brainwashing the youth with leftists Lies
“It’s only bringing all of us down. And fast.”
Of course it is. That is the whole point. It is useless to try and understand it in any other way. Once you see the entire aim is calculated to destroy western civilization in general and the U.S. and her “moral and religious people” in particular, then it all makes perfectly rational and logical sense.
It is genius, really. Requires understanding human nature deeply.
We need to stop saying, “Look look at what they are doing now! Isn’t it terrible?” We must return to the culture that made us great and have leaders and representatives reflecting that culture of greatness. But, of course, that is being made much more difficult as our American culture is being destroyed by multiculturalism.
Our enemy is genius, really. Very evil and very rational.
Our enemy has been working on this for over a century. As to genius, remember that Vladimir I. Lenin oversaw the creation and growth of the CPUSA beginning in 1920. Lenin was arguably one of the worst human beings who ever lived, but nobody ought to underestimate his intelligence.
We have now reached a point where at least one airline pilot recently announced to his passengers that they could rest assured…he was not an “affirmative action hire.” Will some physicians start doing this? And, if so, what will the consequences be on them for seeking to calm their patients? Some years back, Hollywood produced a move called “IDIOCRACY.” It was meant to be a satire. It’s turning out to be a future documentary. I’m very fortunate to be a very aged senior. Why? It means I will certainly not live long enough to have to ask the name of the attending physician if I have to enter a hospital. What’s your name? Oh, Wang. Good. Goldfarb, good. Rodrigues, good. ‘Nuff said.
Black Lies Matter.
The prestigious 105-year old Northern California Community College from which I recently retired just announced the hiring of a new president.
The local paper said that after a “nation-wide search” they apparently found the most qualified, best candidate to succeed the outgoing leader. The newspaper proudly highlighted that she is “the first queer Latina” to hold that position in the history of the college.
Oh yes, those “First’s” are of vital importance — a lot more so than a Ph.D. in a serious field of study. Her degree is in educational leadership, and while the Board of Trustees did not divulge her salary, it is estimated to be in the $400,000 range. She and her wife are looking forward to moving to our city, the article said.
A couple of days later, the newspaper sat down for an interview with the new, incoming president. The interview was full of bromides, how she believes in “challenging” young people, particularly “first-generation college students”, how she wants to “listen to every student’s needs”, “encourage them to achieve their full potential”, etc.
At the end of the question-answer session, the journalist remarked: “This interview has been edited for clarity.”
Unreal. Yes, the “firsts” are of vital importance. Hopefully,, one day we could have our first Siamese Twins hired in leadership positions.
Oppression and marginalization of minorities is obviously detrimental to society and has long term consequences. Demonizing and insulting the history of a wealthy majority will have devastating results downstream. The pendulum always swings both ways and the cutting edge may be comprised of angry armed and formerly ” quiet” people.
This sentence really tickled my ribs. “” Musicologists seek to take Beethoven down a few pegs and try to revive lousy, long-forgotten classical composers who happened to be black.” I didn’t know there were black classical music composers. But seriously, the rot that is festering and spreading in US educational and political institutions is a dangerous and revolting descent back into a Dark Age. America is being subverted internally.