Here are the makings of a fine, exclusionary Labor Day story. This is from an on-line job ad for computer programmers, informing some applicants that they should step to the back of the employment line:
In response to this ad, you may choose to voluntarily notify us of your status as a female, minortiy (sic), disabled or veteran person. This request for voluntary notification is being done purely for Affirmative Action purposes and providing no such indiciation (sic) will not in any way preclude you as a candidate for employment.
Oh sure, right. First, knowing how to spell doesn’t get you a job there. Second, who would be stupid enough to not list his “status” as, say, a “veteran person?” Not to include it is to virtually admit that you are a healthy, white, non-veteran male. Third, if you are, you may not be “precluded,” but you will find someone ahead of you in line not equal to your skills.
And as someone who can claim special status under half of these categories, I have to say that I resent it. When the military called me, all I wanted was to be able to return to my rightful place in line, not get a special chit to elbow someone out of line, even if the son of a gun was clever enough to find a way to avoid military service. When much of my hearing went south, I didn’t feel the need for dewy-eyed and patronizing sympathizers to guide me to the front of the line.
Fine for me to say, you say, but I didn’t go through two centuries of slavery and discrimination. Dare I say it? Neither did anyone else around here, unless someone secretly has set a longevity record. Dare I also say: The essence of freedom and equality is not butting into line, or getting shoved back in line, because of the color of your skin, or other features that make you a part of this or that group.
Thankfully, the courts which over the past few decades have had a habit of throwing people into group classifications and thereby diminishing the value of everyone as individuals, may be turning around on this matter.
Last week, a federal appeals court in Atlanta unanimously ruled that the University of Georgia’s student admissions policy was unconstitutional because it automatically gives “bonus points” to non-white applicants. The school argued that the policy is constitutionally permissible because having more non-white students on campus leads to a more diverse student body.
The school “did not even come close” to showing that greater variety of races automatically equals diversity, according to the opinion written by Judge Stanley Marcus (an appointee of Bill Clinton, by the way). If the school wants to create a climate where students are exposed to different backgrounds and experiences, an Appalachian white student might contribute more than a black student from suburban Atlanta, he wrote.
If the university “wants to ensure diversity through its admissions decisions, and wants race to be part of that calculus, then it must be prepared to shoulder the burden of fully and fairly analyzing applicants as individuals and not merely as members of groups when deciding their likely contribution to student body diversity.”
So, if “diversity” is truly to be one of the high standards in admissions, hiring and other social or economic policies, then we must live with the consequences of it. The University of Georgia may have to hire squadrons of admissions officers to decide whether it is better served by admitting linebackers or bowlers. Debate team members or golf team members. Horseback or Harley riders. Folks from the mountains, shores or plains. Clearly, this is nonsense. But that’s the fix we’re in with our formulaic and uncompromising fixation with diversity. In our compulsion to cram individuals into groups, even the U.S. Census Bureau, The Wall Street Journal reported, is guessing the sex, race, ethnic origins and other demographic characteristics of people who leave the questions blank, based on how their neighbors answer those questions. Defining ourselves by group similarities and differences is how America got itself in trouble in the first place. The court ruling is a refreshing suggestion that we may be turning to an appreciation of individual, rather than group, value. Maybe it even signals that universities will have to act as if the most important thing they do is academics and scholarship, not social experimentation.
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E-mail: dbyrne@interaccess.com
