Diversity and Multiculturalism: The New Racism
The following editorial has
been produced by the Ayn Rand Institute's MediaLink department. Visit MediaLink
at
http://www.aynrand.org/medialink/.
"Ethnic diversity" is the highest priority of a university education today,
the politically correct educational establishment states, pointing to its
race, class and gender standards for hiring and promoting faculty, admitting
and housing students, and even choosing the content of courses. While claiming
that its primary goal is to eradicate racism, the "diversity" movement is
not imparting knowledge to students or helping them to develop the skill
of reasoning, but promoting the ideas of racism instead.
Diversity and
Multiculturalism: The New Racism
Michael
S. Berliner, Ph.D., and Gary Hull,
Ph.D.
Is ethnic diversity an "absolute essential" of a college education? UCLA's
Chancellor Charles Young thinks so. Ethnic diversity is clearly the purpose
of affirmative action, which Young is defending against a long-overdue assault.
But far from being essential to a college education, such diversity is a
sure road to its destruction. "Ethnic diversity" is merely racism in a
politically correct disguise.
Many people have a
very superficial view of racism. They see it as merely the belief that one
race is superior to another. It is much more than that. It is a fundamental
(and fundamentally wrong) view of human nature. Racism is the notion that
one's race determines one's identity. It is the belief that one's convictions,
values and character are determined not by the judgment of one's mind but
by one's anatomy or "blood."
This view causes people
to be condemned (or praised) based on their racial membership. In turn, it
leads them to condemn or praise others on the same basis. In fact, one can
gain an authentic sense of pride only from one's own achievements, not from
inherited characteristics.
The spread of racism
requires the destruction of an individual's confidence in his own mind. Such
an individual then anxiously seeks a sense of identity by clinging to some
group, abandoning his autonomy and his rights, allowing his ethnic group
to tell him what to believe. Because he thinks of himself as a racial entity,
he feels "himself" only among others of the same race. He becomes a separatist,
choosing his friends — and enemies — based on ethnicity. This
separatism has resulted in the spectacle of student-segregated dormitories
and segregated graduations.
The diversity movement
claims that its goal is to extinguish racism and build tolerance of differences.
This is a complete sham. One cannot teach students that their identity is
determined by skin color and expect them to become colorblind. One cannot
espouse multiculturalism and expect students to see each other as individual
human beings. One cannot preach the need for self-esteem while destroying
the faculty which makes it possible: reason. One cannot teach collective
identity and expect students to have self-esteem.
Advocates of "diversity"
are true racists in the basic meaning of that term: they see the world through
colored lenses, colored by race and gender. To the multiculturalist, race
is what counts — for values, for thinking, for human identity in general.
No wonder racism is increasing: colorblindness is now considered evil, if
not impossible. No wonder people don't treat each other as individuals: to
the multiculturalist, they aren't.
Advocates of "diversity"
claim it will teach students to tolerate and celebrate their differences.
But the "differences" they have in mind are racial differences, which means
we're being urged to glorify race, which means we're being asked to
institutionalize separatism. "Racial identity" erects an unbridgeable gulf
between people, as though they were different species, with nothing fundamental
in common. If that were true — if "racial identity" determined one's
values and thinking methods — there would be no possibility for
understanding or cooperation among people of different races.
Advocates of "diversity"
claim that because the real world is diverse, the campus should reflect that
fact. But why should a campus population "reflect" the general population
(particularly the ethnic population)? No answer. In fact, the purpose of
a university is to impart knowledge and develop reasoning, not to be a
demographic mirror of society.
Racism, not any meaningful
sense of diversity, guides today's intellectuals. The educationally significant
diversity that exists in "the real world" is intellectual diversity, i.e.,
the diversity of ideas. But such diversity — far from being sought after
— is virtually forbidden on campus. The existence of "political correctness"
blasts the academics' pretense at valuing real diversity. What they want
is abject conformity.
The only way to eradicate
racism on campus is to scrap racist programs and the philosophic ideas that
feed racism. Racism will become an ugly memory only when universities teach
a valid concept of human nature: one based on the tenets that the individual's
mind is competent, that the human intellect is efficacious, that we possess
free will, that individuals are to be judged as individuals — and that
deriving one's identity from one's race is a corruption — a corruption
appropriate to Nazi Germany, not to a nation based on freedom and independence.
Michael S. Berliner, Ph.D., is executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute
in Marina del Rey, California, and Gary Hull, Ph.D., is a philosopher and
senior writer for the Ayn Rand Institute.