Diversity is Our Weakness – Bakke Revisited

For someone as old as I am, one of the more horrific side effects of reading Christopher Caldwell’s book “The Age of Entitlement” is reliving all of the political debacles that he chronicles.  Each one comes back and delivers the same pain you felt originally plus the additional grief you get from reflecting on how that defeat reverberated through the years.

To select a specific example, Caldwell details the 1978 court case in which a white male applicant to the UC Davis medical school, Allan Bakke, was rejected in favor of a minority student.  Allan Bakke had board scores in the 96^th, 94^th, 97^th and 72^nd percentile while the minority candidate had scores in the 34^th, 30^th, 37^th and 18^th percentile.  Back then the California court rightfully ruled that Bakke had been discriminated against and also ruled that the California program that made this preference was racially discriminatory and must be eliminated.  But the University of California appealed to the Supreme Court and by a five to four vote the Court decided that although discrimination was being practiced, diversity was so important that quotas were acceptable as long as they were masked by calling them diversity “plus factors.”  Previous to this, no one had ever heard of diversity as a constitutional requirement.  So what we had was the very same anti-discrimination laws that the civil rights movement championed ten years before would now be purposefully broken by their government allies to disadvantage a population of people on the basis of race and gender.  How ironic.

This was the decision that sealed the fate of white male students across the country.  Women and various minorities would be put at the front of the line and regardless of how low their scores were they would get the seats ensured by the hidden quotas that all the universities employed.  And eventually the same system would be used by all the major corporations that were monitored by the Federal government which is essentially every one that had more than a handful of employees.

And that is where we are today.  The only difference is that additional “protected groups” like homosexuals and illegal aliens have been added over time to the rolls of the favored.  And now we have reached a place where every organization, whether a college, corporation or non-profit social group justifies this by employing a mantra that they drum into their employees, namely, “diversity is our strength.”

Diversity is our strength.  What does that even mean?  In what sense is it a strength?  I have personally witnessed diversity hires who have proven so incompetent that they effectively destroyed the functionality of a whole department.

I can remember a technical director standing up at a company meeting and during the “diversity and inclusion” sermon stating that he knew diversity was our strength because a company culture survey had confirmed that it was.  I tried not to smile, but failed because I remembered the last time a supposedly “anonymous” culture survey had provided results that contradicted the official narrative.  But anonymity was only maintained at the individual level.  All survey respondents were identified to the level of the supervisor above.  The low-level supervisors of the anonymous dissenters were told that their poor managerial skills were responsible for the “uninformed” nature of the contradictory responses of their direct reports and if the trend continued it would be handled by demoting the supervisors.  Naturally, the supervisors then begged their reports to toe the line if they didn’t want to see them fired.  So essentially the proof of diversity being a strength is that the company told the employees that it is.

Let’s look at it rationally.  If you wanted to hire mechanics what would you be looking for?  Several things; mechanical aptitude, strength, conscientiousness, experience and resourcefulness.  Now several of these general qualities we could hope to find in applicants of any race or either gender.  But if you are looking for strength and mechanical aptitude you would not be surprised to find that the great majority of the best applicants were men.  So, hiring an equal number of men and women as mechanics, while obviously producing more diversity than with an all-male staff is going to provide you with a weaker crew both in terms of strength and skill.

If you wanted to choose good medical school students what would you look for?  Until 1964 you would be looking for emotional composure, honesty but most importantly for very high analytical intelligence.  That is why science and math are the most important prerequisites for medical school.  But if after the civil rights era you would accept candidates solely based on their sex or race regardless of how low their testing scores for analytical intelligence were then you would get a weaker class of medical students.

This same exercise can be employed for any job that requires anything more than rudimentary skills.  In each case choosing candidates by a quota, regardless of fitness for the position does not give you a stronger employee, it gives a weaker one.  From this analysis I conclude that “diversity is our strength” is not just untrue but that the opposite statement is shown to be true.  If choosing applicants according to core job competency is subordinated to checking off gender and race boxes then you have purposefully picked less talented individuals as part of your selection process.  That is stupid.  And worse than stupid, it is dishonest.  And since the victims of this dishonesty, namely the co-workers, have to pretend they don’t see what’s happening it is also highly demoralizing for them.

There it is.  A dishonest process to defend an illogical goal.

There are many things that a conservative Supreme Court needs to do.  Reverse the homosexuality agenda, re-establish the right of free association and protect the First and Second Amendment Rights of all Americans.  But if I were to rank the priorities, I would say that ruling affirmative action unconstitutional is the first priority of a conservative agenda.  American society as a whole would benefit from the elimination of the dishonesty, incompetence and resentment that this insane practice foists on all of us.

Will the Supreme Court take up something like this?  Under John Roberts and with the current conservative/liberal 5/4 split it will not.  But with the 6/3 split that might soon exist it is possible.  And that is why I especially hope that President Trump ends up with a strong majority in the Senate after this year’s election.  I know he will be making an additional nomination within the next five years.  I want it to be a bold conservative judge who will make a bold step like eliminating affirmative action.