Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Titus Techera on April 18, 2012 at 11:29am

I suppose when people came up with doctrines of rights & then asked themselves: What possibly could go wrong?, that's not exactly the danger they foresaw. -- What a lack of imagination, eh?

Permalink Reply by Milo Morris on April 18, 2012 at 12:16pm

Smart money is on the Schizophrenic Gay Native-American Satanist Transgenders.  Holding a royal flush ... she's diverse all by himself.

BWAAHAAHAAHAAA!!! I'd put my money on that.

Permalink Reply by Milo Morris on April 19, 2012 at 7:24am

No, I don't think differently because I'm black.  There is no "black" way to think. The way I think will be vastly different than a black man from, say Kenya. My perspective on things will be different again than a black man from, say Haiti. Race by itself has nothing to do with it. 

 

Ethnicity and nationality most certainly do have something to with it. I think differently because my African-American heritage informs how I look at things. My experiences as a black man in America informs how I look at things.

 

What bugs me about the way "diversity" is practiced in this country is that it is really not about making sure some of everything and everybody is included. It has become about including specific groups to the exclusion of white men. For example, one of my customers was the director of the music department at a local community college. We were talking about the school's concert series which is administered by the Office of Student Life. As I looked at the various acts that were booked on the series, I saw jazz, gospel, a Cuban-American band, an African choir, a Native-American drumming group, a Taiko drum ensemble, an Indian (as in India) dance company, a woman poet, and a latino theatre troupe. Not a single string quartet, opera singer, concert pianist or anything even remotely related. I looked at my customer and said, "there's no classical music on here." He said, "they're trying to make the series diverse." I replied, "Its not diverse unless there is some European music on it too." He agreed.

 

Sticking with academia for another point, I am aware that many colleges nowadays have black student unions, a Congreso Latino, an Asian resource group, and a gay group. Some schools might have a religious organization/club, but those have been coming under fire lately. But I am not aware of any groups that cater to students of European ancestry. Where are the Hibernian student unions? Where is the English resource group? If there is a gay group on campus, shouldn't there be group for students who are married? Or have children? Don't those students have special needs too?

 

Outside academia the problems with "diversity" become even worse. I remember a couple of years ago, some guy wanted to start a basketball team for white boys. He saw how playing street ball was having a positive effect on urban black boys and young men, and wanted to borrow the practice. He was shot down by the media before you could say, "lay-up."

 

In corporate America, they are as blatant as can be about what diversity means to them. Most requests for proposals have a Minority and Women Owned Business Enterprise (MWBE) section for the bidder to fill in. While I was working for a white-man owned piano company, I once had a purchasing agent for a local school district tell me point-blank that if we didn't have a MWBE sub-contractor who could participate in some fashion, our bid would be rejected. This purchasing agent that the school district would cover the cost of engaging said MWBE. So basically they were forcing us to use a MWBE, and then using tax dollars to pay for it. I think there's something very wrong with that.

 

Elsewhere in the corporate space, you have publications like Black Enterprise, and Ebony that go around doing demographic reports on companies. Not only do they want to know how many nappy heads work at the company, they want to know how many nappy heads work at each level of the company: entry-level, customer service, middle management, sales, and upper management. Then depending on the numbers, and "other factors & feedback" like daycare and wellness programs, they rate the suitability of each company for blacks. The "Ten best companies for African-Americans" and such. As far as I'm concerned, the ten best companies for African-Americans are the ten best companies that have the most job openings. You hirin'? Then you're good for African-Americans.

 

And don't get me started on "diversity training." All that is about is making sure you don't say anything to offend a woman or minority. As far as I'm concerned, the only "diversity" policy a company needs is their non-discrimination policy. Giving me the first day of Kwaanza as a paid holiday doesn't mean much.

 

Bringing this back to academia, I think the worst thing they have done to blacks is to lower admission standards. And this has been going on since before I entered college. There should be no racial preferences given in academia. Lowering academic achievement standards for minorities is a dangerous practice. I've seen it first-hand.

 

For me, it started in elementary school. The suburban school I attended had started an advanced reading group. They stuck me in the group not because my grades were as good as the other white kids, but because I had the highest grades of all the other black kids. When I got in the group, I realized that I could not keep up. Now discovering such an academic mismatch is not that big a deal at the elementary level...there's plenty of time left to correct that mistake. But how does one correct the mistake of letting a black kid with substandard academic achievement in an Ivy League university? Most will either fail or drop out. Oh yes, there will be that small percentage that are able to rise to the challenge and become "Golden Boys," but I don't think its worth the risk.

 

Another thing that happened to me before I got to college was that my SAT scores were artificially scaled up by 10%. In other words, if I got the exact same score as a white kid, and that numerical score was in the 85th percentile nationwide, the white kid's score was reported to the academic community as the 85th percentile. My score was reported as the 95th percentile. The results were:

 

1. I was getting unsolicited recruitment materials from Ivy League institutions, while my white peers were not.

 

2. I got the clear message that I wasn't smart enough, so I needed my scores massaged in order to get by.

 

3. Less was expected of me because I was black.

 

It sucked then, and it sucks now. Its time to get rid of racial preferences once and for all.

 

Let me get back to diversity in general. I think there is an “organic” diversity that happens between different groups of people. When I look at African-American culture, and how we relate to the predominant white culture--and more important, how the predominant white culture relates to African-Americans—I see how this organic blending occurs. What happens when you let diversity and multiculturalism take their “natural” course is that people from different groups borrow and adopt from each other the elements in which they find value. Historically, I can point to African-American music and food as two examples where white America found (and still finds) value in African-American culture. To be sure, there are other elements being adopted even today.

 

Another example of this organic diversity is Yiddish. I read somewhere that the average American knows (whether he’s aware of it or not) about 12 Yiddish words. That didn’t happen because Jews lobbied for a law, or wrote it into a corporate diversity policy. No. It happened because the general population found some value in using these Yiddish expressions, and we picked them up and incorporated them into our lexicon.

Permalink Reply by JonEdanger on April 19, 2012 at 7:28am

Permalink Reply by Will on April 19, 2012 at 7:57am

Read an op-ed at my (engineering) college by a black engineer, saying, I'm an engineer.  I'm black.  I wish people would stop telling me being an engineer is acting white.

(And:  much applause to Milo!)

Permalink Reply by Milo Morris on April 19, 2012 at 8:34am

Yep. That is something that we blacks need to fix for ourselves. In our attempt to distance ourselves from our oppressor, many blacks have half-wittingly perpetuated one of the worst stereotypes: namely that getting ahead makes you less black. After all, how can you be "fighting the fight" if you're kissing Da Man's ass?

 

Its total bullshit. Its a social phenomenon created largely by those who never will get ahead, to make those of us who do resent ourselves. It also has an emasculating effect on black men because--and this is the stuff blacks don't tell whites in polite company--black men see themselves as more masculine (stronger, more virile, etc.) than white men. But black women suffer from this underachiever attitude too.

 

Another fear that fuels this kind of attitude is fear of assimilation. Many blacks look at someone who has successfully assimilated white American culture, and see a person who has "left the tribe." What they don't understand is that we actually struck a balance between our African and American roots.

 

The worst part of all of this is that people with this mindset have been fooled. They have been fooled into conflating "ghetto" with "black." So unless you are living like those in the projects, you are not an authentic African-American.

 

I have had a great many confrontations with blacks over this issue from childhood through adulthood. The most recent was this past fall. I was keeping an apartment in a lower/middle class black neighborhood near where I was working. One day as I was walking home, I decided to pop into the bar on the other side of the block from my apartment. As I was standing on the corner, waiting for the light to change, I heard a man’s voice coming from my left on the same side of the street as where I was standing. He said, “Sell-out.” I didn’t react, because he quite a distance away, and could have been talking to anyone. Then as he walked past behind me, he said, “Sell-out” again. I looked at him and I said, “What?” He turned to face me, as he continued walking backwards, and said, “Niggah, you ain’t nuffin’ but a sell-out.” I said, “Niggah, you don’t even know me.” He came back with “I can tell by lookin’ at you.” My last words to him were, “I don’t even know what you talkin’ ‘bout.” Then the light changed and I crossed the street. Of course, I did know what he was talking about, but I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction.

 

I learned a long time ago that any black person who is going to call me "sell-out," “oreo,” or "Uncle Tom" is doomed to a life of failure and frustration.

Permalink Reply by D.J. on April 20, 2012 at 12:36am

I really like your posts, Milo. Thank you for posting what you did. I think you really got to the essence of what I was trying to say in my OP: that the 'diversity' espoused in academia is very artificial and quite clearly has an agenda, much to the denial of those who actually promote it. Thanks again.

Permalink Reply by Bryan Maloney on April 21, 2012 at 10:01am

Here's something else to throw into the mix. Many Africans want no association at all with black people of the USA. The Africans see the US blacks as entirely unlike them, culturally, historically, etc. I've known Africans who are offended at the presumption on the part of US blacks that the two groups should be considered the same. From the African standpoint, there is no basis of comparison. Indeed, there is a great deal of derision of the American black from Africans.

Permalink Reply by Brandon Michael on April 21, 2012 at 10:45am

This one kid said somethin' that was really bad

He said I wasn't really black because I had a dad

I think that's kinda sad

Mostly cause a lot of black kids think they should agree with that

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