Diversity Thursday

What we cover here every DivThu is just part of a larger pushback. Though I like to focus on the DoN battle - it is helpful to look at the broader context all this is taking place in.

Ward Connerly over at the WSJ (read now, as it will soon fall behind the paid firewall) did a good job providing that the day before yesterday.

President Barack Obama, ... recently signed Executive Order 13583 "to promote Diversity and Inclusion in the Federal Workforce." The irony is that few institutions in America are more "diverse" and "inclusive" than the federal government, where the workforce is 17% black while blacks are roughly 13% of the U.S. population.

In addition to the president's executive order, the Dodd-Frank financial-reform law included Section 342, promoted by Rep. Maxine Waters (D., Calif.), (that) establishes in all federal financial regulatory agencies an "Office of Minority and Women Inclusion" with responsibility for "diversity in management, employment and business activities."

It is doubtful that anyone can name a government agency that does not include an affirmative-action office or "diversity" department in its structure. The infrastructure of the diversity network is vast.

More than anything else, the pursuit of diversity overshadows and subordinates excellence and competence and often makes us content with mediocrity. The late economist Milton Friedman once told me that "Freedom to compete fairly for university admissions, jobs and contracts is central to all that America professes to be."

In a recent column on these pages, Stanford's Shelby Steele observed that "the values that made us exceptional have been smeared with derision. . . . Talk of 'merit' or 'a competition of excellence' in the admissions office of any Ivy League university today and then stand by for the howls of academic laughter."
...
The longer we allow preferences to endure in the guise of diversity, the more damage will be done to the nation. If the president is serious about America rededicating itself to our ideals—which are liberty, economic opportunity for all, individual merit and the principle of equality—then he should begin with rescinding his executive order on affirmative action, calling on Congress to repeal Section 342 of Dodd-Frank, and paring back the burdensome and redundant diversity network that exists within the federal government.

Finally, he should urge Americans to embrace the color-blind vision of John F. Kennedy, who said that "race has no place in American life or law, and of Martin Luther King Jr., who dreamed of the day when the color of his children's skin would be subordinate to the content of their character.

Hat tip dt.