Diversity Thursday

More great news on the (D)iversity front - more chance for progress on the way towards a true color blind society based on character and accomplishment - and not on something as meaningless as where your haplogroups come from. We've got to flush them out in to the light and fresh air - they can't survive it.

First: TO THE BARRICADES!

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case of Fisher v. University of Texas, a new challenge to the use of affirmative action in university admission policies. The case, which will be argued in October, may finally end the racially based admission policies that universities have used for decades to achieve “diversity” in their student bodies. Diversity, as used by university officials, is neither conceptually coherent enough nor constitutionally compelling enough to justify explicit racial classification.

This would force all the Kabuki dancing and Newspeak to end from USNA to USCGC - and hopefully everywhere else - and let us stop forcing people to "pick" their ethnicity for gain and profit. Stop dual entry systems. Stop telling ourselves little lies.

Second: Dude, you let the mask slip.

Northwestern president Morton Schapiro and three other top administrators led a panel discussion on Sunday about improving cultural education and safety at NU. The discussion continued for more than three hours.

About 250 students attended the discussion, which was sponsored by The Coalition of Colors, an organization that includes Alianza, For Members Only, the Asian Pacific American Coalition, the Muslim-cultural Students Association and South Asian Student Alliance. Weinberg sophomore Benjy Leibowitz moderated the panel, which took place in McCormick Auditorium.

John Marquez, assistant professor of African-American and Latino/a Studies, introduced the panel with a discussion of what he has learned as a professor from his minority students. Several students in attendance snapped and applauded at points during Marquez's statement.

"They feel like this university is a white university," Marquez said. "It seems as if they perceive themselves as mere props in a political game."
...
"While we can say that undergraduates will be listened to when deciding course offerings, that's not the history of this institution," Bloom said. "We have African-American studies because students in the ‘60s took over the Bursar's Office because no one would listen to them and we have Asian-American studies because students staged a multi-week hunger strike because no one would listen to them."

After the discussion, Howard said it was "good to hear what students were thinking" and positive for students to hear from the administrators, who are capable of making changes.

That was the college newspaper report. This one is better.

Top administrators at Northwestern University convened a panel discussion earlier this month to address a recent incident of racial harassment on campus.

A student named Tonantzin Carmona was walking home when several intoxicated female students jeeringly said to her, “What, no hablas ingles?” Since then, members of the university community have organized several events aimed at making the campus more tolerant and culturally sensitive. University President Morton Schapiro was present at this most recent panel on February 12th.

The event was introduced by John Marquez, an assistant professor of African American and Latino Studies. He began by dedicating his comments “to those indigenous peoples who were displaced or obliterated to build Evanston and Northwestern.”

“I hope their ghosts haunt us,” he said.

Marquez argued that students of color often feel “manipulated and exploited” by the university, and that at times, Northwestern’s commitment to diversity seemed like a public relations tactic, rather than a genuine desire for change.

“It seems as if the students perceive themselves as being mere props in a political game,” he said. “Dignity is more valuable than a diploma.”

Wow - what ignorance of American Indian history - almost as great as his ignorance of the challenge to highly selective schools looking for (D)iversity from different high school graduation rates by ethnicity - but those are more icky facts. People like this don't like icky facts. They get in the way of emotion. Back on topic, he really should study up on pre-Colombian warfare and migration, but that would require a curious intelect. Can't have that either.

Wait ... I'm wandering in to other topics. There is more fun in that article,

... some students demanded that the university initiate wide-ranging diversity policies, such as making a “cultural competency” class a requirement for graduation. Administrators appeared reluctant to take that step.

Schapiro argued it was virtually impossible to implement a cultural competency class due to Northwestern’s many different schools and faculty-governed curriculum.

“Certain things the faculty can and should decide,” he said.

Another controversy arose when Provost Daniel Linzer responded to a complaint that Northwestern needed a “chief diversity officer” to be responsible for diversity-related matters on campus.

Linzer said that such a person had already been hired, but that the job had been titled “assistant provost for faculty development,” because with a chief diversity officer, diversity would be seen as “somebody else’s job.”

Hayley Stevens, president of a group for Hispanic students, was skeptical that this employee existed.

“As president of Alianza, I have never heard of this person until now,” said Stevens.

Northwestern’s most recent method of encouraging diversity was the creation of the University Diversity Council, which grew out of the Faculty Diversity Committee.

Linzer announced that the new council would have five task forces, with students working on each one: Faculty, Academic, Campus Life, Pipeline (which will deal with further diversifying the student body) and Lifetime Connections (which will deal with alumni relations.)

Linzer also touted other initiatives as proof of the university’s commitment to diversity, including Northwestern’s own Center on the Science of Diversity.

The Occupy movement - or at least the useful idiots in it - wants to complain about the cost of higher education? Where do they think the money is going to come from to create these positions - and the real estate and infrastructure to support them - comes from. Non-value added to the extreme.

At first it looks like a bad news story, but it isn't. True, the Diversity Industry and the Diversity Bullies are using the same Mau-Mau'n tactics they have for the last few decades - but though the reasons have been documented for decades (push for ethnic studies departments in order to institutionalize a job market for professional grevience mongers and proponents of segregation and sectarianism) - in the modern sense (see previous DivThu about the new "structures" - it should be clear to all that this is one thing and one thing only - the otherwise intellectually unemployable trying to force the creation of jobs that actually fit their resumes.

Speaking of the wholesale fraud for gain that is going on here - and the fact that so much of the dogma these racialists cling to, this is great! Sometimes even an organ of the Left like the NYT has an OPSEC violation. They unintentionally remind everyone the truth.

Every decade, the Census Bureau spends billions of dollars and deploys hundreds of thousands of workers to get an accurate portrait of the American population. Among the questions on the census form is one about race, with 15 choices, including “some other race.”

More than 18 million Latinos checked this “other” box in the 2010 census, up from 14.9 million in 2000. It was an indicator of the sharp disconnect between how Latinos view themselves and how the government wants to count them. Many Latinos argue that the country’s race categories — indeed, the government’s very conception of identity — do not fit them.

This argument over identity has gained momentum with the growth of the Latino population, which in 2010 stood at more than 50 million. Census Bureau officials have acknowledged that the questionnaire has a problem, and say they are wrestling with how to get more Latinos to pick a race. In 2010, they tested different wording in questions and last year they held focus groups, with a report on the research scheduled to be released by this summer.

Some experts say officials are right to go back to the drawing table. “Whenever you have people who can’t find themselves in the question, it’s a bad question,” said Mary C. Waters, a sociology professor at Harvard who specializes in the challenges of measuring race and ethnicity.

The problem is more than academic — the census data on race serves many purposes, including determining the makeup of voting districts, and monitoring discriminatory practices in hiring and racial disparities in education and health. When respondents do not choose a race, the Census Bureau assigns them one, based on factors like the racial makeup of their neighborhood, inevitably leading to a less accurate count.

Did you catch those two nuggets? First, even the Harvard gal says the question is bad - the question of race. The second jewel - if you are like many of us who have a variety of things in the woodpile - if you choose not to be a racialist and pick one bit of your DNA over the other - then some guv'munt fonctionaire will do it for you. That is right - you will be assigned a race - got to keep those metrics up dontchaknow.

... critics of the census questionnaire say the government must move on from racial distinctions based on 18th-century binary thinking and adapt to Americans’ sense of self.

But Latino political leaders say the risk in changing the questions could create confusion and lead some Latinos not to mark their ethnicity, shrinking the overall Hispanic numbers.

Ultimately, said Angelo Falcon, president of the National Institute for Latino Policy and chairman of the Census Advisory Committee on the Hispanic Population, this is not just a tussle over identity, it is a political battle, too.

“It comes down to what yields the largest numbers for which group,” he said.

... because if you can avoid a people from being one - you can divide them into little groups that can be controlled and manipulated by others; pitted against each other in order to preserve power to those to promote division.

There are so many nuggets in that NYT's article to share with someone new to the conversation about the Potempkin Village Cancer Cluster that is the Diversity Industry, or for those long engaged in the battle against discrimination and bigotry - a reminder that, yes - you are on the right side of the battle.

As more and more people decide not to play - you are on the right side of history too; a trend towards equality and unity and away from division and sectarianism. For the Navy family - we should be at the lead of that move - not with the retrograde forces typified by the Diversity Bullies and their ilk.

Someone once had a dream, let's keep working towards it.

Hat tip WRM.