America's Story of Diversity, Inequity, and Exclusion | Opinion
newsweek.comCongress) and accusations of plagiarism, finally forced her hand. Some think Gay, who is Black, was hounded out by racists, while others argue her incompetence illustrates why diversity hires will destroy civilization.I'd like to argue for a compromise approach.
It is not "the mushy middle," as one senior editor of questionable worth once told me in acid tones, but rather the golden mean.To oppose diversity efforts altogether—to simply declare that diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) efforts must be killed, as some now do—is to ignore the reality of Americans of African descent.
The huge income and wealth gaps between them and the others are unacceptably high more than a century and a half after the abolition of slavery (whites have tenfold the wealth); their ghettoization is corrosive to society; the crime and incarceration rates are—despite improvements—still hugely disproportional); the broken family incidence is unhealthy (about 70 percent of Black kids born out of wedlock).Unless one believes there is something natural about this disaster—which would indeed be a racist view—then it should be obvious that corrective measures are needed.
And there is nothing wrong, per se, with applying corrective measures to a free market; the almost universally accepted concept of progressive taxation, by which the wealthier are taxed at higher marginal rates, is a form of exactly that.But it is also wrong to ignore the corrosive nature of affirmative action that goes to the extreme advocated by the far left in the United States.