The Weaponization of Diversity

Razor sharp and refreshingly honest. Touches on cultural issues that restrict supply side of a diversified candidate pool in "elite" professions, exploitation of diversity by culturally parasitic groups, and much more.

Blaming racism (an abstract bogeyman that can never be defeated) and focusing on equalizing outcomes (or meeting a diversity quota) is a problem because it sabotages the real efforts necessary to improve things that have very little to do with race: deeply dysfunctional governance, across justice, education, policing, and in policy-making.

It's easier to say "silent whites are complicit" than it is to ask how we can lift everyone up without tearing others down.

The issue with this essay, while it is clear in it's wording (as written by a lawyer). It's still has it's fundamental flaw. It's argument boils down to this, which the author spells out

> If the world I was living in had deep, systemic discrimination against latinos, surely I was an easy target. And yet here I am.

So many of these articles are a single person who succeeds and as a result declares racism must not exist. A personal anecdote is always convincing (as many people know), but anytime an actual rigorous statistical study of this comes up it's shows that clear systemic racism exists.

And people love to read anecdotes like this, because it's a very easy way to ease discomfort. The discomfort that shows that deep seated racism exists in the US, and that our country in a number of areas isn't doing a good job of living up to its ideals. But in the end it's an anecdote and data shows it's not the case.

I appreciate this writing - I too had to chose an expedient career over a shot at billions for exactly the same reasons.

It also gives me guidance as a father on how to help my children succeed just a bit better than I did.

I think a lot of the papers and essays that are opposed to Affirmative Action and/or deny the existence of institutional racism seem to share a few characteristics, down to even the the words used (like being honest and decent.) Examining the tone of the piece:

> But I’m afraid that a segment of the community [people of color] – either well-intentioned or not – has chosen to weaponize the issue of diversity in a way that is not only hostile and disingenuous, but counterproductive to its own cause.

> Recklessly and indiscriminately warmongering over diversity is the business world’s equivalent of breaking windows and looting.

While some might characterize the piece as a little tone-deaf, they're the same sort of arguments that've been made since the introduction of Affirmative Action. First, a misrepresentation of sociological concepts like "institutional racism," and the conflation those who discuss its effects or potential solutions to "weaponizing" diversity or claiming that it is caused by malicious actors. The author even goes as far as to say:

> There are historical, cultural, and socioeconomic reasons ... that explain why a disproportionately small number of people in certain ethnic/minority groups are able to achieve the high levels of performance and economic success

But the author doesn't seem to even touch on what those are, other than drilling into the issue being "cultural." The "culture" of people of color has long been blamed as the cause of inequality since at least the Civil Rights Movement. Other, rather cryptic references exist for what the real reason for inequality is, right before the author jumps to a different point:

> If we’re honest, we’ll first acknowledge all of the nuances and complexities – some of them clearly uncomfortable – about the background sources of the problem.

I'm not sure what exactly what that's supposed to mean.

I think articles like this gain momentum due to the "Candice Owens" effect, and the defensiveness of all people to perceived claims of racism. It is a fundamental misrepresentation of what diversity advocates actually advocate, in the name of being "honest" or "decent." It's unfortunate that the author doesn't engage with actual strong arguments in favor of diverse workforces, namely the clear, well documented benefits to both businesses and individuals that a diverse workplace provides, rather than this strawman of someone "weaponizing diversity."

The author acknowledges every culture has its own upper strata There are selection mechanisms which can amplify or inhibit the effect of this upper strata - compare Cubans and Mexicans. For black Americans, that selection mechanism is racism. In 1921, whatever the black upper class had achieved in Tulsa Oklahoma was burned to the ground by white supremacists - businesspeople were ruined by racism. Whatever opportunities the black upper class could have made of home ownership were dashed by redlining, the creation of suburbs excluded them from the foundational middle-class wealth building exercise of the 20th century. Policy created the ghettos at large, with economic pressure for exploitative landlords which incentivized short term earnings to pay the rent, including crime. For black Americans, the upper strata have never gotten a fair break by design of policy (until very very recently). Despite this, a lot of black Americans carry the exact same ethos that the author acknowledges - go read Malcolm X. The idea of 'let's lift ourselves up first' is very old in the black community - the reason it doesn't work is because racist policy always puts the boot on it.

The author comes close to describing the problem, but fails at the solution. "Let's do better guys!" doesn't work - even when a man as charismatic as Malcolm X proposes it. Nowadays, the failure of the black family is used to argue against government intervention to assist African Americans. But the man who pioneered the idea that a failure of the black family would lead to chaos, Daniel Moynihan, actually had genuine policy based ideas on how to rebuild the black family after years of racist destruction of it: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/10/the-bla... He would agree 100% with the author and Malcolm X and others who recognize the role of family, but he would put the blame directly at the feet of white supremacy.

I agree that diversification is being weaponized. The author acknowledged he was speaking from his limited perspective, and again just as a Latino. One thing I wish would happen is that we would go back to the language of redress for past injustice, not diversity. That was the original point of affirmative action. Every social justice movement has scope creep. We go from "Here are these African Americans, descendents of enslaved people who have been plundered and abused for centuries - we owe them redress and opportunities" to "Diversity is good". From "Black People" (and their very very specific struggle) to "People of Colour" (and feel-good-ism about diversity). Happens in the LGBTI movement too. It's gone from people with very specific, very innate differences which have made them targets of brutal violence... ... to the LGBTQ+ movement which is about every other teenager feeling quirky for 'experimenting with their sexuality' and 'not using labels' to be 'progressive'. We even replaced the most observably biological group in the acronym (I - intersex; literally born with mixed chromosomes, genitalia and/or hormone levels) to the most ideological/political letter we could (Q - queer; which is literally defined as something subversive and simply 'different' in a very political sense).

At least as far as black people are concerned, systemic racism is the problem - it has killed the black upper strata for centuries. It killed the black family and created the conditions which the author properly describes in his essay. And, like Moynihan said, it needs to be resolved with policy, but instead it's being 'resolved' with policing and mass incarceration, which has exacerbated the problem.

That was a fantastic piece. The author takes great pains to point out the nuance and complexity behind successful outcomes that clearly belie the “structural racism” trope, while acknowledging the realities.