Is diversity strength?

By Peter Skurkiss, AMERICAN THINKER

Diversity is defined a something being composed of different elements. In sociological and political terms, it means the inclusion of people of different races, cultures, religions, and economic background into a group or organization. The politically correct party line is that this inclusion, often forced by quotas and government mandates, makes the organization stronger. But does it? Is diversity strength?

It depends. It depends upon the degree in which it is done and whether or not brute force is used to make it happen.

An analogy can be drawn from Eco 101, If labor is used to make a product, when a unit of capital is added to the process, the output increases. As you add successive units of capital, the output increases but at a lower rate. Eventually a point of maximum output is reached after which the addition of more capital leads to lower output. This is the area of diminishing returns or lower output.

In real life, an organization will add diverse units voluntarily if it leads to greater output or performance — i.e., strength. But if forced by government to do more, this will push the organization into the area of diminishing returns.

That is where we are today. Racial and other quotas are used by universities and professional schools for admissions and by corporations and governments for employment. These policies are said to augment the laws against discrimination. But ironically, they end up actively discriminating, typically against white males.

An insidious form of forced diversity is the lowering of standards for its the sake. For example, if not enough of certain minority groups can meet the requirement for the police or fire departments, the standards are defined ispo facto as discriminatory and adjusted downward. The same applies for the acceptance of women in combat military service. Ditto with college admissions. It’s a given that forced diversity leads to lower standards, and lower standards invariably lead to poorer performance.

An early example of diversity on steroids was forced school busing in the 70s and 80s.

It was premised on the sociological ‘Doll Study’ by Kenneth Clark whose research was just as shoddy as Alfred Kinsey’s sex reports. Clark essentially claimed black children couldn’t effectively learn unless they were in a white environment. And in turn, whites would also benefit by having blacks sitting next to them in the classrooms. In other words, diversity was strength.

But it didn’t turn out that way. Forced busing didn’t lead to academic improvement. Rather it flopped, but not before squandering millions of dollars, wrecking many school districts, poisoning race relations, and leading to white flight from urban areas. And all the while, this court-mandated fiasco did not achieve its primary goal. The racial academic performance gap has not narrowed one iota.

Another form of where ‘diversity is strength’ has run amok is in our immigration system. The impetus today seems to be to bring as many alien cultures into the U.S. as possible. The media promotes this as a way of building national strength. It is not. It is planting the seeds of fragmentation and balkanization. And this foolish approach to immigration is further aggravated by the reluctance of the new arrivals to fully adapt to American norms and customs. This resistance is encouraged and supported by the liberal hive who view Americanization as a betrayal to their treasured diversity project.

“Diversity is strength” is the reigning ethos not because it is substantiated by facts but only because the elite asserts it as so. The diversity mantra is pushed with such overwhelming force that it’s downright revolutionarily to dispute it. But as George Orwell said “In a time of deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” So no, today’s forced diversity is not strength, and as Orwell also wrote: war is not peace, ignorance is not strength, and slavery is not freedom.