By Thomas Sowell
Wednesday, May 08, 2013
If there is ever a contest for words that substitute for
thought, "diversity" should be recognized as the undisputed world
champion.
You don't need a speck of evidence, or a single step of
logic, when you rhapsodize about the supposed benefits of diversity. The very
idea of testing this wonderful, magical word against something as ugly as
reality seems almost sordid.
To ask whether institutions that promote diversity 24/7
end up with better or worse relations between the races than institutions that
pay no attention to it is only to get yourself regarded as a bad person. To
cite hard evidence that places obsessed with diversity have worse race
relations is to risk getting yourself labeled an incorrigible racist. Free
thinking is not free.
The Supreme Court of the United States has ruled that the
government has a "compelling interest" in promoting diversity --
apparently more compelling than the 14th Amendment's requirement of "equal
protection" of the law for everybody.
How does a racially homogeneous country like Japan manage
to have high quality education, without the essential ingredient of diversity,
for which there is supposedly a "compelling" need?
Conversely, why does India, one of the most diverse
nations on Earth, have a record of intergroup intolerance and lethal violence
today that is worse than that in the days of our Jim Crow South?
Even to ask such questions is to provoke charges of
unworthy tactics, and motives too low to be dignified with an answer. Not that
the true believers in diversity could answer anyway.
Among the candidates for runner-up to
"diversity" as the top word for making thought obsolete is
"fair."
Apparently everyone is entitled to a "fair
share" of a society's prosperity, whether they worked 16-hour days to help
create that prosperity or did nothing more than live off the taxpayers or
depend on begging or crime to bring in a few bucks.
Apparently we owe them something just for gracing us with
their presence, even if we feel that we could do without them quite well.
At the other end of the income scale, the rich are
supposed to pay their "fair share" of taxes. But at neither end of
the income scale is a "fair share" defined as a particular number or
proportion, or in any other concrete way. It is just a political synonym for
"more," dressed up in moralistic-sounding rhetoric. What
"fair" really means is more arbitrary power for government.
Another word that shuts down thought is
"access." People who fail to meet the standards for anything from
college admission to a mortgage loan are often said to have been denied
"access" or opportunity.
But equal access or equal opportunity is not the same as
equal probability of success. Republicans are not denied an equal opportunity
to vote in California, even though the chances of a Republican candidate
actually getting elected in California are far less than the chances of a
Democrat getting elected.
By the same token, if everyone is allowed to apply for
college admission, or for a mortgage loan, and their applications are all
judged by the same standards, then they have equal opportunity, even if the
village idiot has a lower probability of getting into the Ivy League, and
someone with a bad credit history is less likely to be lent money.
"Affordable" is another popular word that
serves as a substitute for thought. To say that everyone is entitled to
"affordable housing" is very different from saying that everyone
should decide what kind of housing he or she can afford.
Government programs to promote "affordable
housing" are programs to allow some people to decide what housing they
want and force other people -- taxpayers, landlords or whatever -- to absorb a
share of the cost of a decision that they had no voice in making.
More generally, making various things
"affordable" in no way increases the amount of wealth in a society
above what it would be when prices are "prohibitively expensive." On
the contrary, price controls reduce incentives to produce.
None of this is rocket science. But if you don't stop and
think, it doesn't matter whether you are a genius or a moron. Words that stop
people from thinking reduce even smart people to the same level as morons.
No comments:
Post a Comment