The Non-White Paper

By Steve Cassarino

Not too many years ago (but still before your time) when I was at Gettysburg, someone spraypainted some nasty words, or rather a certain nasty word, on the door of the Black Student Union’s office. Immediately, every campus leftist plagued with white guilt (which is all of them) went into a frenzy. There was an emergency meeting in the CUB to discuss how this “hate crime” should be punished. Hate crime laws are perverse and somewhat silly. I’d laugh at them if they weren’t also so dangerous. But that’s a discussion for another time.

Eventually the conversation turned to “diversity.” At the time I thought it was an overused buzzword among left-wing academics (which is almost all of them). I was never naïve enough to believe the diversitoids would completely disappear from campuses, but I hoped that interest in the subject would at least wane in the coming years. I figured, as with most buzzwords and political fads, people would just get sick of hearing about it, like a Billboard Top 40 song that radio stations play ad nauseum, however from reading President Kate Will’s plan for the College, I gather this hasn’t happened.

Indeed, academia’s interest in diversity seems greater than ever, and the incessant chatter about it makes me want to rupture my eardrums so I won’t have to hear it anymore. Imagine being subjected to James Blunt’s “You’re Beautiful” a dozen times a day for the next six freaking years!

Unfortunately, the concept has also spread to the business world. I now hear a lot about companies creating Diversity Councils, and other such hogwash to waste their shareholders’ money. This is, of course, because most executives of large corporations are spineless and easily cowed by militant minority employees threatening lawsuits.

But in all this prattling on about diversity, have any of them stopped and asked what’s so great about it?

Now, I’m not a sociologist, but it seems from my perspective that most people don’t really like diversity – and not just rednecks from Alabama. Look at history– heck, read the newspaper. Look around at the neighborhoods and cities of America.

Have you ever heard of white flight? Look at Detroit: In 1940, the city was roughly 90% white. In 2000, the city was over 80% black. And it isn’t because blacks reproduced faster. The absolute numbers of the two races changed drastically. As one moved in, the other moved out.

This isn’t new or exclusive to the United States, nor is it necessarily based on skin color. People have been hating one another for years. In Northern Ireland, the Protestants oppress the Catholics and the Catholics retaliate with car bombs. In Rwanda, the Hutus massacred the Tutsis. Sunnis and Shi’ites in Iraq are at eachother’s throats. The Japanese look down on Koreans who live there. The multiple ethnic groups inhabiting the former Yugoslavia celebrated their diversity by committing genocide. Muslims in France recently decided that the country could do without so many automobiles and set fire to thousands of them in the Paris suburbs. I could go on and on.

In light of these examples, maybe the white flight in places like Detroit isn’t so bad. Maybe that kind of self-segregation helps to prevent further violence between the races. Many of the examples above are cases of forced diversity, where groups who did not traditionally mingle were lumped together under one state by colonial rule. When not forced together, there seems to be less conflict and more old-fashioned ignoring one another. The highest crime rates in the United States are in the areas with the most diversity. Conversely, the states with the five lowest crime rates are Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, South Dakota, and North Dakota – not exactly a diversitoid’s paradise.

So what does this mean? Is everyone a racist? That depends on how you define it. The bottom line is that people prefer to be around people like themselves. This includes people who share similar religious beliefs, similar political philosophies, similar tastes in music, the same language and culture, and, yes, the same skin color. This doesn’t mean they hate other people, just that they don’t want to be around them all the time. They especially resent being told they must be around them. When forced together like this, their dislike for each other often evolves into hatred.

Clearly, diversity isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Why can’t academics like President Will grasp this simple concept? When the Princeton Review says Gettysburg College is homogenous, maybe we should think of that as a positive statement. Maybe it means Gettysburg has fewer problems than more diverse campuses.

The College ought to forget about this harebrained ideology and concentrate on academic excellence. Kate Will should stop playing social engineer. The biggest problems might not even come from the diversity mixing with the College’s traditionally white, affluent, and mildly conservative student body. Has President Will stopped to think about what will happen if the diversity don’t get along with each other? If she gets her way, the campus community will include many more blacks, hispanics, Muslims, and homosexuals. Rather than an appetizing melting pot, this could be a recipe for disaster. The last time I checked, many blacks didn’t much like hispanics and strict Muslims weren’t too fond of sodomites.