The "Other" Diversity

Ross Douthat has an op-ed piece in The New York Times, titled "The Roots of White Anxiety," in which the central thesis is that elite colleges and universities in the United States could do a bit more to stem the tide of "white anxiety" by recognizing that diversity isn't just a matter of skin color or ethnic background.

This cultural divide has been widening for years, and bridging it is beyond any institution’s power. But it’s a problem admissions officers at top-tier colleges might want to keep in mind when they’re assembling their freshman classes.

If such universities are trying to create an elite as diverse as the nation it inhabits, they should remember that there’s more to diversity than skin color — and that both their school and their country might be better off if they admitted a few more R.O.T.C. cadets, and a few more aspiring farmers.

Yeah, perhaps the US would be better off if Glenn Beck* and Sarah Palin had gone to Harvard . . . though I doubt it.

I was accused by one of my high school classmates of having been accepted to UNC-Chapel Hill (in 1978) because of affirmative action. It didn't matter to him that my SAT scores, grade point average, extracurricular activities, etc., fit the requirements for acceptance. For him, I was black and that must have been the only reason. He was white, and I had taken "his" place.

So it is with a certain sort of resistance that I read pieces like Douthat's, which may have a legitimate point to make, but in fact take me right back to my homeroom class at John T. Hoggard High School and an asshole in the R.O.T.C. who blamed me for ruining his life.

Whatever, dude. 

*He apparently dropped out of Yale after one theology class.