Right, but people say things like 'all the speakers at this conference are white men - that's not diverse enough'.
If you are determining diversity by sex and skin color, I'm saying that you are making judgements about people's background, tastes, culture, etc that are racist and sexist.
> Most fundamentally, in this context, diversity would be variety of ideas, experiences, and attitudes, especially those relevant to the things that people are learning about in school.
In the context the author wants us to assume, sure. But that is not what big-D Diversity is.
"When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less." - Humpty Dumpty
In this case, of course, this is very intentional on behalf of the author, to argue a very specific agenda. Which I guess is fair enough, except that it is quite provocative in a generally bad way for society, IMHO. The author knows better and shouldn't depend on this ... diversion (heh) to promote his point.
Can you clarify exactly how he suggests "diversity is bad" - linking off to a 20 minute video and saying "its in there" isn't exactly great for discussion.
I agree with most of the article about academic environments being open to vigorous debate among opposing ideas. But I find this phrase: "diversity of thought" problematic.
Not because I don't actually value diversity in philosophies or modes of thinking, but because the phrase itself has been used recently as a weasel phrase by reactionary forces acting to scale back decades of work to improve actual diversity of backgrounds including race, national origin, genders, sexualities etc. in the workplace and positions of power. I'm not accusing him of using it deliberately in that sense but I think it's important to keep that connotation of this phrase in mind while discussing his talk.
What this thread shows is the sentiment that, if you claim diversity is important, leaving out a group specifically to increase diversity (as opposed to, say, merely reducing their proportion in the cohort) is in fact not being intellectually consistent or honest.
Don't fall into the flippant "Oh ho ho if white's aren't involved I guess it can't ever be legit" sarcastic dismissal. That's neither fair nor accurate.
> Dave Chappelle belongs to a minority too. In fact, a minority of a minority (black comedians) - unlike most trans.
“Minority” in the relevant sense is not “group that constitutes less than 50%” but “group that is a historical target of large scale social discrimination inn
the society which is the context of discussion” (the term “minority” is an accident of history; had the language developed first in, say, apartheid South Africa, the term adopted probably wouldn't have been “disadvantaged minority” from which over time the first word usually got dropped.)
And even in the numerical sense, everybody is a minority of a minority if you choose the right set of axes of variation to look at, so in the sense that it is true of Chappelle, it is not “unlike most trans”.
No, because the audience is clearly unsatisfied with only having those options.
What a bigoted comment. OP is praising diversity, and you are suggesting what, exactly? That there isn't an issue if everyone in a field approaches a problem in the exact same way? Are you really that small minded?
I'm making the point that one cannot talk about diversity in general. The word means very different things in different contexts. Political beliefs are not the same thing as race or gender.
> Sure, he had some women and minorities on his show, but mostly just white males. That's not diversity.
Yes, it is. It's just less than you'd prefer.
reply