Why is diversity education always taught the same way?
I can just imagine if other subjects were taught the same way:
Newtonian physics taught as a man pushing a box over level ground, even if the real point was gravity's acceleration.
Algebra taught as long addition writ large.
English as "Jack and Jill."
Botany as the study of an oak leaf.
Chemistry as the study of table salt.
The constant refrain of diversity education is that we should learn to appreciate the differences in one another.
The problem that I find is that the people who are best trained in diversity are the least appreciative of the differences in one another.
If a black student comes into class and proclaims his love for his white brothers, he is hailed as living up to the diversity creed. If a white student takes no interest in the fact that the black student next to him has a different skin color, he is racist for not appreciating the differences.
Diversity classes tell us that we look different but share common experiences but discourage actually learning about each others' pasts that might expose different experiences and different opinions. They are discouraged from accounting for differences in skin color, hair characteristics, childhood experiences that don't fit the template, and monetary habits. Heaven forbid a student mention that another person's statement of reality is wrong. There is only one opinion allowed but many observations of facts; so long as the observations support the allowed opinion.
Skin color tells you nothing about the person's character. Got that?
A person who truly appreciates diversity will learn about medieval English madrigals from a black man from the inner city of Washington, DC.
A person who truly appreciates diversity will seek out friends of other races because of similarities of interests and learn about their new friend's family and life experiences over a beer (or root beer for minors). He will ask tough questions that challenge his interlocutor's understanding of reality. Then both friends will challenge their differing opinions. They will laugh that one uses more sun tan lotion than the other. That one's hair is straighter than the other. That one's mother kept money in a shoebox and the other's mother kept money at a bank that went out of business. They will return to the joys of their similarities of interest and look forward to their next meeting.
Anyone who shouts about the importance of diversity scares me as a person who wishes to find only people who agree with him. Diversity studied is diversity ignored.
It does not have to be that way, but diversity training is the domain of the liberals and is just a way to use corporate money to enforce liberal orthodoxy (i.e., correct belief) just as the Spanish Inquisition was about enforcing correct Catholic orthodoxy.
As I watch my child grow, he has friends of all races and cares not one whit. Only as teachers in school tell him to look at all the other kids and teaches my son to place value on being different from his multi-racial circle of friends does he start to have a race-oriented mindset.
Diversity training does more damage that it solves. No member of the KKK will go into diversity training and confess his sins and repent of his racism. No member of the NAACP will go into diversity training and confess that the NAACP is damaging the black community. But put a multi-racial circle of young friends in diversity training and they will start to question their natural open-mindedness.
What's worse is inserting diversity training into history classes.
As a life-long student of history, I have found that the only way to truly learn history is to accept that each era has their biases that cause corrupting influences. The now-beloved Progressives were heavily exposed to racist ideology with many proposing programs to serve their racist goals. Study the history of the early Progressives by getting mad at their racism makes little sense. It is hard to truly learn about what motivated the Progressive's racism if you as a historian are angry.
As history meets the present, that emotional detachment can and should change. The only way a human being can affect the future is by his thoughts, feelings, and actions be carried out in the present.
A passionate pursuit of righteous behavior that interacts with other persons based solely on the content of their character is the best form of antidote to racism.
Diversity training is like taking the heroin addict and waiving a filled syringe in front of their eyes to demonstrate the evils of heroin. It does not work but it feeds the worst elements of the addiction.
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