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Racial justice or genuine diversity? In this link, the video showcases how affirmative action has had an uncomfortable consequence of making it harder for certain minorities to enter college, but still hasn't had much of an effect on white students getting into college. It zones in on how Medical School, the conditions for medical school should be different. It expands on what might ACTUALLY be causing some students to not make it into these big schools.

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Affirmative Action & Medical School Admissions | The Uncomfortable Truth

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1. According to Jodi Melamed, how has the idea of "diversity" been used to support unfair systems like capitalism instead of fighting against them? Do you think diversity programs today actually help create fairness, or do they mostly protect the system the way it is?

2. What is the difference between "diversity" and "difference," and how can thinking about "difference" help challenge the way big institutions use diversity for their own benefit? How could schools, businesses, or governments do a better job of focusing on real change instead of just promoting "diversity"?

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Covering another topic that was touched on in this week's readings/videos. Legacy admissions are another hot topic for unjust admission systems. While technically a colorblind process, legacy admissions has served primarily to keep wealthy families, predominantly white ones, to be able to consistently apply and be admitted to prestigious schools such as Harvard and Yale. The video argues for the fact that while many conservatives are actively fighting against doctrines like affirmative action, if they truly cared about fair admissions processes, they should be going after legacy admissions first. Only proving that behind every just cause, there is often times an ulterior motive.

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The Controversy Of Legacy-Based Admissions In Higher Education

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The following video goes more into depth regarding the court case that was mentioned in the article. The case explains how diversity improves education, and how having a diverse student body helps students think better, prepare them for a diverse workforce, and enriches learning, However, the Court also emphasized that diversity initiatives cannot be justified as means of remedying historical discrimination.

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Regents of University of California v. Bakke Case Brief Summary | Law Case Explained

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The article above goes into more detail about the link between capitalisms and racism. The author argues that Capitalism is fueled on inequality, while racism is a source of inequality. Because of this, capitalism is often the cause of racist ideals. For example, when white plantation owners needed workers for their fields (capitalism), they rationalized ways to capture slaves to do the work for them (racism).

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To Build an Equitable Economy, We Must Understand Capitalism’s Racist Heritage - ProMarket

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American capitalism was built on racial exploitation, from the enslavement of Black people to institutionalized discrimination and its structural impact on our nation’s economic and legal systems. Creating an equitable society requires us to examine and understand the history of capitalism and its reliance on racialized oppression, writes Elizabeth Kennedy. In How to Be an […]

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This article discusses how the term "diversity" has evolved over time. It also discusses the difference between diversity and affirmative action, claiming that diversity is often used strategically for the sake of power enhancement.

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As a professor of humanities and cultural studies-and as someone who engages in diversity and inclusion work-I see my own institution and many others struggling to confront thorny questions about what constitutes diversity. It is no easy task. Universities and businesses have to balance contrasting and competing visions of deeply ingrained - and often unconscious - beliefs about racism, sexism, colonialism, privilege and freedom of speech, among other volatile issues.

I praise and value these efforts, but I often find myself frustrated and disturbed by a growing trend: the dangerous and self-serving notion that diversity means variety and accommodating all differences, regardless of the ethical implications. This shift in rhetoric and practice has allowed those who (consciously or unconsciously) promote racist, sexist, homophobic and xenophobic ideas to appropriate diversity and demand that their perspectives be considered as equally valid. This is a false and dangerous analogy.

The pursuit of diversity goes hand in hand with the quest for justice. Therefore, we cannot move away from difficult conversations about the socio-historical aspects of the categories that constitute identity formations, and about the-gendered and racialized-dynamics that produce and continue to strengthen inequality in the name of emotional comfort, or a misguided notion of inclusion.

American society began fostering a watered-down notion of diversity many years ago, prior to the election of Donald Trump and before White supremacists became emboldened and stepped out of the fringe and into the mainstream.

As Jeff Chang reminds his readers in "We Gon' Be Alright," the word "diversity" did not acquire its current meaning until Justice Lewis Powell Jr. used it in his opinion in the 1978 Regents of the University of California v. Bakke case. In that landmark decision, Justice Powell presented "diversity" as an effective substitute for affirmative action, one that eased White anxiety about race by de-contextualizing and individualizing difference.

Diversity made difference palatable by moving away from the demands of structural change and reparation of affirmative action and focusing on individual narratives of success instead. Diversity also gave comfort to White guilt because it flattened and de-politicized difference and accommodated White resentment by including everyone in its narrative. This meant that Whites started using the language of diversity to define themselves. As a 2015 Deloitte survey showed, for millennials, the word diversity is now primarily associated with "cognitive diversity," and it signifies everyone's unique experiences and perspectives, which, of course, they believe is good for business.

The millennial perspective shows the trajectory-and failure-of diversity as a social justice term. From a concept meant to close the gap in achievement and opportunity produced by systemic, racially-based inequality, it has moved to a buzzword closer in meaning to "variety." Furthermore, diversity has been commodified. Nancy Leong coined the term "racial capitalism" to describe the strategic use of diversity by predominantly White institutions to enhance their symbolic and economic power, instead of redressing socio-historical disadvantage.

Under this framework, diversity works like the "ethnic" aisle in the grocery store: It allows customers to consume exoticism while guaranteeing the rest of the store remains "non-ethnic." By explicitly denoting certain foods as "ethnic," the supermarket manages to include, profit from, and contain diversity all at the same time.

Unlike diversity, affirmative action openly aims at redressing structural disadvantages. It brings inequality into the conversation and acknowledges a shared responsibility. This is increasingly important in a society polarized by misinformation and alternative facts. Affirmative action is difficult and controversial because it is unapologetically racial and structural. It neither falls into the delusion of colorblindness, nor pretends that all differences are created equal. Our preferences for working in the early morning hours or at night, or our inkling towards cats instead of dogs, cannot be equated with the enduring impact of racial discrimination or the deadly consequences of transphobia. Too often diversity pretends this is the case, and, in its effort to accommodate white discomfort, fails to address the very issues it intends to ameliorate.

One of the most disturbing trends is how diversity has taken on an ahistorical notion of "identity," a decontextualized approach that emphasizes personal feelings and levels of comfort over acknowledgment of, and reckoning with, systemic discrimination. Too often it fails to challenge-and even validates-uniformed or inaccurate accounts of historical events if they are presented as "personal opinions." So, instead of explaining identity as a socio-historical construct shaped by categories that are themselves the product of, and in turn reproduce, uneven power relations among individuals and communities, identity is too often confused with "personality." This is harmful because it individualizes a problem that is structural, and creates a false equivalence between individual opinions, emotions and hardships on the one side, and historical oppression and disadvantage on the other.

It also produces a troublesome misconception ever more prevalent in traditionally White, liberal institutions like elite college campuses and the tech industry: the notion that what defines a minority is the numbers of individuals in a given time and place, not the power relations at play in larger societal dynamics.

Being outnumbered by a particular gender or race at an event or in a class does not make one a minority. Being a White Christian conservative on a liberal campus does not make one a minority. That person may be outnumbered by differently-minded peers or by students of other races, but he or she does not face the structural discrimination experienced by people of color, undocumented migrants or Muslim-Americans.

Institutions should address the anxiety that some individuals may feel in spaces where they have to interact with people of different races, genders, sexual orientations, nationalities, etc. But these feelings cannot become the main focus of diversity and inclusion efforts, or keep institutions from doing the profound work that needs to be done to truly prioritize the advancement of historically marginalized communities.

Furthermore, creating a false equivalence between those who advance the rights and dignity of people and those who promote ideas aimed at denying them, based on specific aspects of a person's identity, is a manipulative appropriation of equality.

In classrooms and boardrooms, we need to talk about inequality, and the real-life consequences of many conservative viewpoints on issues as varied as the War on Drugs, affirmative action and reproductive rights that continue to disproportionately impact minorities and women. This does not mean discrimination against those who "don't agree." It is about raising awareness and taking responsibility for the unequal distribution of resources and opportunities across race, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation and/or ethnic lines. It should be about transforming the structures that created such unequal outcomes.

Diversity is not something you consume. It is something you produce by challenging personal, institutional and societal bias through concrete and sustained action.

At times when the murder of unarmed Black people by police officers is dismissed in the courts, and where racial-profiling and racial violence is condoned and pardoned by the White House, we have to move away from the sugary platitudes that equate diversity with variety; call out the maleficence at the heart of the false analogies that seek to place blame for violence "on many sides;" and restore ethical reasoning, moral judgment, and social justice to the discourse and practice of diversity and inclusion.
Dr. Juliana Martínez is assistant professor in the Department of World Languages and Cultures at American University. She focuses on the intersection of violence and body politics in the Latin-American and the U.S.-Latino context.

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We Need to Talk About the Shifting Meaning of Diversity

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The notion that diversity implies accommodating all differences is dangerous and reproduces structural inequality.

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This article discusses why diversity programs at the corporate level tend to fail despite constant attention and training. Melamed discusses in the reading for this week that companies use diversity to their advantage to make money.

This article talks about corporate diversity training being ineffective and sometimes feeling threatening in the sense of "say the right thing or the company will get sued".

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After Wall Street firms repeatedly had to shell out millions to settle discrimination lawsuits, businesses started to get serious about their efforts to increase diversity. But unfortunately, they don’t seem to be getting results: Women and minorities have not gained much ground in management over the past 20 years. The problem is, organizations are trying to reduce bias with the same kinds of programs they’ve been using since the 1960s. And the usual tools—diversity training, hiring tests, performance ratings, grievance systems—tend to make things worse, not better. The authors’ analysis of data from 829 firms over three decades shows that these tools actually decrease the proportion of women and minorities in management. They’re designed to preempt lawsuits by policing managers’ decisions and actions. But as lab studies show, this kind of force-feeding can activate bias and encourage rebellion. However, in their analysis the authors uncovered numerous diversity tactics that do move the needle, such as recruiting initiatives, mentoring programs, and diversity task forces. They engage managers in solving the problem, increase contact with women and minority workers, and promote social accountability. In this article, the authors dig into the data, executive interviews, and several examples to shed light on what doesn’t work and what does.

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The image above depicts two working class people (One black and one white) walking into a fire labeled "Capitalism" and "Racism". They are holding briefcases labeled "Fear". The two characters are talking about how they shouldn't willingly walk into the fire. Instead, they should convert to a system of equality instead of fueling the capitalist fire. This likely symbolizes the fact that the only reason that racism/capitalism exists is because people are willing to jump into the fire and are too afraid to do anything about it.

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This video talks about the Supreme Court ending affirmative action in college admissions last year, meaning that race can no longer be a factor in the selection process. In a 6-3 decision that addressed cases involving Harvard and the University of North Carolina, the Court found that these practices went against the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. The video further goes into how this ruling sparked mixed reactions, with Republicans praising the focus on skills while Democrats showed concern about the potential negative impact on college diversity. Biden criticized the ruling and urged the Department of Education to explore other ways to promote diversity.

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Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

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This article by PBS goes further in depth into the ongoing issue with legacy admissions. This article provides a multitude of statistics, all of which point towards just how unfair collage admissions can be. This article only proves to further advance the points made by other articles on the topic. Pointing out how much more legacy admissions actually tip the scale compared to affirmative action. Some schools such as Harvard for example, are almost 4 times more likely to admit student's that are decedents of alumni.

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Colleges rethink legacy admissions in the wake of decision against affirmative action

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The Supreme Court’s decision to limit the use of race in admissions was a game-changer for colleges. While the ruling’s biggest impact is on the most selective schools, a survey found nearly a quarter of all colleges considered race to some degree before the pandemic. Special correspondent Hari Sreenivasan looks at how some schools are reevaluating admissions for our series, Rethinking College.