That is the title of a new book by Professor Carol Swain. She is a black scholar (whose work was plagiarized by Claudine Gay) who argues that the whole “diversity, equity, and inclusion” movement is an intellectual fraud that only harms its supposed beneficiaries. In today’s Martin Center article, I review it.
Carol Swain is very unpopular among “progressives” because her life story is a rebuttal to their narrative that America is indelibly racist and must be thoroughly transformed before there will ever be “equity.” She grew up very poor and began her higher-education story at a community college. While she was advancing, it was because of the quality of her work, not just because she was “diverse.”
She praises the old civil-rights concept that Americans should be receptive to bright and ambitious people from “disadvantaged” backgrounds, but not that there had to be quotas that meant admitting or hiring people not because of their abilities, but merely because of their ancestry. The way racial preferences now work, she shows, is to create a crutch for blacks that harms them.
After a distinguished academic career, Swain retired to begin a consulting firm that is the precise opposite of the usual “diversity training.” She understands that businesses don’t make things better by paying for “diversity trainers” who hector workers with acerbic racialist rhetoric.
The Adversity of Diversity is filled with sharp observations and common sense. It will drive the “progressives” nuts. I think Carol Swain would make a great secretary of education.