The Left’s Selective Diversity Goes Beyond Asians
In the long battle to save merit and defeat unfair quotas, conservatives are finally winning. Keep up the pressure.
The U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision to strike down affirmative action in Students for Fair Admission v. Harvard and the same group’s lawsuit against the University of North Carolina will reverberate across the American college and university system for generations. Institutions of higher education will have to reconsider over 40 years of race-based practices which, under the premises of increasing diversity, have resulted in the state-sanctioned practice of race discrimination.
The case itself hinged upon whether the Left’s support for ethnic and racial diversity in higher education was constitutional. It’s now up to presidents, deans, and diversity officers to implement the court’s decision— but the rest of the country should take a different lesson from the case: that the Left’s support for diversity is as selective as it is discriminatory.
Racial Diversity
Let’s start with racial diversity, and— because of the SCOTUS cases— with Asians. In 2020, Asians were the Left’s favorite minority. It was racist to blame China for COVID, so-called “hate crimes” allegedly skyrocketed, and Democratic officials made a bizarre show out of visiting New York City’s Chinatown. Even earlier this year, Republicans who criticized the aide who packed up Joe Biden’s classified documents when he was Vice President were accused of being anti-Asian.
But when it was convenient for the Left, Asians were suddenly reclassified as white. For years, it’s been socially acceptable among liberals to suggest that Asians align themselves with white “interests” by protesting admissions discrimination. That’s how the Supreme Court heard the affirmative action cases in the first place. It’s why merit schools in Virginia, New York, California, and elsewhere kowtowed to the Left’s pressure to make less-successful black and Hispanic students feel better.
Asians dominated the schools’ highest ranks, and for leftists that was simply unacceptable.
This isn’t limited to East Asians. Immigrants from India and their descendants are the right minorities… unless your name is Nikki Haley (and, sometimes, Vivek Ramaswamy). Liberal commentators have picked apart Haley’s identity—down to her name—trying to prove that she wants to be seen as more white, even though Nikki is a Southeast Asian nickname and Haley is just her husband’s last name. Former President Barack Obama has attacked her for not spending enough time talking about race.
And the Left loves successful black Americans, unless they are Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas or Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC). These conservative blacks are considered modern Uncle Toms, a reference to black slaves who sold out their fellow slaves to white owners. In Scott’s case, that’s literally what prominent black liberal pundits started calling him when he gave the Republican rebuttal to Biden’s State of the Union speech in 2021. (And some lefty commentators conveniently ignored that Scott introduced a bill signed by then-President Donald Trump, suggesting he was merely a black face standing next to Trump instead of the senator who successfully shepherded his bill into law.)
Justice Thomas, meanwhile, has had his motivations and even his marriage put under a microscope for signs of “un-blackness” because he once flirted with racialism but has since become a dedicated colorblind constitutionalist. Since his nomination in 1991, Thomas has stood in the way of the Left’s judicial agenda. His longtime positions on philosophical issues such as the role of government and his practical opposition to issues like court-packing make him an arch-enemy who is the wrong kind of black.
Sex and Gender
Let’s step away from race, and into sex and gender. J.K. Rowling is a famous feminist and Martina Navratilova was one of the first openly lesbian athletes. Today, however, neither woman is not the correct kind of feminist because they protest males who think that they are females for competing unfairly against women in sports.
There’s something about Rowling in particular that has made leftists fly off the chain for years: She says she has received “so many death threats I could paper my house with them.” The Left would find Rowling’s irreverent tone hilarious if she was still the “right” kind of feminist—but since she’s not, she’s labeled a TERF (trans-exclusive radical feminist).
I think they got the “radical” point backwards.
Religious Minorities
If there is one area where the Left’s selective support for religious diversity is most obvious, it may be religion. The same ACLU which claims that Muslims being asked to remove face coverings for police photos and driver’s licenses is harsh discrimination has no problem with trying to force Catholic hospitals to conduct abortions. The Obama administration tried to force Catholic and other Christian organizations into including birth control in employee health coverage, an outrageous violation of traditional Christian teaching against contraception. The Biden administration, meanwhile, has directly used federal law enforcement to target Catholics it considers to be “radical traditionalists”—a label which, in today’s world, tends to mean “someone who takes their faith seriously.”
Then there was the incident last April, when the Defense Health Agency abruptly canceled Catholic services at the Walter Reed military hospital just before Holy Week and Easter. Once might be happenstance and twice might be coincidence, but three times indicates hostile action.
When anti-Semitism comes from the Left—think “The Squad,” Palestinian radicals, etc.—it’s all fine and dandy. But don’t you dare criticize George Soros for undermining U.S. elections, or you’re “anti-Semitic.”
Center-right Virginia Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin? Anti-Semite. Largely apolitical, slightly eccentric, sometimes conservative and sometimes liberal billionaire Elon Musk? Anti-Semite. All the Jews who criticize Soros? That’s more complicated, but the Left will still scrutinize their motivations for crypto-anti-Semitism. Perhaps those slapping the “anti-Semitic” label on everyone and everything should consider what will happen if abusing the term results in ordinary people dismissing it entirely.
From Asians to Anti-Semitism, “Diversity” is Selective
Just like only the “right” blacks are black enough, and only the right feminists are feminist enough, only some Asians are Asian enough. And, conveniently, it’s whenever “progressives” give the thumbs-up.
Our society never really had the conversation about whether enforced diversity of skin colors, body parts, and grievance agendas even has any benefits compared to a more organic, “the cream rises to the top” diversity of ideas and experiences. The conversation was, understandably, short-circuited by efforts to reverse centuries of slavery, Jim Crow laws, and other state-sanctioned discrimination which gave whites massive advantages over blacks and other minorities.
But the arc of human equality is long, and in all areas of life—from university admissions, to hiring practices, to the broader question of who our society should valorize—conservatives should continue making the case that merit and character, not arbitrary quotas, are the best deciding factors.
Paul Revere is the pseudonym of a conservative writer.