Bruce and Phil
back in April -- I think neither of you was on the list then -- I asked
much the same question about what *diversity* means in a US of A context,
as it sounded to me like the people on the xmca were using it as some kind
of "technical" or "administrative" term. Or, rather, as if the xmcaer's,
whose work is characteristically motivated by social justice, were pursuing
the issues in a political environment where *diversity* had been petrified
into something technical, administrative, which they had to deal with.
As I was curious enough to repeat my question a couple of times, there was
some discussion, which I found really helpful. I especially remember one
long message by Phillip White and one by Jay Lemke.
Phillip gave some of the history (from his Colorado perspective):
At 21.06 -0600 98-04-21, Phillip Allen White wrote:
> Many Anglos referred to the push to hire more minorities as
>'reverse discrimination'. Some of my closest teachers friends took this
>position, to my amazement.
>
> Soon, the term multicultural because politically loaded. So,
>those who had been hired as multicultural administrators (racial
>minorities, of course) as well as the multicultural council, decided to
>change the terminology - to emphasize that they were inclusive in nature
>and value and belief - and so the term used was Diversity.
>
> But, of course, everyone took the term Diversity to be a code term
>for multicultural, which was in turn a code word for 'reverse
>discrimination'.
And Jay, as usual, fearlessly called a spade a spade:
At 14.02 -0400 98-04-23, Jay Lemke wrote:
>All this being said, one has to realize that Diversity in the US always
>really means racial diversity; it is in fact a code-word or disguise for
>Race Difference. To make the disguise more effective, diversity as a term
>has been broadened to include all difference, from gays to the physically
>handicapped, as well as all language and culture differences. In the
>academy, because "culture" is now the primary concept for thinking about
>social difference (and we are much in need of more radical and exhaustive
>critiques of the concept of "culture" which is probably much too weak and
>old to carry this burden that is placed on it today, esp. in the US),
>"cultural diversity" has become an acceptable deflection from the more
>basic issue, again in the US context, of "race difference", or to be more
>candid, "race hatred".
The full messages can be found at:
http://communication.ucsd.edu/MCA/Mail/xmcamail.9804.dir/index.html
-- Phillip's with a subject line of *Re: Scales of "Diversity"* and Jay's
with a subject line of *Re: Of interest to everybody* (due to my weird
subject line practice in the initiating message).
Also mCole's AERA paper *Can Cultural Psychology Help Us Think About
Diversity?* is already available on the Web at:
http://communication.ucsd.edu/LCHC/paper/cole/aera.html
About the upcoming discussion on the topic, I think it would be worth
having it here in the international "living room" rather than some other
parlour.
Eva