Comments on Minority Diversity

Post 1

Background: I was asked to take this quiz: http://mije.org/diversitygame?gclid=CIW1t-yE2qECFRQN2god-BJYMA for my workplace communications class to learn about diversity.  I then had to write a paragraph in response to the quiz.  I did not agree with the message of the quiz.  Below is my response.

It would have been helpful to start the challenge knowing this was hosted by a journalism website and not a scholastic one.  The questions presumed that I knew more about journalism terms in general.  Not knowing these affected my score and had nothing to do with my understanding of diversity.  Also, I’m not sure what the point of the timer is, not to mention again, these quick paced questions were mostly journalism related.

This quiz rubbed me the wrong way because I’m tired of hearing about the need to have a certain percentage of minorities.  When I was attending UNL, I found out that they had to have a certain percentage of minorities enrolled.  I also found out that some of the minorities did not have the qualifications necessary to attend the school, but had these waved simply to get more minorities enrolled.  This type of behavior is racist because it is not treating races fairly.  It is disrespectful to all people regardless of color to enroll a person just to meet a percentage.

This quiz constantly brought up this topic of favoring minorities to meet a percentage.  It mentioned choices of promising the next management position will be a minority, not freezing a position for which a minority was next in line, hiring more minorities, etc.  None of these options were rated as the best answer, but they were usually the second best answer.  On the surface, this looks like it is doing its job of promoting diversity, but at the cost of being racist.  Anytime something is done, whether it is good or bad, just because of race, it is a form a racism. The best candidate for positions, regardless of color or gender should be hired.  As long as we continue to point out someone’s gender or race, we’ll never have true equality. 

Being a white male, I realize that it is hard for me to know what it is like to be a minority, but based on current population trends shown by the U.S. census, white men will soon become a minority in the U.S. within the next 30 years (http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/06/13/18934111-census-white-majority-in-us-gone-by-2043?lite).  Financially and politically, it will take much longer for white men to become a minority, but the fact is that the change is coming.  Based on this information, we need to ask ourselves, at what point do we stop talking about color.  In our struggling economic times, instead of caring about a percentage of minorities, we need to be more concerned with hiring the best people for the job so that we can remain in business to even have employees.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that the best teacher I’ve had in my adult life with regards to race is South Park.  I know the show is vulgar, stupid and disgusting at times, but there are three episodes that handle race, tolerance and diversity better than anything else I’ve ever seen.  It doesn’t just give a message to the people being intolerant, but it gives an excellent satirical message to the people trying to teach it.  The three episodes are Season 4 Episode 7 “Chef Goes Nanners”, Season 5 Episode 12 “Here Comes the Neighborhood”, and Season 6 Episode 14 “The Death Camp of Tolerance” (warning, this has a stupidly, gross subplot).  I’m not saying I know better than the book or your teaching (because I don’t) and I really don’t want to be offensive, but in the forum of scholarly discussion, I feel these episodes make the point better.  All three can be found for free at http://www.southparkstudios.com.