Tuesday, January 06, 2004
Diversity
So, one of the things that's been on my mind recently is the concept of diversity. But when I say "diverse", I'm not using it as a euphemism for describing an area that has a lot of poor people in it, as a lot of liberals tend to do. ("That area's kinda dangerous - it's a really diverse place.") Nor do I use the word in the weak sense that many conservatives have pigeonholed it - as a lame euphemism for affirmative action, or a meaningless way to describe some nebulous beneficial property. Rather, I think it's a very specific, valuable quality, and all too rare.
The dictionary definition of "diversity" is a little too vague for my liking. Let me share my main experiences with diversity with you: I grew up in Silver Spring, Maryland. As it turns out, Silver Spring is a giant area in Montgomery County, Maryland. Unlike a lot of other areas, Maryland is much more oriented towards counties, rather than cities. Silver Spring can loosely be defined as "anything in Montgomery County that is not in another city". Thus, my personal experiences with Silver Spring may differ significantly from yours (if you have any). Here are the official demographic statistics on Silver Spring, and they seem pretty accurate to me. Certainly diverse in age, but amazingly so in race. However, my experiences were a little more specific.
I imagine the typical person would look at these demographics and make some assumptions about what Silver Spring might look like. In some cases they'd be right, and in some cases they'd be wrong. I definitely come from an upper-middle class upbringing, and my neighborhood differed vastly from some of the other neighborhoods that are also in Silver Spring. But I can attest to the fact that my subcommunity was still diverse in and of itself. My high school - Springbrook High School - had approximately 2000 students, significantly less than the 75000 citizens in Silver Spring. Its current demographics reflect the diversity of Silver Spring pretty accurately - right now, it is 37.8% African-American, 21.3% Asian-American, 18.2% Latino, and 22.6% White. It's been 8 years since I graduated Springbrook, and the diversity has probably increased since then, but I can attest to the fact that its demographics were quite similar while I was there. The fact that I'm very proud of is that Springbrook High School was a fantastic school. It prepared me very well for college, and while I was there, it was ranked as one of the top 100 High Schools in the nation, by Redbook magazine, I believe. It's not a magnet school, it's not a private school - it's just a very diverse, effective, high school.
And I believe it's more effective because it's diverse. I'm a white, raised Jewish, now an atheist. I went to school with Latinos, Asians, African-Americans, Indian-Americans, and many other races. They were Catholic, Jewish, Hindi, Buddhist, Muslim, and many other religions. No, we didn't sit around discussing our differences. Yes, as it turned out, many of my closest friends were Jewish, and a lot of them were white - but I also had friends and acquaintances of all races and religions, and my classes were just as diverse as the school itself. As far as I know, we had relatively little racial turmoil in the school, and we had no apparent problems with crime, drugs, or violence. Maybe I just kept my nose clean, but I would imagine that if the school was anything like what people would assume a school of that demographic would be, I wouldn't have been able to avoid those issues.
The funny thing is, I didn't really appreciate this diversity until it was absent. I went to a relatively diverse college, and joined a fraternity that was also moderately diverse in race, and quite diverse in the backgrounds of its members. It wasn't until I was near graduation and interviewed at Lockheed-Martin in Colorado that I realized how important diversity was to me. I went to Lockheed and talked to a lot of different people. All of them were white. Many of them were over fifty years old. Almost all of them were males. I was shocked. The work could have been interesting, but after leaving, I realized that I didn't want to live in an area like that - I needed the different backgrounds, the different opinions, the different beliefs. It wasn't anything tangible about what I would be missed - I just felt like I would be bored and not challenged. I didn't even appreciate the diversity that I enjoyed until I was missing it.
I ended up taking a job back near my hometown - in Bethesda, MD, one of the most diverse areas in the US. Of course, there were other factors that drove me to take a job back near home, but the increased diversity of the area was definitely an important part of it.
If you ask me to explain what's so nice about diversity, I don't think that I can precisely state it. I think part of it is that I like being challenged - I like to understand how people think differently and why they think that way. I believe that the best way to understand and validate your own thoughts and opinions is to hear varied arguments and adjust your thoughts accordingly. I don't understand how some people can let themselves become so firmly rooted in their own beliefs without ever encountering any dissenting voices - it's kind of like wandering through life with your eyes shut and ears plugged. I want to meet people richer than me and poorer than me. I want to meet people raised by two loving parents, and people raised by one elderly great-uncle. And I think that only by living in an environment with many different types of people can one truly learn about the world and appreciate what one has.
Now here's where we get political. Maybe you read the previous part and thought it was absurd, but I think it's pretty logical and most people would agree with it. If not, I'd love to hear from you. The logical extension of this argument is that diversity is a valuable quality - it enhances the living experience, and the learning experience. And so, if diversity in and of itself is inherently valuable, then there you get your argument for affirmative action, at least in the college environment. Forget the "retribution" argument for now - the argument that minorities have been kept down for so long that they need and deserve the push that affirmative action gives them. Also forget the "racism still exists" argument for now - the argument that no matter how progressive a society we think we are, racism is still present, both overtly and covertly. I think both of these arguments are valid to a degree, but let's ignore them for the time being.
Given that diversity is valuable and enhances the learning experience, especially in a child's formative years, and given that much academic and social learning occurs in college, there's a compelling argument for affirmative action to be used in admitting students to college. The counter-argument is that of "fairness". Assuming that you can grade a prospective student's quality on a one-dimensional scale between 1 and 100, then how can we say that accepting anything but the top X students on that scale is fair? If a given white guy scores 90, and a given black gal scores 85, how is it fair to the guy if the gal is accepted instead of him. Well, I'll tell you how:
First of all, let's say that there's a minimum quality score that a student has to have in order to have the school consider him or her. Any student below that score - let's say it's 80 - has been determined to be unacceptable - he or she will likely not succeed at the school. Any student above that score, will likely succeed. Yes, this is very coarse, but it's probably not too far from the truth. So then the question is what a school's obligation is. Is a college a means, or an end? Is its goal to admit the top X students? Or is it to educate X students as much as possible? I think it's obviously the latter. Furthermore, I think schools have an obligation to create a community that will enhance that learning experience, and diversity is a critical component of that. If the school determined that both the aformentioned white guy and black gal will likely succeed at the school, then which one is more likely to contribute to the community as a whole? I'd argue that the black gal will more likely contribute to the diversity (assuming standard US demographics are pervasive across the applicant pool) of the entire community, and given that both applicants will likely succeed, I'd choose the black gal over the white guy. Obviously, I can't do this every time - ideally, the selection process takes diversity into account in a more thorough and fair manner than the process I described, but I think I've made my point.
There are obviously further issues at hand here, some of which I mentioned, and some of which I didn't. Maybe I'll dicuss them later, but one last thing I'd like to mention is what brought this issue to the front of my mind - my recent trip to Telluride. Once again, going to Colorado, and going skiing at that, gave me another image of a "diversity-less" place, and what it was missing. I had a great time, and it was a beautiful locale, but the whole town set me a little on edge. It's isolated and consists of entirely white, seemingly privileged people, and I think it's affected the way the locals act. It wasn't overt, but an air of superiority permeated the way the locals interacted with each other and with the tourists. DC's not necessarily the friendliest of areas, but many people seemed to be neither trusting nor engaging. They were off in their own little world, enjoying their secluded little resort town. I imagined that if an African-American had walked into town, many of them would have fainted. Don't worry - for the entire week that I was there, that didn't happen. I wish it had.
The dictionary definition of "diversity" is a little too vague for my liking. Let me share my main experiences with diversity with you: I grew up in Silver Spring, Maryland. As it turns out, Silver Spring is a giant area in Montgomery County, Maryland. Unlike a lot of other areas, Maryland is much more oriented towards counties, rather than cities. Silver Spring can loosely be defined as "anything in Montgomery County that is not in another city". Thus, my personal experiences with Silver Spring may differ significantly from yours (if you have any). Here are the official demographic statistics on Silver Spring, and they seem pretty accurate to me. Certainly diverse in age, but amazingly so in race. However, my experiences were a little more specific.
I imagine the typical person would look at these demographics and make some assumptions about what Silver Spring might look like. In some cases they'd be right, and in some cases they'd be wrong. I definitely come from an upper-middle class upbringing, and my neighborhood differed vastly from some of the other neighborhoods that are also in Silver Spring. But I can attest to the fact that my subcommunity was still diverse in and of itself. My high school - Springbrook High School - had approximately 2000 students, significantly less than the 75000 citizens in Silver Spring. Its current demographics reflect the diversity of Silver Spring pretty accurately - right now, it is 37.8% African-American, 21.3% Asian-American, 18.2% Latino, and 22.6% White. It's been 8 years since I graduated Springbrook, and the diversity has probably increased since then, but I can attest to the fact that its demographics were quite similar while I was there. The fact that I'm very proud of is that Springbrook High School was a fantastic school. It prepared me very well for college, and while I was there, it was ranked as one of the top 100 High Schools in the nation, by Redbook magazine, I believe. It's not a magnet school, it's not a private school - it's just a very diverse, effective, high school.
And I believe it's more effective because it's diverse. I'm a white, raised Jewish, now an atheist. I went to school with Latinos, Asians, African-Americans, Indian-Americans, and many other races. They were Catholic, Jewish, Hindi, Buddhist, Muslim, and many other religions. No, we didn't sit around discussing our differences. Yes, as it turned out, many of my closest friends were Jewish, and a lot of them were white - but I also had friends and acquaintances of all races and religions, and my classes were just as diverse as the school itself. As far as I know, we had relatively little racial turmoil in the school, and we had no apparent problems with crime, drugs, or violence. Maybe I just kept my nose clean, but I would imagine that if the school was anything like what people would assume a school of that demographic would be, I wouldn't have been able to avoid those issues.
The funny thing is, I didn't really appreciate this diversity until it was absent. I went to a relatively diverse college, and joined a fraternity that was also moderately diverse in race, and quite diverse in the backgrounds of its members. It wasn't until I was near graduation and interviewed at Lockheed-Martin in Colorado that I realized how important diversity was to me. I went to Lockheed and talked to a lot of different people. All of them were white. Many of them were over fifty years old. Almost all of them were males. I was shocked. The work could have been interesting, but after leaving, I realized that I didn't want to live in an area like that - I needed the different backgrounds, the different opinions, the different beliefs. It wasn't anything tangible about what I would be missed - I just felt like I would be bored and not challenged. I didn't even appreciate the diversity that I enjoyed until I was missing it.
I ended up taking a job back near my hometown - in Bethesda, MD, one of the most diverse areas in the US. Of course, there were other factors that drove me to take a job back near home, but the increased diversity of the area was definitely an important part of it.
If you ask me to explain what's so nice about diversity, I don't think that I can precisely state it. I think part of it is that I like being challenged - I like to understand how people think differently and why they think that way. I believe that the best way to understand and validate your own thoughts and opinions is to hear varied arguments and adjust your thoughts accordingly. I don't understand how some people can let themselves become so firmly rooted in their own beliefs without ever encountering any dissenting voices - it's kind of like wandering through life with your eyes shut and ears plugged. I want to meet people richer than me and poorer than me. I want to meet people raised by two loving parents, and people raised by one elderly great-uncle. And I think that only by living in an environment with many different types of people can one truly learn about the world and appreciate what one has.
Now here's where we get political. Maybe you read the previous part and thought it was absurd, but I think it's pretty logical and most people would agree with it. If not, I'd love to hear from you. The logical extension of this argument is that diversity is a valuable quality - it enhances the living experience, and the learning experience. And so, if diversity in and of itself is inherently valuable, then there you get your argument for affirmative action, at least in the college environment. Forget the "retribution" argument for now - the argument that minorities have been kept down for so long that they need and deserve the push that affirmative action gives them. Also forget the "racism still exists" argument for now - the argument that no matter how progressive a society we think we are, racism is still present, both overtly and covertly. I think both of these arguments are valid to a degree, but let's ignore them for the time being.
Given that diversity is valuable and enhances the learning experience, especially in a child's formative years, and given that much academic and social learning occurs in college, there's a compelling argument for affirmative action to be used in admitting students to college. The counter-argument is that of "fairness". Assuming that you can grade a prospective student's quality on a one-dimensional scale between 1 and 100, then how can we say that accepting anything but the top X students on that scale is fair? If a given white guy scores 90, and a given black gal scores 85, how is it fair to the guy if the gal is accepted instead of him. Well, I'll tell you how:
First of all, let's say that there's a minimum quality score that a student has to have in order to have the school consider him or her. Any student below that score - let's say it's 80 - has been determined to be unacceptable - he or she will likely not succeed at the school. Any student above that score, will likely succeed. Yes, this is very coarse, but it's probably not too far from the truth. So then the question is what a school's obligation is. Is a college a means, or an end? Is its goal to admit the top X students? Or is it to educate X students as much as possible? I think it's obviously the latter. Furthermore, I think schools have an obligation to create a community that will enhance that learning experience, and diversity is a critical component of that. If the school determined that both the aformentioned white guy and black gal will likely succeed at the school, then which one is more likely to contribute to the community as a whole? I'd argue that the black gal will more likely contribute to the diversity (assuming standard US demographics are pervasive across the applicant pool) of the entire community, and given that both applicants will likely succeed, I'd choose the black gal over the white guy. Obviously, I can't do this every time - ideally, the selection process takes diversity into account in a more thorough and fair manner than the process I described, but I think I've made my point.
There are obviously further issues at hand here, some of which I mentioned, and some of which I didn't. Maybe I'll dicuss them later, but one last thing I'd like to mention is what brought this issue to the front of my mind - my recent trip to Telluride. Once again, going to Colorado, and going skiing at that, gave me another image of a "diversity-less" place, and what it was missing. I had a great time, and it was a beautiful locale, but the whole town set me a little on edge. It's isolated and consists of entirely white, seemingly privileged people, and I think it's affected the way the locals act. It wasn't overt, but an air of superiority permeated the way the locals interacted with each other and with the tourists. DC's not necessarily the friendliest of areas, but many people seemed to be neither trusting nor engaging. They were off in their own little world, enjoying their secluded little resort town. I imagined that if an African-American had walked into town, many of them would have fainted. Don't worry - for the entire week that I was there, that didn't happen. I wish it had.
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