Diversity gains you nothing

Vincent J. Curtis

15 Oct 20

A new member was added to the five member Hamilton Police Services Board.  The Spectator celebrated the change noting that the new member would bring diversity to the Board. (In respect of there being only five members, I was reminded of a conundrum from quantum mechanics and "mixed nuts."  You are given two nuts and told to mix them any way you want.  So it is with diversity on a five member Board.)

One of the unlearned lessons of the rioting in the United States this summer is that diversity brought nothing.  We saw how many of the police chiefs of the cities in which the rioting was the worst: Seattle, Minneapolis, Atlanta, Chicago, and Portland were Black, and some both Black and female.  The mayor of Chicago is a Black lesbian, and her chief is Black, and this did nothing to stop the looting in that city this summer, or reduce the notorious shooting and murder rates.

We saw white rioters demeaning Black police officers for being blue and not Black, and all this occurred in the most liberal and Democratic cities in America.  Even electing Barack Obama as President twice brought America no relief from racial tensions; in fact they got worse, as the Ferguson riots and the strife over the Zimmerman-Treyvon Martin killing testify.

The theory that diversity in authority will relieve tensions has been demonstrated to be false, and the theory itself stands as a practically disproven ideology.

Nothing matters more than competence in the job, and competence is colour-blind.  Nothing matters more than proper enforcement of the law without the acceptance of excuses.

If the argument is diversity for diversity’s sake, then the appointment of Mel Athulathmudali to the Police Services Board is saying that someone better for the job was passed over on account of their race.  All for the sake of a falsified ideology.

-30-