Diversity is the magic word in public relations these days. Tuesday’s front-page story proves it (Diversity down in medical school), and yet there is an increasing trend toward both self- and government-imposing segregation in America.

First of all, is the existence of those boxes White, Black, Hispanic, Asian, and everyone’s favorite, Other on every government application, census or document we fill out.

Not too many years back, America imposed an embargo on South Africa due to its equally raced-based census, which that government naturally used in its administration of Apartheid. The result was an elimination of racially-based census there, and not too much later, Apartheid ended. Ironic that our government still demands that every citizen declare his or her ethnicity in a nation long dedicated to the proposition that all people are created equal, when another nation, which has only recently adopted such a principal, excludes race from its government documentation.

Advertisement

Many politicians have, and continue to, use racial statistics to plan campaigns (what to say to which crowd in a certain part of a certain city), and it is no difficult task to turn us against each other. I submit that it is no more of the government’s business what ethnic group you belong to than to which religion you subscribe, nor should it be the business of any potential employer. Therefore I encourage everyone to refuse to indicate your ethnicity on any document, public or private, for we can never be truly free unless we cease to think of our population as percentages of black, white, Hispanic and Asian.

But our government is not the only thing that divides us. We divide ourselves. There are exclusive minority organizations throughout this campus and the nation all with the advancement of their respective minority group in mind. As a future history teacher, I will be the first to admit that until recently, minorities in America were held back by institutionalized racism, and the legacy of those years lives on, as poverty is more common among minorities than among whites. The solution to this is for us to stop considering each other, and ourselves, primarily by our race. Quotas or diversity requirements will not solve this, for they insult the minority, an naturally offend the generic white male. As Thomas Radecki pointed out in his Oct. 28 column, slapping the title white on anyone with light skin is inaccurate, and unfair.

Diversity is important, and can be beneficial if it is based on philosophical intellectual differences often brought by different ethnic groups. Diversity is only a good thing if we hold mutual respect and work together as equals. One cannot cherish diversity by force, a-la Affirmative Action, nor by segregating into support groups for race A, B or C no whites need apply.

Until race is no longer the first question in every census, and until we stop worsening the situation by segregating ourselves or seeing ourselves as victims, we will never achieve the potential a nation such as ours possesses.