In the Ivy League, it might be true that the students there tend to be upper crust people who tend to have similar experiences. I don't know that it's as true for University of Austin or for society at large.
So I would agree that the affirmative action model has produced a lot of cynical tokenism, I would agree that if two people differ in race but not in anything else they're not really much different, and I would also agree that DEI offices and policies are generally wasteful or counterproductive, but I don't think that completely obsoletes any notion of diversity.
I can't pretend to have any special knowledge of the makeup of the University of Austin (although I tend to look at it favorably just knowing that many of my favorite thinkers teach there). But I think my criticism of racial diversity is the same as my criticism of any race-based initiative - that race is being used as a proxy for something else and that it would be more sensible to directly address whatever race is a proxy for rather than using a proxy in the first place. I don't think that racial diversity is bad, per se. I think that people still have a lot of tribalism in the way they think (which feels so obvious I feel dumb for even pointing it out, just look at our political landscape) and that incentivizing people to include those who *look* different in their tribe is a positive thing. To that extent, I agree with you. But to me, it shouldn't be a primary goal of any organization. If you have a diverse selection of skin tones, great, but diversity of opinions is far better, at least in an academic setting. And since race is merely a proxy for opinion in the context of that part of the discussion, it feels like race creates a very small positive impact.
In the Ivy League, it might be true that the students there tend to be upper crust people who tend to have similar experiences. I don't know that it's as true for University of Austin or for society at large.
So I would agree that the affirmative action model has produced a lot of cynical tokenism, I would agree that if two people differ in race but not in anything else they're not really much different, and I would also agree that DEI offices and policies are generally wasteful or counterproductive, but I don't think that completely obsoletes any notion of diversity.
I can't pretend to have any special knowledge of the makeup of the University of Austin (although I tend to look at it favorably just knowing that many of my favorite thinkers teach there). But I think my criticism of racial diversity is the same as my criticism of any race-based initiative - that race is being used as a proxy for something else and that it would be more sensible to directly address whatever race is a proxy for rather than using a proxy in the first place. I don't think that racial diversity is bad, per se. I think that people still have a lot of tribalism in the way they think (which feels so obvious I feel dumb for even pointing it out, just look at our political landscape) and that incentivizing people to include those who *look* different in their tribe is a positive thing. To that extent, I agree with you. But to me, it shouldn't be a primary goal of any organization. If you have a diverse selection of skin tones, great, but diversity of opinions is far better, at least in an academic setting. And since race is merely a proxy for opinion in the context of that part of the discussion, it feels like race creates a very small positive impact.