Diversity Includes More Than Race
By Conor Friedersdorf '02

Race at Pomona College remains a volatile subject, and "continuing dialogue" on the matter isn't helping. It's no wonder: vapid, parroted, jargon driven sermons will never raise the bar on public discourse - and thus ideas. In fact, the editorial board's Feb. 21 sermon (Affirmative Action is a Step Toward Increasing Diversity) continues to pummel that bar into the ground.

The editorial lauds affirmative action, asserting that "a student body made up of varied cultures and races allows for students to educate each other ... in different, and more comprehensive way than would otherwise happen." It goes on to argue that beyond racial diversity "we need more diversity in terms of geography, economic background, sexual preferences and academic concentrations."

No, what Pomona needs is more diversity of thought, and it's shocking that it didn't even make your list. That is the diversity that helps students learn from one another - pitting different ideas against one another to everyone's eventual benefit. Maybe racial diversity tends to contribute to diversity of thought--I think it does--but in the end it's the diversity of thought that determines whether or not students will learn from one another in a different, more comprehensive way than would otherwise happen. So does racial diversity facilitate better learning at Pomona?

Not much. That's because Pomona students don't often engage one another's ideas publicly - on any topic. By design Pomona has a residential campus so that students can learn from one another outside of class; and great discussions do happen between individuals, during the meetings of student groups, etc. But Pomona lacks an effective (even an active) public discourse, and until it develops one, students won't learn from one another no matter how much diversity - racial or otherwise--there is.

That's especially true when private groups--whether groups of friends or student groups--are quite segregated by race.

The editorial board says "there has been much debate about the tendency of minority groups to segregate themselves into 'racial cliques.'"

But minority groups don't have to separate themselves into racial cliques- the administration does it for them!

That's my main objection to AAMP. If an Asian student determines that he or she would benefit from a student group made up of other Asians, fine. I'm all for groups of students forming together to suit their needs. But I do object to the administration making the determination that because you are Asian - or Black or Latino or Catholic or Jewish - you will automatically be assigned a mentor group of which you are a member whether you choose it or not.

I take issue with AAMP in particular because it enjoys institutional support and peer pressure factors that are perhaps on par with the sponsor program, and several close Asian friends of mine faced enormous flak from AAMP members when they chose not to participate in the group.

To me, automatically assigning students to a race based mentoring group betrays the following false ideology: racial identity is the single most important factor that defines you as a person, and for that reason we will automatically put you in groups of the same race, instead of letting you arrive at Pomona and choose between joining a group of Asians, or a group of surfers, or a group of musicians, or a group of football players, though you may be all of those things. (In other words, you are Asian and your race automatically and unquestionalbly makes you meaningfully different than everyone else.)

But back to affirmative action and the ed board's support of it. My biggest gripe about the editorial is that it addressed the matter in a Bush-esque, oversimplified, pseudo-ideological way.

Sure, racial diversity tends to contribute to diversity of thought, at least on some topics. But who brings more diversity to Pomona: the Black son of corporate executives, fresh out of Princeton Review and prep school in the suburbs? or the White son of a single father, who had to work two jobs through high school and once won the chance to intern for a high ranking Republican for the summer miles away from his trailer park, or farm, or inner city? That question ought to give you pause if you advocate straight up race-based affirmative action. It at least begs the question: if diversity is truly the aim, is there a better way?

Other tough questions the ed board doesn't even address: are the benefits of affirmative action worth unfair outcomes in individual cases?; what is the "right" amount of diversity?; what's more important, racial diversity or diversity of geography or socio-economic diversity or ideological diversity? Why?; what should affirmative action entail? Quotas? Considering race as one factor? Outreach? Two of those? All of those?

Whatever you think about affirmative action, diversity, and race at Pomona, the preceding questions - the whole letter's worth - require reasoned answers if a real discussion is to take place.