These days, as is well known, “diversity” has become a virtual mantra among liberals. Imagine my surprise, then, at finding a powerful critique of it in, of all places, The American Prospect — in a review essay by Stephen Macedo, a professor of politics at Princeton.
General public policies and programs never impose uniform costs on every group in society; some groups can always claim to bear a burden on account of a particular policy or a generally applicable rule….
If elevated to constitutional status and interpreted strictly, the diversity principle would radically alter our legal system. As things stand, the courts regard as legitimate general laws and policies made according to fair democratic procedures — even if particular groups feel that their activities and projects are burdened….
The principle of “maximum feasible accommodation of diversity” revises the usual presumptions. It says that whenever a law burdens particular cultural or religious groups, the law should be changed or an exemption should be created to accommodate the group in question….
What’s this? An article in TAP actually opposing diversity? Well, yes and no.
Yes, it definitely rejects diversity and endorses general laws and standards even when they have a disparate impact on particular cultural or other communities. But it’s not what you think. It does not refer to racial preferences at all, much less reject them. It objects to the sort of diversity, proposed by political theorist William Galston in the book under review, that by implication at least favors school vouchers and the rights of parents and advocates maximum accommodation for religious groups and their practices, even when doing so requires exemptions from general laws and rules that apply to everyone else.
Now, if TAP would just apply that analysis to race-based diversity….
