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[beacon1]

To suggest that AA/EEO attempts to right the historical wrongs experienced by women, gays, people of color, etc. in ACADEMIA is akin to Nazism?

I used this analogy simply to suggest there can be unintended consequences of discrimination.

I know that there are definitely terrible injustices and I'm not whining about not getting a job. Please read earlier posts. I'm just suggesting until we are blind to race, gender, and culture, we can not see a persons true merits. Maybe this is naive. I believe that the true social injustices in this culture are about wealth and poverty. How bout giving advantages to folks that where raised in poverty.

[beacon1]

Let's not reject the OP out of hand.  White males really have power only in a few select areas-- they are clearly ghettoized.  Aside from the top jobs in government, law, business, the professions, and academia, they just can't catch a break anywhere else.

Is this true for all white males? Again, there are many poor, undereducated, disadvantaged, white males in this country too. Should they be punished for having white privilege?

My original question is why is diversity a good thing? Diversity is different than AA, EEO, and social injustice. It means culturally diverse. What are the benefits?

[beacon1]

This is a poor historical analogy.  And a loathsome one, at that.  To suggest that AA/EEO attempts to right the historical wrongs experienced by women, gays, people of color, etc. in ACADEMIA is akin to Nazism?  Maybe this is why you didn't get the job...

I didn't get the job because I believe differently than most academics about the issue? I'm not denying the historical wrongs. I simply differ on ways to correct it.

Does your disagreement with me make me a loathsome person?

[betty_p]

I didn't get the job because I believe differently than most academics about the issue? I'm not denying the historical wrongs. I simply differ on ways to correct it.

Does your disagreement with me make me a loathsome person?

No, that doesn't make you a loathsome person. Maybe other factors do; I don't know.

But if you interview for a job in a department that has expressed its interest in diversity, and you express your disbelief in diversity (as I believe you did explicitly a page or two back), you cannot expect that you will get the job. It's not because you're a white male, and it's not because you espouse a radical viewpoint; it's because you stepped into a place where they said "We're looking for paper clips," and you said, "well, no, but I'm quite the stapler." When you're in the market for paper clips, and paper clips are readily available, who needs a stapler?

(Note that in this scenario, a "paper clip" is a person who accepts the department's position on diversity, and a "stapler" is someone who doesn't.  That's all. Paper clips and staplers have no race or gender. Seriously, they're just fasteners.)

I'm reminded of the first time I interviewed for a CC position. One of the questions was, "so, did you always want to teach in a CC?" Honest me, I said no, never really thought I was headed down that path, thought I was destined for SLACs and Universities but I did love the CC adjunct job I had; I tried to turn it into an epiphany story but I really just ended up sounding like an ass. I didn't get the job, and I wasn't surprised, and I didn't go trying to blame it all on some vast CC-wing conspiracy to keep me out of CCs.

As to your insistence on the superiority of policies of "race-blindness," there is plenty of literature out there to challenge your notions. Read Kimberly Crenshaw or Patricia Williams or Ian Lopez-Haney. There are two excellent anthologies, both entitled "Critical White Studies;" one's edited by Crenshaw and one by Delgado and Stefancic.

[splinter]

Assuming that your question regarding the benefits of diversity is sincere, I would also recommend a brilliant anthology titled Race Critical Theories edited by David Theo Goldberg and Philomena Essed.

[beacon1]

But if you interview for a job in a department that has expressed its interest in diversity, and you express your disbelief in diversity (as I believe you did explicitly a page or two back), you cannot expect that you will get the job. It's not because you're a white male, and it's not because you espouse a radical viewpoint; it's because you stepped into a place where they said "We're looking for paper clips," and you said, "well, no, but I'm quite the stapler." When you're in the market for paper clips, and paper clips are readily available, who needs a stapler?

No, of course I didn't appear in opposition to diversity during the interview. I'm may disagree with them but I'm not particularly self destructive. I came to a safe anonymous forum to buck the party line. I know the rules of the game, I'm simply challenging the reasoning behind the rules.

Thank you for your resources. I will consider them.

[betty_p]

My bad, my bad: "Critical White Studies" is only one title, and it's edited by Delgado and Stefancic. There are two anthologies entitled "Critical Race Theory;" these are the ones edited by Crenshaw et.al. and by Delgado and Stefancic. Both of these, and Goldberg's as well, if I'm not mistaken, take a legal studies approach.

[aardvark]

Let's not reject the OP out of hand.  White males really have power only in a few select areas-- they are clearly ghettoized.  Aside from the top jobs in government, law, business, the professions, and academia, they just can't catch a break anywhere else.

Is this true for all white males? Again, there are many poor, undereducated, disadvantaged, white males in this country too. Should they be punished for having white privilege?

My original question is why is diversity a good thing? Diversity is different than AA, EEO, and social injustice. It means culturally diverse. What are the benefits?

You're changing your terms.  You started off with "Anti White Male Movement" and now you're talking about poor, disadvantaged undereducated, etc.  Please don't try to suggest that the reason people from Appalachia aren't getting jobs running Fortune 500 companies (for example) is because of an Anti White Male movement.  If there's a conspiracy, it ain't an anti-white one.

As for why diversity is a good thing.  Call it selfishly subjective on my part, but I got tired of seeing only white people and wanted a change.  When I taught in the USA, from grad school through post-tenure, roughly half of my colleagues and roughly half of those who beat me out for jobs were other White Boys; the rest were white women, with only the occasional non-white thrown in the mix.  (We did, however, always have plenty of people of color working in the kitchen, in housekeeping, etc., so I guess it's not true to say I was "seeing only white people.")

If you prefer a lack of diversity, or don't see any benefits, I won't try to change your mind; for me, the selfish subjective pleasures of diversity are enough.  Other posters might offer you a more philosophical approach.

By the way, in my current neck of Asia, only about 1/3 of the faculty are white (including Aussies, Canadians, Brits, folks from Old Europe, and of course Yanks).  And ... drumroll... they actively seek non-Asian hires because they think this is a Good Thing.

[splinter]

There is also one of my favorite reads, classic by now hopefully, The Posessive Investment in Whiteness by George Lipsitz. The book articulates the problems surrounding color blindness and the perpetuation of racism via a rhetoric of racelessness.

[beacon1]

You're changing your terms.  You started off with "Anti White Male Movement" and now you're talking about poor, disadvantaged undereducated, etc.  Please don't try to suggest that the reason people from Appalachia aren't getting jobs running Fortune 500 companies (for example) is because of an Anti White Male movement.  If there's a conspiracy, it ain't an anti-white one.

I used the title to draw attention more than anything. I personally grew up very poor, in a small rural town, in the south. There was obvious racism that existed. I quit a church once because of the preachers view on racism. I also detested the name calling and hurtful attitudes. We poor country boys that were friends pulled together and helped each other out. Two friends, one black and one white went away to college with me. We all finished and went on to bigger places. It has been a struggle. I personally don't feel that I have gotten any free passes because I am white and don't expect any.

We did, however, always have plenty of people of color working in the kitchen, in housekeeping, etc., so I guess it's not true to say I was "seeing only white people."

I understand why this is upsetting. I worked as a bus boy to pay for college. It was hard work. I scrubbed toilets, mopped floors, and at one period in my life walked 9 miles per day to get to both of my jobs. I was just getting by. Can you understand why a suggestion that I might not get a job because I am not diverse enough would be irritating.

[aardvark]

Sounds like you and I had similar social/ economic/ regional backgrounds in childhood, and similar jobs earlier in life.  But any disadvantages I had I don't attribute to my whiteness, and like I've said, I've sure been beaten out for a lot of jobs that went to other whites instead of me. 

Now, at an earlier stage I did have to learn to lose my "ethnic" (i.e., Southern white) accent, certain working-class manners, etc., in order to "pass" in the (professional-class) white-dominated society in which I was trying to get on.  I'm not complaining, either, just remembering.

As for free passes, I would venture that the lion's share of free passes in America are wealth-based, not color-based.  But it happens that a disproportionate number of the beneficiaries are... white.

[betty_p]

Beacon1, you began this thread with a serious lash-out at abstract policies, then related them to your own experience interviewing for a university "position." I assumed by that you meant tenure-track position. Did you?

Now I'm starting to see a more defensive, insecure side. You feel that economic diversity should be enough diversity, yes? Okay: so convince the next search committee that your economic background will be beneficial for their students.

What field are you in? If it's an overcrowded humanities field, all I can say is welcome to the rest of us churning masses of divers hues, all yearning to breathe tenure.

[southprof77]

      beacon1, what bothers me about your posts is your basic premise that somehow women and minorities advance only at the expense of white males.  That's troubling and simply wrong--the explosion of women and minority presence in colleges and universities has largely coincided with growth not replacement.  Also you assume that women and minorities in positions of influence behave with the same systematically narrow self-interest that has typified white male dominance.  It strikes me that the problem here is that you in fact haven't gotten beyond the us-them mentality, and still expect the color line to do some work for you that it has not.  But why should you expect a diverse committee of women to prefer a second-rate someone over a first-rate anyone?  Isn't that an especially low expectation, a kind of white guy's nightmare of everyone else's incompetence?  Your argument is like that of denied college students who raise holy hell about "underqualified" minority students admitted, but never bother to consider the many similarly "underqualified" white students admitted. Did you ever hear that dictum to look _within_ if you miss the mark. . .
      You may not have benefited from white male privilege, but your email suggests that you have an expectation of it.  Isn't your frustration that the advantage is _supposed_ to be there?  Be honest: there is no anti-white male movement, but the field has gotten a lot more level than it has ever been before (and it isn't yet very level).  Before we lament the good ol' days or pine for better living through bureaucracy, maybe first we ought to be shock at what the sudden explosion of women and minorities suggests about how uneven the playing field used to be.

[kaysixteen]

Chances are indeed good that the OP is simply another PhD in an overcrowded field, likely humanities or social science, who was sold a bill of goods as an undergrad and then perhaps also as a grad student--poor southern kid from the wrong side of the tracks made good, the world will be his oyster, he'll be drooled over by SCs when he is ready to find a professor position, etc.-- but, whatever the likelihood is that he would actually have found a job, irrespective of AA conditions, it is disingenuous to continually assert that AA is not what it manifestly is, namely reverse discrimination against white males.  It can be spun any way one likes, but if one gets positive employment credits for being other than a white male, well... that means it is a negative consideration to be a white male.

[onwego]

Now I'm starting to see a more defensive, insecure side. You feel that economic diversity should be enough diversity, yes? Okay: so convince the next search committee that your economic background will be beneficial for their students.

Here you go, Beacon1, Betty_P just offered you the best advice you'll ever recieve on this topic.  Place your experiences in context (and I recommend not drawing on any holocaust stories when you do so) and use them to your advantage.  Talk about not having a lot of examples of graduates in your community or what it was like to work through school.  Don't make them more (or less) than they are. 

And I think you would also benefit from spending some time educating yourself about groups you are not so experienced with.  For example, there are studies that show nearly universally in elementary classrooms, boys are called on more than girls (study in the mid 90's showed a 6:1 ratio in humantities (english, social studies) and a shocking 12:1 in science and math).  So, whether you were a rich girl or a poor girl, you were not getting the sort of classroom attention of your male classmates.  (study in 'Failing at Fairness: How our schools cheat girls' by Sadker).  this will help you place your own experinces in the context of people (like search committees and faculty members) who are deciding if 'they want you down the hall.'

Finally, this reminds me of a story from Sadker book.  During one class, they required the teacher to call boy, girl, equal numbers.  They didn't tell the students that the teacher had been required to do this.  After they class, they interviewed the students - and both the boys and the girls said that the 'teacher favored the girls' - the same analogy can work with other groups - how funny that 50/50 seems unfair after so many decades of 90/10 (or whatever).