Diversity Trumps Skill

Diversity As A Goal Rather Than Excellence

OpinionJournal - Diversity's Stigma: Jayson Blair and the cost of racial preferences. BY JASON L. RILEY

Somewhere in between the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1978 Supreme Court Bakke decision on university admissions, blacks forfeited the right to be judged by society as individuals. The most unfortunate consequence of racial preferences is not that they produce the occasional Jayson Blair. (Indeed, the existence of a Stephen Glass would seem to make that link tentative at best.) Far more troubling is that racial preferences, however well-intentioned, strip blacks of their individuality, their pride, their humanity.

Race-based policies make black achievement a white allowance and black failure a group stigma.

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