BY NOW, some people are doubtlessly tired of hearing about diversity. But until we reach the day when skin color is no longer an issue, no amount of spilled ink can be too much. This country cannot endure if we cannot function as a pluralistic, multiethnic society. But those who talk about fostering more "diversity" have actually been doing everything possible to delay and deny that dream, using the innocuous term as a stalking horse for policies that stress racial differences rather than individual merits.
From California to the Commonwealth, however, a backlash is brewing across the country. In Ward Connerly's racial privacy initiative on the West Coast to the recently founded Individual Rights Coalition, which seeks to stop the University from subverting our individuality for group identity politics, what we are seeing is nothing less than the exciting birth of a new civil rights revolution for the 21st century.
Last year, media across the country reported on the deeply disturbing, racially tinged alleged assault on Student Council President Daisy Lundy. That, and a fraternity's "blackface" party, unfairly tainted the University as a haven of bigots.
President John T. Casteen III's newly formed "diversity commission" and the proposal to require students to take an online course in diversity betray an administration flailing in the face of negative publicity and failing to find an original and effective response. Like President Bill Clinton's massive race initiative fiasco a few years ago, all such efforts are destined to fail because their premises are inherently incompatible with our society's individualist bias.
Devotees of diversity use the term as a code word for classification schemes like affirmative action, recruitment programs that racially profile minority students, separate orientation sessions and receptions for "students of color," and supporting student groups based on no substantive shared interest other than the color of its members' skin. At some schools, administrators have even built separate ethnic-themed housing. Given academia's race-based policies in the name of diversity, individualists can be forgiven for rolling their eyes at the latest talk about courses and commissions on diversity.
Increasingly, Americans are thwarting these racist shams, demanding their right to be recognized as individuals. Earlier this year, the Census Bureau bowed to public outrage, abandoning its longstanding requirement -- about as offensive as the "one-drop rule" under Jim Crow -- that individuals fit themselves into one of the government's official racial categories. And on college applications, legions of students now refuse to check off any racial category at all.
These encouraging trends point to a return to the inclusive message of Martin Luther King, Jr., who taught us to judge people by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin. King was an interlude between racial separatists who preceded him like W.E.B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington, who famously advocated that the races "can be as separate as the fingers" in all things social, and those like Malcolm X who ascended in his wake. While all of these civil rights leaders made essential contributions to racial justice and equality before the law, the separatist faction left a society severely scarred and split along racial fault lines.
Instead of following the path of inclusion, college administrators, including those at the University, adopted Washington's mantra with race-based policies that bring students together only to the extent of the separate fingers on the hand. Far from promoting cultural diversity, these practices, by caricaturing students' ethnic backgrounds, are really a form of cultural denigration.
The new civil rights movement is not about skin color or caricatures. Its activists come from all walks of life, faiths and complexions. What they share is a mission to stop the race-based social engineering schemes imposed on us by authorities who signed on to the separatist racial agenda. Should the new movement succeed, its victory -- our victory -- will be a truly color-blind society that judges people on their own merits and recognizes their diversity as individuals.
The frontlines of this battle are on our college campuses, led by activists like the Individual Rights Coalition. And when it comes down to the students versus the cultural, social and academic elite, I place my faith in the students.
(Eric Wang is a Cavalier Daily viewpoint writer.)
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