Triumph of an Ideology.("Diversity: The Invention of a Concept")(Book Review)

Diversity: The Invention of a Concept, by Peter Wood (Encounter, 360 pp., $24.95)

In January, President Bush announced his administration's position on the University of Michigan's Supreme Court cases on affirmative action. Educational traditionalists greeted his announcement with a mix of praise and concern. The president had denounced overtly race-conscious affirmative-action remedies, such as those practiced in Michigan's undergraduate division. Unfortunately, however, he had also endorsed the idea of "diversity" -- which is to say, racial and ethnic proportionality in the college population. And that's an idea that may end up doing even more harm to America than overt racialist policies.

Bush specifically commended the percentage plans that are in effect in the Florida and Texas state-university systems as race-neutral means of attaining diversity. Under these plans, a certain top percentage of students from every high school in the state are guaranteed admission to a college in the state system. In a superb article in Academic Questions (Fall 2001), former philosophy professor William Casement explains the many practical objections to these plans. But even apart from the deficiencies of these particular programs in terms of actually achieving "diversity," a much larger question remains: What does mandating group representation mean for a country built on individual rights? The most amazing feature of the rapid ascendancy of this concept of "diversity" is how little thought is being given to that question, even as the idea is transforming our country before our very eyes.

Actually, Bush did signal his views on diversity during his presidential campaign, but what he said aroused little notice. Campaigning in Miami on August 25, 2000, in a speech devoted to U.S.- Latin American relations, Bush presented a view of America that one never would have expected to hear from the lips of an American presidential candidate, certainly not from a conservative Republican.

"We are now one of the largest Spanish-speaking nations in the world," W. declared. "We're a major source of Latin music, journalism, and culture. Just go to Miami, or San Antonio, Los Angeles, [or] Chicago . . . and close your eyes and listen. You could just as easily be in Santo Domingo or Santiago, or San Miguel de Allende."

Bush thus described in warm and approving tones a social development that most conservatives see as a source of worry and contention in our body politic. Moreover, he even seemed to be foreclosing any further discussion of the matter. "For years our nation has debated this change," he continued. "Some have praised it and others have resented it. By nominating me, my party has made a choice to welcome the new America." That is, confronted with the large-scale immigration of recent decades and the consequent demographic transformation of America that it has brought about, George W. Bush seemed to affirm multiculturalism and "diversity" rather than assimilation and integration as the goals.

One can only wonder how a conservative politician, and one who has proven so effective a leader in other respects, came to embrace "diversity" in this meaning. Peter Wood's invaluable new book, Diversity, gives us some insight into the way this poisonous weed took such deep root in our society. Wood, an anthropologist by training, makes a crucial distinction between two ...