Rodent Regatta

This interview is long. It is also going to raise your blood pressure unless you’re prepared to think critically about things like race, diversity, affirmative action and the nature of minorities in America.

If you are concerned about that notion of critical thinking, learn more here.

An interview with a campus head of diversity
By Craig J. Cantoni
(For Internet publication)

Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and four other justices have ruled that societal interests are served by diversity on college campuses. The reality is that the university brand of diversity and multiculturalism has backfired on campus, resulting in races segregating themselves into their own separate dormitories and organizations, and in race mongers taking control of faculty training and spouting divisive diversity drivel.

Don’t believe me? Then read the following interview that I conducted with the former head of diversity at Arizona State University a few years ago. The interview has been posted on my web site since, and it has proved to be very popular with readers across the nation.

The initials ”DH” stand for the diversity head in the following, and the initials ”CC” stand for me.

CC: Could you please define ”diversity” for me?

DH: Diversity has to do with blacks, Hispanics, Asians and Native-Americans.

CC: I’m not so sure that you defined the word, but, nevertheless, let’s go on. So, diversity does not include Egyptian-Americans?

DH: Well…uh…you see…

CC: Or Iranians, or Bosnians, or Pakistanis, or impoverished Appalachian Scots-Irish?

DH: I use the government categories.

CC: Hmm, that’s interesting. I thought our system of government is based on the noble idea that we are all equal. I also thought that for the last 30 years it has been illegal in this country to give preferential treatment in employment and elsewhere to some groups over others based on skin color, ethnicity, race or nationality. My mistake. Let’s go on.

DH: Go ahead. You requested the meeting.

CC: Thank you. The description of the course that you are conducting for faculty here says that it will address ”diversity challenges, conflict resolution and the First Amendment in the classroom.” Could you give me an example of a diversity challenge in the classroom?

DH: Sure. The other day I had a Hispanic woman say in my class that ”all whites are ignorant.” An untrained professor might have responded to that by shutting her down or putting her down. But instead, what I did was ask the class for their thoughts on what she said. Interestingly, some other Hispanics spoke up and said that they didn’t agree that all whites were ignorant. You see, professors aren’t trained in how to handle that kind of conflict. In the Institute here, our goal is to give them the skills they need to deal with these types of situations.

CC: I must be ignorant myself. Must be a white thing. Did I miss something? Does the subject of whether whites are ignorant or not have something to do with learning math, engineering, double-entry accounting and other subjects? Do the laws of math change depending on the skin color of the professor or student?

DH: You’re missing the point.

CC: You got that right. What is the point?

DH: The point is that a university is a microcosm of society. It is a place of learning. It is a place where we address rather than ignore societal issues.

CC: Perhaps a sociology class might be a place to address racism and other social issues, but I’m not so sure that a racist comment should be allowed in a classroom or that the racial views of a student are relevant to other areas of study. I can’t help but wonder what you would have done if a white had used the ”N” word in class. Do I sense a double standard?

DH: Not at all. We value all viewpoints. You could have accused us of double standards in the past when we conducted diversity training the old way.

CC: I’m afraid to ask, but what was the old way?

DH: The old way was to separate whites from minorities in the class and have the minorities tell the whites what it is like to live in a white world as a minority. That made the whites defensive.

CC: Imagine that. That’s the problem with whites. They not only have pale skin, but they are thin-skinned. And to top it off, they are ignorant. I’m sure glad that I’m olive-skinned. Let me give you a little background about myself. It’s relevant to a question I want to ask you in a moment, so please bear with me. One of the reasons I went into human resources in the early 1970s was to advance the idea of equal opportunity. At the time, I was a big proponent of affirmative action and fought many groundbreaking battles on behalf of blacks and women.

Then, in the early 1980s, well before Roosevelt Thomas started the diversity movement with his landmark Harvard Business Review article, I would go on retreats with people of color to get in touch with my deep-seated feelings about race. And, oh yes, I got my undergraduate degree from St. Mary’s University of San Antonio, a school where half the student body is Mexican-American. At the time, I viewed my Mexican-American friends as the sons and grandsons of immigrants, just like me, who were trying to better themselves and live the American dream. At the time, we didn’t affix labels to each other and, in fact, thought that racial and ethnic labels should be done away with. My question is this: Do you wonder why someone like Craig Cantoni is so opposed to your brand of diversity?

DH: I can’t speak for you. But I’m sorry to hear that you are against diversity.

CC: Yeah, whatever the word means. It’s kind of like being against motherhood and apple pie. Let’s shift the subject from me. Let me ask you a related question: Do you think, as I do, that the races have become more polarized over the intervening years?

DH: Yes indeed. You see it on campus. Blacks have their own clubs and dorms. Hispanics have theirs. There doesn’t seem to be much mingling of races. That’s why the Institute is so important.

CC: Do you ever think that you’re at fault for the polarization?

DH: What do you mean?

CC: I mean that the diversity movement’s obsession with race has resulted in people being obsessed with race. I mean that putting people into categories makes them behave and think like they are in a category an aggrieved category at that. The government and institutions like yours have institutionalized the separation.

DH: You can’t ignore the fact that we’re all in categories. You’re Anglo, for example.

CC: Excuse me, but to the best of my knowledge, I’m an American of Italian ancestry. I don’t believe that I have any Anglo or Saxon blood. Since my forebears came from the Italian peninsula, which sits across from the African continent, and since a large number of citizens in the Roman empire were Africans, there is a better chance of me having African blood than Anglo blood.

DH: Okay. But the fact is that you are in other categories. You are a male, for example.

CC: You noticed.

DH: That’s the point. We can’t help but notice categories and respond differently to the category that we see.

CC: But my being male is not an artificial construct like you calling yourself ”Hispanic.” Nor do I petition the government to give me a group identity and group rights.

DH: What do you mean?

CC: Simple. There is no nation of Hispania. Nor is there only one ethnic group or nationality of Spanish-speaking or Spanish-surnamed people. The term ”Hispanic” is incorrectly used to cover many nationalities, with widely different cultures and history, ranging from Communist Cuba to aristocrats from the Iberian Peninsula of Europe. It shows a profound ignorance of history to lump all those people together into one category as if they are a monolith.

DH: I like to think of myself as a Chicano.

CC: From the country of Chicania?

DH: Cute. My family is from Mexico.

CC: So if you insist on putting labels on yourself, why don’t you use the label of Mexican-American? It’s much more precise.

DH: Okay, if it makes you happy.

CC: Delighted.

DH: Let me return to the issue of categories. Why is it if a black man moves into your neighborhood, you will treat him differently? Is there something about black skin that gives off vibes? Is black skin in itself bad? Or is it that you assign stereotypes to his category?

CC: Seems like you are the one dealing with stereotypes. You assume that at the end of the 20th Century, mainstream whites will treat a black neighbor differently. You’re right, though. If Colin Powell moved into the neighborhood, I’d treat him with awe and respect. I suggest that you separate issues of class from issues of race.

DH: Then why is it that when blacks moved into neighborhoods in so many American cities, the whites moved out?

CC: Because human beings are rational and look out first and foremost for their own security and safety. It’s the same rational thinking that Jesse Jackson used when he said that if he is walking down a dark street at night and hears footsteps behind him, he is relieved to see a white face instead of a black face. The fact of urban life in American cities in the 1950s and 1960s was that whites, primarily middle-class ethnic whites, saw block after block and neighborhood after neighborhood be destroyed after blacks moved in. Upper-class elites and university intellectuals have the luxury of intellectualizing about the causes of uncivilized behavior in the inner-city, about the horrible social consequences of slavery, Jim Crow, poverty and the welfare state.

But if you had been living in a Lithuanian neighborhood on the west side of Chicago in a two-flat that had been in your working-class family for two generations, a home that represented a lifetime of hard work in a mind-numbing factory it would have been unnatural for you to welcome people of any color, white or black, who had different values about property values and a demonstrated history of destroying everything that you had worked and saved for. To react differently would be irrational and foolish. To delete your memory bank of all personal experience and observations would reduce you to the intelligence and existence of a slug. To me, there is a difference between being discriminating and being discriminatory. The former is based on factors other than race; the latter is based solely and exclusively on race.

DH: Your negative stereotyping sounds like racism, not discrimination.

CC: Webster’s definition of racism is this: ”A belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race.” I like that definition. And by that definition, I am clearly not a racist. I don’t think for a moment that when babies come out of the womb that there is any difference whatsoever, other than appearance, between one race and another in terms of innate intelligence and other human characteristics. Differences come later as a result of upbringing, social class, instilled values and that nebulous thing called culture.

DH: It seems to me that you whites…

CC: Excuse me, but you’re white.

DH: No, I’m Hispanic, er, Mexican-American.

CC: Not only do you look white, but the government classifies you as white; and we know how much you like government classifications. In fact, you are a member of the largest ethnic white group in America, far larger than Italian-Americans. Why you are classified as a minority is beyond me. It must be because universities are teaching diversity instead of math. Today’s graduates don’t seem to know that if you lump all white ethnic groups together, with the exception of one group, the lumped-together group will be a mathematical majority while the one exception will be a mathematical minority.

DH: You mean that you don’t see me as a minority?

CC: I know that you like to see yourself as a minority but, no, I don’t see you that way at all. In Arizona, Mexican-Americans comprise about 22 percent of the population, and Italian-Americans about five percent. I’m more of a minority than you.

DK: Let me finish what I was saying before you got us off on this tangent. I was saying that whites think in negative stereotypes.

CC: Didn’t you just state a negative stereotype? See, the government is correct in putting you in the white category. You think like a white person in stereotypes. I understand what your saying, though. You’re saying that Nation of Islam head Louis Farrakhan doesn’t think in terms of negative stereotypes. The New York Times Magazine must have been mistaken in a recent article. It said that blacks commit three times as many hate crimes as whites. Speaking of which, one time when I was riding the El train home from work in Chicago, three blacks got on the train and started slapping elderly white women, laughing as they made racist remarks about whites. Another time, a black man got on the train at the stop for Malcolm X College and sat next to me. On his briefcase were written the words, ”Whites eat shit!” in bold letters. And when I was a 16-year-old working as the only white on an otherwise all-black staff in an exclusive country club in St. Louis, my black supervisor told me to clean the employee rest room, which hadn’t been cleaned in years. Two hours later, as I was finishing the job, a burly black co-worker came in and urinated all over the walls, telling me to ”clean up this mess, white boy.”

DH: What does all that prove?

CC: It suggests that negative stereotypes and racism are not just a white phenomenon.

DH: Oh yeah, like you’ve suffered from negative stereotypes you who comes from white privilege.

CC: Wow, I’d suggest that you read the history of Italians in America. You don’t have to go back very far. Just go back to the 1938 issue of Life Magazine that featured baseball great Joe DiMaggio. It said that he was not a typical Italian who put ”bear grease” on his hair and reeked of garlic. And I guess that you’ve never seen the Godfather movie, which portrays Italians as Mafioso. You see, what’s different between you and me is that I don’t blame Godfather author Mario Puzo for perpetuating a negative stereotype about Italians by writing a novel based on facts. I blame the Italian mobsters for perpetuating the stereotype. I think the no-goods should be executed or imprisoned, and I support the government going after them with a vengeance. New York mayor Rudy Guiliani felt the same way when he was a prosecutor.

A couple of years ago I spoke at a diversity outreach conference of educators. As I sat at a table for lunch prior to my speech and introduced myself, the people of color at the table noticed the vowel at the end of my name and made the standard wisecracks about the Mob. I blame them for their appalling hypocrisy, but I don’t blame them at all for the stereotype. I blame depraved Italian mobsters like John Gotti for the stereotype. By the way, about your stereotypical statement about white privilege, let me say this: My impoverished and poorly educated grandfather immigrated to this country and took a job as a coal miner. Yes indeed, some privilege.

DH: But at least your grandfather was white, as were all the other workers, so he didn’t have to deal with feeling different. Diversity wasn’t an issue back then.

CC: Evidently you were not a history major. If you were, you would be aware of the huge differences between ethnic groups in the early Twentieth Century, the animosties, the tensions and the fights in the work place. Ethnic and religious slurs like dago, pollack, mic, papist, Jew-boy weren’t endearments back then. It wasn’t a loving gesture when an Irish cop bashed in your head because he didn’t like wops. People segregated themselves by ethnic and religious identity where they worked and where they lived.

DH: See, they needed diversity training.

CC: What, to make things worse? I take a different lesson from history. I take the lesson that assimilation worked its wonders without the help of social engineers and busybodies. Somehow industry was able to achieve historical highs of productivity and growth with a diverse work force, without sending managers to diversity training. Somehow the various groups gained political power, got an education and brought their families into the middle class on their own. Most of the problems went away after one generation, and almost all of them disappeared after two generations.

Blacks were another matter. That’s why the 1964 Civil Rights Act was passed. That’s why I fought to give blacks equal opportunity in the work place and used affirmative action in its original meaning of outreach. It wasn’t until later that other groups petitioned the government to expand the Act to cover them. That was a slap in the face to blacks, because it implied that the other groups had endured the same government-sanctioned mistreatment. A black female editorial writer and acquaintance of mine still bristles over that. She won’t say so, though, in her newspaper’s editorial page. The newspaper wouldn’t want to upset its Mexican-American readers.

DH: Maybe we’d be better off if we didn’t use stereotypes at all.

CC: I think it would be better if we recognized that some negative stereotypes have their roots in reality. To get rid of the stereotypes, we have to eliminate the roots.

What I hear diversity leaders like you saying is that your particular group is a victim of white racism, that whites are evil and that you are helpless innocents. A little more introspection might be helpful, just as I went through introspection on my retreats with people of color. It might be helpful for you to be more self-critical and address the problems in your own group. For instance, instead of petitioning the government to teach Mexican-Americans in their native language, at the expense of other ethnic groups, you might be honest about the abysmal failure of bilingual education and the fact that about half of Mexican-American kids drop out of school, a fact that has nothing to do with any other ethnic group. To blame that failure on other ethnic groups and to ask for special privileges based on your ethnicity is intellectually dishonest and counter to the principles of your adopted country.

DH: If you destroy our language, you destroy our culture.

CC: Whew. Let me count to ten before answering: One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. That was close. My Italian temper almost got the best of me on that one. But hey, it’s a cultural thing.

DH: Why would that make you angry? It’s the truth.

CC: I’ve read about this belief, but it’s the first time I’ve heard someone express it firsthand.

DH: As an Italian, you should understand what is is like to have your culture obliterated. The purpose of public schools has been to Americanize people, to take their culture away from them.

CC: Obliterated? God give me the strength to contol myself. My grandparents came to this country because they preferred it to the old country. Maybe yours came here because they are masochists who hate America. I can picture them talking back in Mexico: ”America is an evil, racist country, so let’s move there.”

In any event, my grandparents and parents ate Italian food, drank homemade Italian wine, listened to Italian opera, spoke Italian between themselves, and lived with other Italians in the Italian section of St. Louis known as Dago Hill, where it was so clean you couldn’t find a cigarette butt on the streets. I never remember the government Gestapo coming into our house and demanding that we stop celebrating our Italian heritage or stop using the Italian language. Oh yes, they also loved America and American values, customs, cuisine and sports, especially baseball. And they particularly appreciated religious freedom, freedom of expression, freedom of association, property rights, the rule of law, and legal contracts all the basic tenets of our liberal democracy, tenets that are hard to find outside of the Western world.

DH: But the government expected you to learn English in school, not Italian. That sounds like tyranny to me.

CC: I’m going to lose it. You might be right, but it was really my parents who expected me to learn English, just as their bilingual parents had expected them to learn English. Thank goodness. If they hadn’t, succeeding generations of Cantonis probably would have remained as poor as my grandparents. By the way, we do agree that public education has a tyrannical side, but for different reasons. That’s why my kid goes to parochial school.

As a purely practical matter, putting aside the issue of whether a nation can remain a nation if it doesn’t have a common culture and if it turns into a Tower of Babel, let me ask you this: How would teaching every ethnic student in his own language work? Are you suggesting that if there is one Iranian-American in a classroom, he should be taught in Farsi? What would happen to the cost of education?

DH: If we can send men to the Moon, we can figure that out. What’s important is that we don’t lose our cultural identities.

CC: And there it is in all its naked, ugly honesty. You don’t believe in all of us getting along and not being judged by the color of our skins. You want to be identified by your category. You relish it. You believe in multiculturalism. Or is it quadroculturalism for the Big Four groups of blacks, Hispanics, Asians and Native-Americans? Or is it monoculturalism for your own group?

DH: I guess we’re not going to agree.

CC: We can agree on that.

Mr. Cantoni is an author, columnist and management consultant. He can be reached at ccan2@aol.com.