Diversity is Our Strength: Rubbish

Stephen Kershnar

Diversity is Our Strength

Dunkirk-Fredonia Observer

September 17, 2018

The U.S. cultural elite constantly repeats the mantra: diversity is our strength. This idea supports affirmative action, a sizable diversity industry, and immigration policies (for example, the diversity lottery). Academia, businesses, and the military enthusiastically promote diversity. Recently, FOX talk show host Tucker Carlson questioned the mantra is true and in so doing caused public outrage.   

The mantra that diversity is our strength expresses the notion that countries, communities, schools, and teams are better if they have people from different racial, ethnic, and religious groups as well as the two, or perhaps more, genders. The mantra does not support diversity of ideas in that the elites pushing diversity do not seek to increase the number of Christians, free market theorists, pro-gun types, etc. On the whole, the evidence does not support the mantra.  

First, consider nations. Columnist Pat Buchanan points out that the Soviet Union split into 15 nations largely on ethnic grounds. He notes that three of those new nations (Moldova, Ukraine, and Georgia) further split along ethnic lines. Racial and ethnic identities also split the British Empire, Czechoslovakia, Sudan, and Yugoslavia. Other countries have so far avoided an ethnic divide only through the use of coercion or violence. Consider, for example, China, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen. Tribal violence and separatist movements can be found throughout the world, even in old world countries such as Spain.

In contrast, largely homogenous countries such as Israel (outside of the occupied territories), Japan, and South Korea flourish despite a lack of diversity. The same is true for Nordic countries that have a history, at least until recently, of small homogenous populations.

Second, consider the free market’s view of diversity. The economic free market is the most reliable test we have of the relative costs and benefits of an idea or program. The market does not value diversity much. Consider competitive fields in which contribution is measurable, such as Hollywood, National Basketball Association, and the National Football League. They are notorious for their lack of diversity.  

Third, consider the social free market. This market also doesn’t value diversity much. Writing in The Huffington Post, Emily Swanson notes that 75% of whites only have white friends and only 8.4% of marriages are interracial. Economist Roland Fryer points out that only 0.4% of whites have a black spouse. This pattern is rational. The National Marriage Project’s David Poponue observes that marriages are more likely to succeed if the couple is similar in backgrounds, life goals, social networks, and values. Similarly, Cornell University sociologist Karl Pillemer finds that, “The research findings are quite clear: marriages that are homogamous in terms of economic background, religion and closeness in age are the most stable and tend to be happier.” It is plausible that racial, ethnic, and religious similarity tends to correlate with these other similarities.

The social free market has a similar take when it comes to communities. Harvard political science professor Robert Putnam argues that people in diverse communities tend to withdraw from collective life, distrust their neighbors, withdraw from even close friends, expect the worst from their community and its leaders, volunteer less, give less to charity, and work on community projects less often. He summarizes his findings as showing that diverse communities lead people to “huddle unhappily in front of the television.”

We find the same pattern in children. Duke University’s James Moody found that the more diverse the school, the more students self-segregate by race within the school and the fewer interracial friends they have.

Fourth, consider education. UCLA law professor Richard Sanders and Stuart Taylor Jr. argue that the pursuit of diversity mismatches black and Hispanic students to their schools and that doing so often harms them. Their idea is that a black student who would do well at Cal State Fresno might do poorly at Berkeley because he is mismatched against his peers. This is analogous to how a wrestler who does well at a small Division III college might do poorly at a top flight Division I program.

I should note that there is some evidence that diversity improves group decision-making and business profitability. Research by Carnegie Mellon University professor Anita Woolley and others found that in laboratories, diversity improves team-based decision-making. Research by Vivian Hunt and others of McKinsey & Company found that gender and ethnic diversity increases firms’ profitability.

Even so, it is unlikely that the diversity in the business world involves people with strikingly different abilities, education levels, and values. In addition, it is not clear how these purported benefits in diverse executive boards compare to the cost of moving away from merit-based hiring and promotion. It is odd that diversity at the executive level would benefit businesses, while it appears to harm performance elsewhere. Also, well-known MIT management professor Thomas Kochan has challenged the notion that the studies on the whole provide a business justification for diversity.  

Even if there were evidence that diversity is worth pursuing, the American people do not want it. Americans in effect show their preference against it in their churches, friendships, housing, and marriages. Their vote for Donald Trump against the elite’s hysterical opposition was a clear statement that the American people do not want their country flooded by immigrants, especially those who are very different from them. Seven states have banned affirmative action at public universities (Arizona, California, Michigan, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Washington) and more would do so were other states to have referenda on it. The majority of voters in those states did so despite a shrill defense of it by the cultural elites (specifically, the leaders of academia, business, entertainment, military, and politics). Americans just do not want merit being sacrificed to diversity.

In summary, diversity is not our strength. It has harmful effects in communities, education, nations, relationships, and at least some economic areas. Similar to other outdated mantras (“A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle”), it’s time to drop it.   

What the Sexual Abuse Scandal Tells Us About Catholicism

Stephen Kershnar

Lessons from the Catholic Sexual Abuse Scandal

Dunkirk-Fredonia Observer

September 3, 2018

            Like Lucy, the Catholic Church has some ‘splainin to do.

            This year, a Pennsylvania grand jury released a report that found that in six of the eight Roman Catholic dioceses there were over 1,000 identifiable child victims of sexual abuse. It guessed that there were thousands more. It found that over 300 priests abused the children. According to the Philadelphia Inquirer’s David Gambacorta, this included a ring of priests who raped children, shared intelligence on potential victims, and made child pornography on church property.  

            The John Jay Report found that in the U.S. from 1950-2002, there were over 11,000 allegations made against 4,392 priests. This was roughly 4% of the priests who served during this time. The Huffington Post’s Eoin Blackwell and the BBC report that in Australia from 1950 to 2010, 7% of all priests were alleged to have engaged in child sexual abuse and that the average victim was pre-teen.

This report found the abuse was largely male on male with roughly 4 out of 5 victims being boys. Also, much of the sex involved teenage boys, many not so young. The report found that 27% were 15-17 when first abused. 51% of the victims were 11-14 and 22% were 10 or younger. Thus, much of the sex likely involved ephebophilia (sexual interest in mid- to late-adolescents, generally ages 15-19) and hebephilia (sexual interest in early adolescents) and not pedophilia (sexual interest in a pre-pubescent child).

In many cases, the words “abuse” and “children” are highly misleading in that, as a moral matter, a priest who has sex with a willing 17 year-old male does not commit rape and his act is far less wrong, if it is wrong at all, than that done by a priest who forces himself on an unwilling 10-year-old boy. The same is true, for example, when an archbishop “molested” seminarians. It would helpful here to have an account of how the data on sex with mid- and late-adolescents relates to the general pattern of sex in the gay male community.

The grand jury found a common pattern in how the dioceses handled these matters. There overall finding was that the church focused on avoiding scandal, not protecting its members. The dioceses used misleading language (never say “rape”), didn’t conduct genuine investigations with properly trained personnel, sent priests to get church-run (and likely half-assed) diagnoses, removed problematic priests without explaining why, transferred problematic priests to new locations, and didn’t tell the police.

The Pope, archbishops, bishops, and priests from around the world have been accused of committing or covering up sexual abuse. According to BishopAccountability.org the church has paid out more than $3 billion in settlements. This includes Boston ($85 million), Los Angeles ($660 million), Portland ($75 million), and San Diego ($198 million). From 2004-2011, settlements bankrupted eight Catholic dioceses.

A couple of lessons that can be drawn from this. First, the pattern is evidence that Catholicism is deeply flawed. Consider if a diet organization found that 4% to 7% of its full-time dietary experts became morbidly obese after they started working for the organization. The organization would conclude that its dieting method or way of selecting experts is defective.

Here we have 4 to 7% of priests engaged in sexual abuse and arch-bishops, bishops, and other priests sweeping it under the rug. Unlike overeating, sexual abuse of unwilling children (again, not sex with willing mid- to late-teens) is a serious moral wrong and harshly punished by the criminal law. When this vast moral failing is added to the logically incoherent doctrines (consider, for example, Atonement, original sin, trinity, and transubstantiation) and empirically impossible ones (consider, for example, virgin birth and multiplying bread and fish), the likelihood of Catholicism being true becomes infinitesimally small.

Second, the scandal makes the moral lessons of the Church become ever more dependent on arguments that are independent of its religious premises. A church whose most committed practitioners are too often sexual predators has no business lecturing people on abortion, capitalism, divorce, gay marriage, and immigration, except to the extent that it has good arguments that are independent of its religious and moral doctrines. Lessons based on papal infallibility and sacred tradition are less convincing to the extent we discover that the people putting forth these doctrines are not particularly reliable.

For example, the Catholic Church teaches that abortion, desecrating the Eucharist, and renouncing one’s faith are mortal sins that result in the sinner going straight to hell. Here I am assuming that the person who does these things is sane, has sufficient knowledge of what he was doing and the consequences of doing so, acted voluntarily, and so on. It is less clear whether other acts (divorce, masturbation, and premarital sex) are mortal or venial (forgivable) sins. It is hard to see why someone would accept these claims unless they viewed the church as a moral authority.

The specific stories tell us that some of the priests warrant our sympathy rather than hatred. One priest from Scranton alleged raped a girl and then helped arrange for her to have an abortion. Another forced a boy to perform fellatio on him and then tried to purify the boy’s mouth with holy water. A ring of priests marked their favorite boys with telltale gold cross necklaces. If the priests really believed Catholic doctrine and yet performed these acts, they are so deeply troubled as to merit our pity rather than blame.

  

 A defender of Catholicism might argue that all groups have members who bad, ignorant, or weak and it is unfair to criticize the church for the general failings of humanity, specifically, the failings of adult men with their intense sexual desires. Still, the church puts forth its bishops, pope, and priests as being experts on God and morality and, in some cases, as having special access to what God believes people ought to do. Under these conditions, one would expect that its vanguard would perform better.