My university recently announced the appointment of Dr. Tamra Minor as our new Associate Vice Chancellor of Institutional Diversity. Dr. Minor said her appointment illustrates that the entire university leadership is now serious about the commitment to diversity and the promotion of a “culture of inclusiveness” at UNC-Wilmington. I respectfully take issue with her socially constructed interpretation of reality.

As a preliminary matter, this Associate Vice Chancellor of Institutional Diversity position is not actually a new position at all. The name of Dr. Minor’s old position of Director of Campus Diversity was simply changed to sound more important. Her previous salary of $84,000 hasn’t changed either. She’ll do the same job for the same money despite making this grand statement in a university press release:

“(M)y major focus will include identifying strategies to enhance the culture of UNCW by assisting students in developing the intellectual, social, emotional, cultural and civic capacities essential to lead in a global economy.”

Dr. Minor’s statement that she will help students develop the “emotional capacities” that are “essential” to lead in a “global economy” could not be further from the truth. Directors of “diversity” - or even “institutional diversity” - always have the opposite effect on minority students. Without fail, they encourage minority students to be hypersensitive and, thus, deprive them of the emotional maturity needed to function in any economy, global or otherwise.

In my experience, the more money a school spends on “diversity initiatives” the more minority students complain. And, sadly, this also causes non-minority students to walk on eggshells around them. This, in turn, produces a form of accidental segregation, which only serves as a supplement to the university’s intentional segregation. In fact, this intentional segregation is one of exactly three unstated goals of the diversity movement:

1. To promote racist discrimination.
2. To promote non-racist discrimination.
3. To promote racial separatism.

I am fairly certain that every reader knows the meaning of racial separatism. But the distinction between racist and non-racist discrimination is not widely understood. The former is any initiative that seeks to increase minority presence on campus by lowering standards for minorities, usually blacks.

For example, in a recent press release, UNC-Wilmington made reference to Dennis Carter - an associate vice chancellor for Academic Affairs - who has been instrumental (in the school’s opinion) in supporting efforts on behalf of minority students at UNCW through programs such as “Great Expectations.” Often, when diversity initiatives make mention of “great expectations” they are simply concealing the fact that the initiative actually sets lower expectation for minorities. I classify these initiatives as “racist” forms of discrimination because they so often reinforce notions of black intellectual inferiority. This is both tragic and counter-productive.

But other forms of discrimination have nothing to do with racism in the purest sense. For example, initiatives that seek to retain minority faculty members - by paying them much more than whites – do not reinforce truly racist stereotypes. But this minority hush money does prove that affirmative action is no longer necessary.

Remembering these three goals of diversity helps achieve insight into why Dr. Minor was hired for this “new” position. It wasn’t because she is bright (though she is). It wasn’t because she is a nice person (though she is). It wasn’t because she’s attractive and skilled socially (though she is both). She was given this job simply because she is black. Continued...