United States Representative James Clyburn (D-S.C.) gives “diversity” a bad name.
That’s not because he’s black: his congressional district is almost 60 percent black.
It’s because he’s nuts.
Clyburn is the current, at least until the new Congress is seated, House majority whip. He has been in Congress since 1993, making him a poster child for term limits. He is singularly responsible for Joe Biden being president: at a key moment when it looked as if Bernie Sanders would get the Democratic nomination in 2020, Clyburn threw his support to Joe Biden. The country has been paying dearly ever since.
Recently he made an unbelievably nutty remark about this year’s elections:
This is what happens in a country that follows what happened in Germany in the early ’30s. . . . This country is on track to repeat what happened in Germany when it was the greatest democracy going. It elected a chancellor, who then co-opted the media. This past president calling the press the enemy of the people—that is a bunch of crap, and we know it. And that’s what’s going on in this country.
How many nuts like that do we want serving in Congress? How many nuts do the Diversity Police want?
Diversity is our strength? Please. Who says so?
Heather McGhee says, among others. Last June, at tony Milton Academy outside Boston, a Milton graduate and professional diversity expert named Heather McGhee gave the graduation address during which she trotted out the usual mantra about diversity. She told the students that “it turns out that diversity is a superpower. Research shows that diverse groups are more creative, better at problem-solving, see people bring their different lived experiences and ways at looking at the world, and together can see more sides of a problem, and come up with more innovative solutions.”
Ooh! What would we do without research? McGhee has been asked a number of times to provide citations for the research she mentioned, but she never replied.
So: Two atheist architects are building a brothel for the Harry Reid family in Nevada. One day they simultaneously smack their foreheads and exclaim, “Diversity is our strength! Let us therefore hire a Catholic architect to work with us.”
One day, after showering, the Harlem Globetrotters are looking in the locker room mirror and one of them says, “Hey, guess what: we don’t have any white players. Diversity is our strength. Let us find ourselves a white player.” (This is not a joke. The Globetrotters, in fact, do have a white player on their current roster. And, as it turns out, two women!)
When people say “diversity is our strength” they are talking only about racial diversity, of course, but not about just any “diverse” race. Only blacks. They are not talking about including Asians—whether or not they got into Harvard.
If you’re trying to solve a complex economic problem, you’d be thrilled if you could get Thomas Sowell to help you (he’s 92, so it’s not likely you can get him, but you can always ask). He’d be brilliant, of course. But would you then run around saying, “Diversity is our strength, and Sowell’s joining our team proves it”? If you were wacky, you might.
If you were planning a marketing strategy in Harlem, you might well hire some blacks to help you understand your potential customers. What does that prove? And how many studies do you need to prove something that is so intuitive?
If you ask mega-companies—which are the companies that tend to be “studied” in the “research” on “diversity”—they’ll all say that a diverse workforce is beneficial. What corporate official would dare say it isn’t? But even if the corporate interviewees are not just being woke (how likely is that?), is what’s good for General Motors necessarily good for Mom & Pop, Inc.? How do you extrapolate from the practices and experience of Fortune 500 companies—which market to all of America and probably to the world as well—and apply it to your locally owned shop?
And in some circumstances racial diversity could be a drawback. If you were marketing, say, to a small community in which two blacks had recently murdered some high school students, would racial diversity really be a strength? Possibly not, for a while, however unfair that may seem.
Acting out their mantra, Democrats have created a problem for themselves: they selected an idiot to be vice president. They selected her because she’s black. Kamala Harris may be the least qualified person ever to serve in public office. Ever. She makes James Clyburn look good. Here’s a sample of Harris rhetoric, which should be included in the next edition of Bartlett’s Famous Quotations: “We will work together, and continue to work together, to address these issues, to tackle these challenges, and to work together as we continue to work operating from the new norms, rules, and agreements, that we will convene to work together.” Humorists all over the world are studying her form.
How will the Democrats get rid of her? What will the black community—all of Jim Clyburn’s friends—say if the Democrats dump her?
Calling Heather McGhee: Is the diversity that Kamala Harris brings to the Democratic Party a strength? If not, why not? Use only one graduation speech.
And while you’re at it, tell us what to do about nutty Jim Clyburn.