This is my first official post. I submitted this as an article to National Review Online for their consideration, but I haven't heard from them yet. It's not like this is the only one sent to them. So not knowing when they would respond, I decided to go ahead and post it here. As always, I welcome your comments. Let me know what you think.

Ron

On Being Diversity Neutral

I spent the first nineteen years of my career at a large multinational, multibillion dollar, multi-thousand employee company. In the early years, it was the epitome of a performance-driven company. One could start anywhere and go anywhere based on one’s ability to execute and contribute on behalf of the business. Secretaries became vice presidents. Software developers became Group Executives. It felt wide-open, bare-knuckled, and no-holds barred. The esprit-de-corps was remarkable, and each of us felt that we were part of something unique, special. The only factor determining your success was your willingness to work hard and your ability to succeed. And that was my experience for my first several years at the company. It was an exciting environment, and I loved it.

And then the politically correct forces of the times arrived, and the company caved. Diversity awareness set in. The company began offering classes on diversity to increase employees’ awareness of other ethnicities and their cultures, and sensitivity to same. I had mixed emotions about it at best. And sure enough, shortly after this process began, my low expectations were confirmed. I was speaking to a friend in the company who had attended the diversity class. If he wasn’t aware of the stereotypes of Mexicans before the class, he certainly was now. I can’t say he was better off for it. In the course of discussing the class, his eyes widened slightly, as if really seeing me for the first time: “You’re a Mexican, aren’t you?” Um, yes, at least I was the last time I checked. And I was fairly certain I was a Mexican the last time we had talked, before he had taken the diversity class. I recognized that now my ethnicity mattered, whereas before the only thing that mattered was how I treated people and the results I was able to achieve through my work. That’s what my parents had always taught me. I disliked the change immediately.

For the first time in my career, people began to notice the fact that I was an American of Mexican descent. I always knew I was a Mexican, but never thought about it very much. What difference did it make? So what? Wasn’t I still a human being first? Wasn’t it the content of my character that mattered? Wasn’t it my ability and willingness to work that mattered? Why, then, was I now being at least partially judged by the color of my skin? All of a sudden people I knew were noting that I was, in fact, a Mexican. Many of my more astute colleagues and friends had already recognized this fact, of course, but now I felt somewhat like a novelty instead of a person.

I didn’t ask for it, and I didn’t want it, and I still don’t. It was forced on me. This new “sensitivity” immediately threw everything into question. Now, was I being promoted because I was effective, or partly or only because I was a Mexican? I found it irritating, unnecessary, and insulting. I didn’t need a break, I could compete with anyone. And if someone was a better contributor than me, then that’s the way it was. I didn’t want a “Mexican dividend.” If I was promoted, I wanted it to be based solely on my contributions. Now I felt that whenever I was promoted people would always question whether or not my ethnicity contributed to the decision. Gross.

Then I saw a different aspect of this thinking revealed to me, which I had in no way considered and in fact would not have even occurred to me at the time. I was attending a company-mandated class designed to evolve the nature of the company from a competitive, aggressive posture, to one which operated under a more sensitive, “kinder, gentler” environment. Diversity was a key component of the class. The company was sending all of its leaders to the class, as leadership basically drives the environment of a workplace. At the end of the first day of class, the instructors showed the movie The Color of Fear. It is a very powerful film about the state of race relations in America as seen through the eyes of eight North American men of African, Asian, European, and Latino descent. In a series of emotional and dramatic confrontations the men reveal the pain and scars that racism (or their perception thereof) has caused them. On the flipside, however, the movie could be perceived as six guys of color verbally beating up on one white guy (the other white guy was gay; he seemed to escape the bulk of the assaults), who really had nothing to do with creating the social systems that led to racism. He was just a convenient punching bag. The film, nonetheless, was very powerful.

The following morning the class discussed the film, several of us sharing our personal experience with it. I shared with the group that though I understood and was sympathetic to the perspectives of the Latino men in the film, I didn’t see things the same way they did. I had different ideas. I didn’t want everyone assuming I thought the same way they did simply because I shared the same skin color. If all the white people in the room were getting their first cracks at understanding diversity, then I wanted them to understand that there were diverse thoughts within the same ethnic groups, much as there is vast diversity of thought within whites.

Another person shared, then the next person (whose name I will withhold to protect the guilty) volunteered that she was “ashamed of the company for showing this film with no people of color in the room.” I was, in fact, the only person of color in the room. She caught herself, looked at me, and said, “Well, you don’t count, Ron, because you’re diversity neutral because you espouse white male views.” I was so floored that I didn’t know whether to burst out laughing or whether to publicly humiliate her for the hypocrisy, arrogance, and presumption of her thinking. I just responded that she, nor anyone else, could limit my ethnic diversity simply because I didn’t think the way she expected a Mexican to think.

So there you have it. It was my first exposure to the line of thinking (and this from a white woman, as if she would know how a Mexican should or would think) that one’s race only counts if one possesses a particular ideology. If a person of color has conservative convictions, they won’t be called racist themselves, but they will not really be ethnic because they have adopted conservative American values, such as hard work, independence, self-reliance, and the love of freedom. I find this to be one of the most insidious, arrogant, and presumptuous lines of thinking I’ve ever encountered, and in itself is an insidious form of racism.

At some point in the near future this line of thinking will no longer be viewed as credible (which means that liberals will continue with it for years to come). People of color are being appointed and elected to some of the highest leadership positions in the nation. The hypocrisy of race-card wielding ethnic leaders campaigning against and attacking ethnic conservative leaders, and in fact promoting white leaders running against them, exposes that race no longer matters to them, only ideology. Or, they view only one ideology as being useful to their race. This can only last so long before it collapses under its own weight. Either way, this behavior and line of thinking contributes to the dilution of the power of the race card, something one would think ethnic leaders would want to avoid.

So all this having been said, I think for virtually my entire career my race hasn’t mattered one way or the other. If it has, I’m unaware of it. I’ve never in any form tried to exploit it. The notion that I need help or that I need a spot reserved for me because I’m a Mexican makes me sick. My parents worked hard to give me a better life, as their parents did before them (they emigrated to the U.S. from Mexico). They taught me right from wrong, personal responsibility and accountability, and the fact that I was going to have to earn my way through this life. They never ever suggested that anyone owed me anything, and never did they suggest that I should look to the government for help. So I just go about the business of providing for and raising my family the best I know how. If I wanted to be in a majority population, so to speak, I suppose I could immigrate to Mexico, assuming they’d want me or have me. After all, I wouldn’t be considered diversity neutral there. But all in all, I think I’ll take my chances here.