Review: The Diversity Delusion: How Race and Gender Pandering Corrupt the University and Undermine Our Culture

The Diversity Delusion: How Race and Gender Pandering Corrupt the University and Undermine Our Culture by Heather Mac Donald
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Detailed and meticulously researched, Heather MacDonald's work to reveal the ever-growing body of evidence that our universities have become ghettos for gender pandering and infantilizing young men and women, should be required reading - both in college and high school.

It is not light reading. It is deeply challenging. MacDonald makes arresting observations on how efforts in diversity in admissions backfires. She observes, and supports with hard numbers, how diversity admissions practices on competitive college campuses results in fewer minorities in STEM studies. She provides average GPAs for Asian students, white students, black students and Hispanic students and tracks these with average GPAs for different majors. It is uncomfortable to read. It was uncomfortable for me to read. But that doesn't mean it should not be read.

Completely left out of the diversity admissions discussion in this book are poor whites who have no chance of going to college. None. No mention of those sitting in the back-most row of the diversity debate, the ones left behind and left out altogether. I read a lot about diversity these days and it is increasingly ominous to me how very poor whites are utterly invisible to our modern culture.

MacDonald devotes much of this book to the blustering rape culture on campuses and in society, generally. She details how preposterous attempts to police sex on the campus backfires. She observes how attempts to police sexual desire actual turns the clock back and places into the hands of men the chastity of women. She presents compelling evidence that the current climate on college campuses, once again, makes the male the sole guardian of female safety. She layouts with great care the neo-Victorian worldview growing on the college campus - a view that essentially says that females have no responsibility for their own behavior, while the male is responsible not only for himself, but for his partner as well. Unintended consequences, etc.

MacDonald is very hard on spineless faculty and administrators on college campuses, who let themselves be bullied by spoiled, anarchical, privileged kids and who render powerless actual victims of sexual abuse.

Here's what I got from reading this book: The truth does not always sound nice. And nice-sounding words are not always the truth.

This is a courageous book. It presents a point of view which is not hate-filled but fact-filled. It is not biased, racist, xenophobic or genophobic. It does contain hard-to-confront info, though. It made me uneasy. It made me think. Whatever your opinion on these topics, your bank of knowledge is not complete until you read this book. It may not change your mind but it will greatly inform the debate.


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