On the Sunday Special episode of Human Events Daily, host Jack Posobiec spoke with Heather Mac Donald from the Manhattan Institute, about the effects of diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives on the systems of our society, specifically whether the notion of diversity is America's greatest strength.
Posobiec asked, "Is diversity our greatest strength? Is diversity the greatest virtue of Western civilization?" Mac Donald replied, "No, it's not. The greatest virtue of Western civilization is achievement, accomplishment, exploration, the scientific method, and constitutional government. None of those things have any inherent relationship to diversity."
"If we want to be truly honest about the empirical data, we would draw on Robert Putnam's work that showed that, in fact, local communities become increasingly distrustful of each other," Mac Donald said.
According to Scientific American, Putnam, a Harvard professor, published a paper in 2007 "which used a large, nationally representative sample of nearly 30,000 Americans" and "found that people living in more diverse areas reported lower levels of trust in their neighbors."
The study also showed that as diversity grew, Americans showed "less interest in voting, volunteering, and giving to charity" and overall "greater diversity seemed to be linked to both feelings and behaviors that threaten a sense of community."
"The reason that we keep talking about diversity right now," Mac Donald said. "it's a code word. If you really want to understand what this discourse is all about, diversity is a code word for racial preferences.
"Any institution that is saying, 'Oh, we're in the pursuit of diversity' is telling you that it is taking aim at meritocratic standards because sadly, given the Academic skills gap, you can have diversity or you can have a meritocracy. You cannot have both," she added.
The growing Academic skills gap in America relates to the distance between what a child at a certain grade level and age knows and what the child should know.
Mac Donald and Posobiec continued to discuss the relationship between the push for diversity, equity, and inclusion and its effects on society, and she again said, "you can have diversity, you can have a meritocracy, you cannot have both" when discussing standards for jobs such as engineers and conductors.
The consequence of the modern "racial gatekeepers," Mac Donald explained, is a civilizational decline.
"As long as racism remains the only allowable explanation for ongoing racial disparities," she said. "Everything is coming down. You speak about civilizations that collapse inwards. We are collapsing ours at an unprecedented rate. It is all coming down."
She said a shift must happen from focusing on racial disparities to valuing academic achievement.
