DIVERSITY POLICE GONE WILD.
| Author | Mac Donald, Heather |
| Position | AMERICAN THOUGHT |
OUR NATION is about to be transformed thanks to the #MeToo movement I am not speaking about a cessation of sexual predation in the workplace. If that were the only consequence of #MeToo, the movement clearly would be a force for good. However, its effects are going to be more sweeping and destructive.
Pressures for so-called diversity--defined reductively by gonads and melanin--are, of course, nothing new. Since the 1990s, every mainstream institution has lived in terror of three lethal words: "all white male," an epithet capable of producing paroxysms of self-abasement. Silicon Valley start-ups and science labs quake before the charge of being all or mostly male; their varied ethnic demographics earn them no protection from the diversity racket.
The New York Times recently criticized the board of fashion giant H&M for being "entirely white." We therefore can infer mat there are females on the H&M board, or else the Times would have let loose with the bigger gun: "all white male." When both categories of alleged privilege--white and male--overlap, an activist is in the diversity sweet spot his or her power over an institution at its zenith.
Yet, no matter how pervasive the diversity imperative was before, the #MeToo movement is going to make the previous three decades look like a golden age of meritocracy. No mainstream institution will hire, promote, or compensate without an exquisite calculation of gender and race ratios. Males in general, and white males in particular, will have to clear a very high bar in order to justify further deferring that halcyon moment of gender equity.
Hollywood and the media already are showing the #MeToo effect. At mis year's Oscar lunch, the president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, John Bailey, prefaced his remarks by noting that he was a "75-year-old white man." Bailey was trying to get out ahead of the curve, since if he had not pointed out this shameful status, feminist crusaders in the press and the industry would have done so for him. Witness actress Natalie Portman's sneer in presenting the Best Director prize at the 2018 Golden Globe awards: "And here are the all-male nominees." Such shallow bean counting now is going to become the automatic response to any perceived lack of "diversity" in entertainment.
Naturally, Bailey announced reparations for the Academy's predominantly white male profile: henceforth it would "balance gender, race, ethnicity, and religion" in all its activities and would double its female and minority members by 2020. Not surprisingly, this was not enough. Outside the lunch, the National Hispanic Media Coalition protested the lack of proportional ethnic representation in Oscar nominations and acting roles.
CBS considered only females to fill the vacated anchor slot at "Face the Nation," to catch up with 'The Today Show," which now has two female anchors. (Indeed, CBS ultimately hired Margaret Brennan to replace John Dickerson.) The Recording Academy, which oversees the Grammys, has promised to overcome the "unconscious biases that impede female advancement" in the music industry, after bean-counting complaints from the pop music critic of The Wall Street Journal as well as female music executives.
The prospect of left-wing entertainment moguls having to sacrifice their box office judgment to identity politics is an unalloyed pleasure, and of little consequence to society at large, but quota-izing hardly will be limited to Hollywood.
Major publishing houses are analyzing their author lists by gender and race and making publishing decisions accordingly. What books get reviewed and who reviews them increasingly will be determined according to gender and race. There are likely no major newspapers that are not tallying reporter and op-ed bylines, as well as the topics they cover...
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