Get government out of the diversity business

Wish I'd said that!

[Reprinted from Issues & Views January 28, 2002]

On Dec. 18, Ford Motor Company agreed to pay $10.5 million to settle two suits based on gender, race and age discrimination. The automaker was accused of unfair bias in giving older, white male employees lower grades, raises and rates of promotion than young women and minorities.

Two weeks ago, Smith College coach Jim Babyak was awarded $1.65 million for being fired in 1997 so that the college could hire a woman instead.

The "men's movement" considers these payouts to be victories, but they are not. They reassert two of the most destructive assumptions underlying "diversity" programs such as affirmative action: First, that government has a right to determine the employment practices of private companies; second, that a marketplace in which people trade without restriction is inherently unfair and hinders diversity. . . .

In 1957, Gary Becker's pivotal book The Economics of Discrimination provided persuasive evidence that employers who used "unfair bias" generated less income. The implications of Becker's work have been expanded by many analysts, including the black economist Thomas Sowell. He argues passionately that government's intervention "on behalf" of blacks has bitterly impoverished them. . . . .

If the men's movement believes that the recent Ford and Smith College payoffs constitute progress, they are mistaken. The courts are perpetuating the same pattern that caused conflict in the first place: that is, the "right" of government to determine the terms on which private parties associate. It was wrong when it benefited women. It is wrong when it benefits men.

Government should get out of the diversity business. Employers should determine their own employment practices and be left to pay the high economic cost of discrimination.

-- Wendy McElroy, excerpted from "Government Should Not Dictate Diversity," on ifeminists.com.

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