Diversity Inc.

    In the preface, Pamela Newkirk debunks what she considers the myth of diversity and integration in the elite fields. She brings up two questions with regards to diversity; the first is how and why diversity is lagging, and secondly, why the White elites believe statistics, which the author claims are distorted and exaggerated.  In the first chapter she blames in on President Reagan cutting Federal money for job training, though I add that Reagan blames minority unemployment on minimum wage increases (as did economists like Milton Friedman.) Then she brings up an issue – museums having few Black curators – which I agree with wholeheartedly. I’ve been to museums all over the USA, and I saw lots of Black security guards, and but few in positions of management. The author makes this a race issue, but I would have to disagree, based on my experience and observation. If you look up any museum online, you will see that the curatorial staff have degrees in history, art history, and lots of unpaid internships in museums. It’s not a field for someone who has to work to earn money during the summer. Furthermore, a major art museum is going to prefer someone who went to a top college, not community college. Let’s face it, being a museum curator is an “ivory tower” kind of career.

    Newkirk writes that few Black Americans head a daily paper (probably true) or get an Oscar. But is the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences the only judge of talent? She doesn’t mention whether Black actors, writers, and directors get prizes at other festivals, like Sundance, Telluride, Tribeca, Cannes, Moscow, Berlin, Venice, etc. You also have to think in terms of geography; The Oscars are in LA, home of the Hollywood studios, while directors like Spike Lee take their cameras outdoors on the East Coast. He and other directors – Scorsese, Jarmusch, Alexander Paine – make their movies far away from LA, so it’s not surprising that they’re going to be closed out of the Hollywood cliques. The Oscars are essentially a child of the Hollywood system.

    Here are some things that I find missing from this book. First, I would like to know if job applicants are rejected from jobs on account of race. If an office has one Black employee, does that mean they have closed hiring practices, or does it mean that no Black men or women applied? Next, let’s take stock of how many Black school principals there are in major cities, then see how many of them head a racially integrated school. If the results are sparse, does that mean the White parents don’t want a Black American principal in their kids’ school? Then we can wonder why there are so many Black American correction officers in the NYCDOC, and few Whites. If more Whites entered, would there be an uproar over White people taking Black jobs? There are some trades, like construction, that are dominantly White, but is that because of racism, or because Poles and Albanians only hire their own? The same thing holds true for the jewelry industry, famously dominated by Hasidic Jews. Should we attribute the lack of Black gem cutters to racism, or because the Hasidic jewelers in NYC, Tel Aviv, and Antwerp, only train their own?

    Sorry Ms. Newkirk, but your book falls short. You failed to research enough fields to find out why Black Americans are underrepresented. If your research were more extensive, then you might have found instances of genuine racism, and your book might be the start of change in the USA.