The diversity trap

Britain seems to be following America down a dangerous path. There’s your politician David Lammy accusing Oxford and Cambridge of racial bias — and refusing to listen when they point out they simply accept whoever gets top grades. Then there’s the author Lionel Shriver, pilloried because she dared to suggest (in this magazine) that privileging identity quotas over talent might be a mistake. It seems the UK is succumbing to the same madness over diversity and quotas that has plagued the US for half a century. The hope is that quotas lead to a fairer, more tolerant society, but the reality is very different. 

Across the Atlantic, American institutions have enshrined diversity and inclusion as their guiding principles. From university admissions to life-or-death professions such as air-traffic control, we have sanctified diversity so completely that many treat the idea of choosing applicants based on merit as if it were tantamount to nailing a ‘whites only’ sign to the door.

Despite its seeming popularity, affirmative action has always presented a problem for even its most ardent supporters: it is a racist policy.