In an article published by The Epoch Times a week or so ago, Canadian journalist Barbara Kay discussed the fact that the Law Society of Ontario demands those wishing to practice law within the province must declare their allegiance to the Ideals of Diversity, Equity and Inclusiveness, generally known as DEI. No lawyer, one would assume, ought to object to “ideals” which are in fact unequivocally Just. Kay’s problem, as is mine, is that the standards being imposed on Ontario’s lawyers are the product of a political ideology rather than anything that can be defined as Objectively True. Their arbitrary nature, that is to say, has less to do with a genuine concern for Justice than with the forceful imposition of a point of view which our Leftist Elites have decided we all ought to share.
In the name of Equity, Affirmative Action programs have been established in various Western nations intended to assure that those designated as oppressed by the Left are represented in accordance with their numbers. If 20% of a population is purple, for example, then 20% of those admitted to its institutions of higher learning ought to be purple. That this is a grossly superficial approach to the complexities of the human dynamic is obvious. Rooted in the Neo-Marxist assumption that those who have failed to excel in any particular area are always the victims of Oppression, it ignores the simple fact of genuine human diversity, of, for example, the self-evident differences between Men and Women and the radically different Cultural Values espoused by various Races.
The Culture of the Post Enlightenment West as well as of various Oriental peoples assumed Intelligence, Self-Discipline and Hard Work to be essential to success in the real world. We are all aware of the “tiger mom,” a simplistic stereotype no doubt, yet one which reflects the very real parental pressure placed on most oriental kids to take their schooling seriously and apply themselves aggressively in the pursuit of both academic excellence and a fulfilling life. Ironically, however, given that Orientals are a racial minority in America, Affirmative Action programs designed to help Blacks frequently result in Orientals with far better academic credentials being denied admission to the university of their choice. The statistical parity implicit in the Left’s definition of Social Equity, that is to say, stems from its focus on the superficialities of Identity at the expense of Human Merit and Achievement which it absurdly attributes to either the vagaries of chance or the tyranny of oppression.
Obviously there are millions of intelligent, hard working people of Color in the States who have excelled on their own merits. No one is stereotyping all Blacks based on the color of their skin! But the Cultural Values embraced by a significant percentage of today’s young Inner City Blacks are truly degenerate and a major factor in the statistical disparities which the Left attributes to White bigotry. Sexual promiscuity, as validated by various studies, has resulted in a radical increase in the number of young Black girls forced to raise children on their own. Bereft of the guidance of a responsible male guardian, the children of these fatherless “families” tend to succumb to mindless loathing for the traditional Values of the West which leads them to join gangs, engage in criminal activities, abuse drugs, etc., etc.. “Anti-Racist” disdain for the Nuclear Family as just another White, Western “social construct,” does nothing but exacerbate this problem, while a good deal of Rap, which is rife with anti-establishment anger, actively promotes it. These comments, far from being expressions of racism, are simply intended to highlight the radical disparities in the Cultural influences shaping America’s inner-city Blacks and those being imposed on most Asian American kids. Is it “equitable” that members of the latter demographic, having applied themselves assiduously to their studies, should be denied access to the university of their choice because their skin is not Black? Are Affirmative Action programs Just, or the product of a world-view that is eminently contentious.?
Black “conservative” Clarence Thomas feels affirmative action programs do little to address the real problems within Black Urban America. Fully qualified individuals who fail to gain the education or job of their choice simply because of their race or gender, hardly feel these programs are equitable. That Women and Men do not occupy every socio-economic niche with statistical parity is clearly a result of the objectively verifiable physical/psychological differences between the sexes. The Ideals of DEI, in other words, seem to “conservatives” more or less a parody of a genuine concern for Justice, the Left’s devotion to “diversity” actually entailing a refusal to admit the real Diversity of the species.
How then does the Law Society of Ontario have any right to impose its simple-minded acquiescence to the dominant ideological Bias of our era on all those seeking to practice Law within its jurisdiction? How is its arrogance in any way different from that of Catholicism’s Inquisitors of 1000 years ago? And, most absurd of all, how can those claiming to be the champions of Democracy be so stupidly, hypocritically opposed to the freedoms of Speech and Conscience which, up until recently, were deemed to be the very cornerstone of a healthy Democracy?
The Orwellian attempt to submit Ontario’s lawyers to the dictates of the Left’s mindless Ideology is but a symptom of the widespread sickness that has come to infect Canadian political discourse. I have dozens of acquaintances working in the public arena who are afraid to express their true opinions on any number of issues for fear of being fired. Sadly, as I shall discuss in my next blog, Leftist Fascism is no less prevalent in the country to Canada’s south, that which used to pride itself on its identity as the Land of the Free!