Maryland Conservatarian

Walls Against Diversity Must Fall, Officials Say

“Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley and Rep. Albert R. Wynn marked Presidents' Day yesterday at the state's oldest historically black university [Bowie State] with a call to expand diversity in higher education.”

I especially like Congressman Wynn’s recommendation towards this:

“Wynn (D-Md.) said it is important to "preserve and expand" the roles of the nation's historically black campuses in higher education.”

Expand the roles? Unless he means increasing non-black enrollment, I’m hard pressed to see how preserving and expanding HBCs somehow also ‘expands diversity’. He gives a hint though that (surprise!) Federal dollars may be part of his thought process:

“Wynn called for the federal government to increase research funding for such schools, saying they receive 2 percent of research money.”

Not sure how many of the HBCs are research universities but since I suspect that much of federal research money is already wasted, I really have no problem with re-allocating such waste – especially. if it comes at the expense of a Harvard, Yale and/or Stanford.

The Governor also spoke, tempting controversy with such platitudes as:

“… diversity is "our greatest strength as a people."

Strong words indeed but he wasn’t through yet. Yesterday, Soccer Dad discussed the Governor’s call for StateStat - to be modeled after his Baltimore CitiStat. And give our Governor credit; at that same Diversity forum, he nails exactly why we need this program statewide:

“At Board of Public Works meetings, he has routinely quizzed state officials about minority participation on the contracts he is asked to approve, and yesterday he got the biggest applause of his speech at Bowie State by promising to make minority contracting the first thing bureaucrats are measured on through his new StateStat performance management process.” O'Malley reaches out to blacks

Yep – I think citizens statewide will all agree that when it comes to state contracts, the skin color, gender and/or ethnicity of the contractor is of paramount importance. We’re a forgiving lot so if a contract comes in 6 months late, 25% over budget and of questionable quality – well, we can probably forgive the bureaucrat who arranged for the contract…unless, of course, he compounded the error by having contracted with a straight, white male.

Here in Maryland, there isn’t a single prominent politician that won’t kneel in homage before the god of “Diversity”…but they become positively agnostic when it comes to their own careers: witness Martin O’Malley’s run for Mayor, Doug Gansler’s run for AG and Ben Cardin’s run for US Senate. In other words, any costs associated with diversity-mandates will not be borne by the enlightened deep-thinkers calling for such mandates.

...which is why I like to ridicule this whole "diversity" scam so many have bought into. Diversity is just code for "liberal Democrat" - the call for it just plays into the stereotype of Blacks (and Women) as a reliable Democratic base. The people buying into this rhetoric have now purchased a state owned by Democrats for decades now – accordingly; Maryland, like Louisiana, should be a veritable Disneyworld for the downtrodden and oppressed statewide.

Somehow I’m guessing that’s not how they now view it.