Word: tokenisms
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...believe that if those student organizations devoted to race relations had been given the chance to profit from the time and resources committed to the Handbook on Race Relations, they could have yielded greater benefits to the Harvard community. The Handbook on Race Relations was a token of goodwill and a good publicity show, yet it not only glossed over the entire issue of race relations but also avoided any provisions for substantial solutions and improvements...
...intimately entwined, and separating cause and effect is not easy. Biology may affect behavior, but behavior and experience also influence biology. Serotonin levels, for example, are not only controlled by genes but, according to research in monkeys, they can be lowered by regular exposure to alcohol. By the same token, says Kagan, a child with a fearless personality may turn into a criminal if reared in a chaotic home, but given a stable upbringing, "he could well become a CEO, test pilot, entrepreneur or the next Bill Clinton...
Likewise, the staff somehow thinks that for Harvard to seek out Latino professors is "demeaning." A Latino professor at Harvard wouldn't be a token but a long-overdue pioneer. Was the first Black student to go to a white public school in the South a "token...
...Latino applicants is a patronizing diminuition of the very real anger that many feel. Is integration "demeaning?" Harvard's continual failure to diversify its faculty undercuts its ability to offer the wide range of perspectives so vital to academic discourse. A Latino professor at Harvard, wouldn't be a token any more than was the first Black student at Harvard, or the first female professor...
...times when rigorous scholarship and the pursuit of truth were valued above the feel-good campus politics of militant minorities. If white males are the leading thinkers in a field--as they are in almost every real academic discipline--we should read their work, and not the token work of some sloppy scholar who just happens to be a woman, a Black or a Latino (or all of the above...