Wanker Word Of The Week: Diversity

John Black
Opinion

Let’s begin with a cliché: "Variety is the spice of life." Something I tell Mrs Black whenever I try talking her into wearing her catwoman costume to bed. Alas, variety has its limits and so does she. But enough about my fetishes. The modern left has succeeded in turning human variety itself into a fetish. They call it "diversity".

They seek it here, they seek it there. And if they can’t find it, they create it. Or rather they demand it be created by Government.

Witness the actions of that teenage male model who masquerades as the Canadian Prime Minister. He created "diversity" in his first cabinet by throwing out the norm of merit-based promotion in favour of genital-based promotion. He appointed women to half his cabinet positions – despite them only making up 22 percent of all Canadian MPs.

Then there’s the city of London. It faces a grave crisis. No, not the record number of stabbings, drug crimes or dementos throwing acid in people’s faces; It’s the lack of diversity in cyclists that’s got the City’s officials in a tiz. The cyclists are too white, male and middle-aged. I guess one can sympathise – the sight of ageing pommy porkers poured into lycra wet suits wobbling in and out of traffic could be a distraction to the London motorist. But as bad as getting a face full of sulphuric acid?

Diversity fertilisation is not confined to the corridors of power. It is spreading virus like, via the ubiquitous human resources department into private commerce. Twenty percent of fortune 500 companies now have a "chief diversity officer". The British publisher Penguin Random House announced recently that their stable of authors will "reflect UK society by 2025". Regardless of literary quality, if you’re the next J.K Rowling and look like the current J.K Rowling (a bit melanin deprived), you could now well be passed over for a left-handed gay Jamaican stutterer with a collection of poems about the trials of being a left-handed, gay, Jamaican stutterer.

Here in the land of milk and manuka honey we’ve had our own hand-wringing over diversity. Terrifyingly (to some), we have one of the lowest number of women in senior management positions in the western world. But worry not, the government has leapt into action: it has released a pamphlet. It has also set a target of 45% women on state sector board of directors. Will quotas follow?

This current obsession with diversity is as sincere as a Bill Clinton handshake. We don’t really care for true diversity in every walk of life. If we did we would have campaigns for more Asian All Blacks, more white Olympic sprinters, more female forestry workers and more any race-but-Indian dairy owners. We don’t, because most of us get that nature, nurture, and people’s individual choices will never conform to any social ideal of perfectly equal distribution.

And it’s better that way.

About the author

John Black