Sacrificing truth on the altar of diversity, by Jeff Jacoby. Recounts how children’s textbook publishers are struggling to meet “diversity guidelines” which “require you to include pictures of disabled children in your elementary and high school texts.” “How can you meet your quota of disability images if you don’t have disabled models who are suitably photogenic?” Houghton Mifflin “keeps a wheelchair on hand as a prop and hires able-bodied children from a modeling agency to pose in it.”
It’s also noted that “images of Chicanos can be passed off as American Indians from the Southwest, because they ‘look very similar.’ Similarly, Golden notes, a textbook photographer tells clients that since the ‘facial features’ of some Asians resemble Indians from Mexico, ‘there are some times where you can flip-flop.'”
Additionally, “pictures of authentic Hispanics who happen to have blond hair or blue eyes don’t count toward the Hispanic quota ‘because their background would not be apparent to readers.’ In other words, rather than expose schoolchildren to the fact that ‘Hispanic” is an artificial classification that encompasses people of every color, publishers promote the fiction that all Hispanics look the same — and that looks, not language or lineage, are the essence of Hispanic identity.'”
Aren’t our “liberal” masters wonderful and tolerant of diversity?
11:07 am on August 30, 2006
