By Jerry Shenk

jshenk2010@gmail.com

A Google search of the words “diversity is strength” yields more than six million results.

Progressives for whom the platitude has become unassailable, albeit fact-free dogma have created hundreds of logos and images proclaiming that Diversity is (our) Strength, none of which specifically define diversity. Given the multitude of circumstances in which “diversity” is invoked, though, one gathers that its practical left-wing definitions are “whatever we say” and/or “…because…shut up!”

Diversity is Strength is a vague, faculty-lounge-like locution often applied in the same way the left gratuitously misuses pejoratives such as “racist,” “sexist,” “xenophobe,” “science denier” or “homophobe” to shut down reasonable disagreements over or expressions of justifiable opposition to their social, cultural or political preferences – or simply to delegitimize political adversaries.

For progressives, “diversity” has become an intuitively self-vindicating term employed to mask otherwise-divisive identity politics which emphasize cultural equivalency (“Religion of peace,” “One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter”), illegals (“Dreamers,” “undocumented job-seekers), militant feminist sloganizing, LGBT grievance-mongering and, especially, race (affirmative action, Black Lives Matter). Suggestions that All or Blue Lives Matter are punishable violations of racial conformity.

The lazy left is lousy at persuasion and coherent, logical explanations, so attempts to bully and insult those with whom they merely disagree are popular weapons of choice. That strategy works frequently enough to lather-rinse-and-repeat, but left-wing intimidation/indoctrination campaigns can be perversely entertaining – like small children’s tantrums, only funnier.

For example, things get tricky when “diversities” clash. In November, 2016, San Diego’s first transgender police officer was excluded from an LGBT memorial event she helped to plan so the sight of her uniform wouldn’t upset other attendees. Bye-bye, “diversity.”

In October, while agitating for dedicated “safe spaces” exclusively for “people of color,” students at the University of California-Berkeley blocked white students from using a campus entrance gate. Note to Berkeley progressives: If you’re demanding segregation or apartheid, you’re probably racists.

Faithful conformance to ‘diversity” can get awkward. Also in October, a young woman at South Africa’s Cape Town University publicly rejected science in favor of witchcraft, saying: "Science as a whole is a product of Western modernity and the whole thing should be scratched off," She called for a conference group to "restart science from an African perspective, from our perspective." Her preferred method to "restart science from an African perspective?" By practicing "black magic."

Then, a moderator admonished an openly-amused attendee for "disrespecting the sacredness of this space," for trying to "collapse this space and make it antagonizing" and forced him to apologize. Apparently, liberals are the “science deniers.”

Last September, a University of Michigan student brilliantly protested an initiative intended to force the entire campus community to use fabricated pronouns to address students who imagine they belong to some alternate, invented gender. On a data-base-building web page inviting students to declare their preferred “designated” pronouns, a conservative undergraduate expressed his desire to be addressed as “His Majesty...” University progressives were unamused, even angered.

Clearly, nonconforming diversities are unacceptable, …because…shut up!