The content discussed below will be based on this article:
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/04/11/tweet-political-science-group-angers-many-women-field
When I saw that the title of this article involved a political science group, it automatically grabbed my attention (since I’m a political science major). The article is about the American Political Association’s advertising mechanisms for published articles. They use Twitter to promote others to read certain articles.
However, one of their tweets were controversial. There was a tweet promoting an article about international NGOs. There is nothing wrong with that or with the wording of the tweet: “INGOs challenge existing social and political order on human rights. In this here article…” This information alone would be fine, but the problem is there was a photo of a smiling Asian woman attached to this tweet. While one of the co-authors was an Asian woman, Wendy Wong, it was not her photo attached to the tweet. Furthermore, the tweet and article was not about Asia. The picture had no relevance.
When speaking out against this to APSA, the response Wong was given was that “diverse stock images” are often used in conjunction with tweets and that this particular case was merely a mistake. However, Wong found that their other tweets tended to have images that actually did correspond with the topic of the article, so using diversity as an excuse was not justified. The tweet was deleted and an apology with an updated version was given, but there is a message that should be found here.
In class, we discussed the importance of diversity in college and how universities and colleges should have student distributions that represent the proportions of the population as a whole. We learned how many schools make diversity a priority, and we discussed how successful it can be based on our perspective of being students in Brooklyn College. Then, we debated about whether it would be fair for minorities to be able to get into schools with lower grades than the majority, and we concluded that it would be, because they have had less opportunities than the majority so it creates a balance of sorts.
It is sad to see how even though so much emphasis is being put on diversity, people can still use it as a way to justify discrimination. Wendy Wong is within the scope of higher education, being a political science associate professor, and unfortunately had to deal with this mistreatment. I just hope that people can learn to stop generalizing others as abstract entities and can start focusing on their depth and what they actually have to offer.
There does seem to be an unfortunate clash. We like to believe that we are progressive and we’ve gotten past old stereotypes and discriminatory practices. Yet, as we proudly point to our diverse student body as evidence of our liberal-mindedness, we subtly reinforce racial and ethnic divides.
I also wanted to comment on what your discussion of affirmative action. Although, the financial disadvantage that minorities often have is enough of a reason to implement such practices (affirmative action), the larger benefit for the whole student population may be an even stronger argument for it. As we have discussed in class, college is more than getting an academic education. It’s also about hearing different perspectives and learning to relate to different people. Having a diverse student body enables us to do exactly that.