Another Brief Thought

You probably know this, but it's very hard to write an extended blog entry on 4 hours of sleep. Thus, "brief thoughts."

I was reading through the Daily Orange to see if there was anything to write about, and I came across this article about the speaker coming to SU tonight.

That's right, Chuck D. of Public Enemy is coming to Syracuse to SPEAK. Not to perform, but to SPEAK. Once again, draw your own conclusions.

Anyway, one sentence in particular stood out from the rest of the article:

"We were looking for diverse speakers," said Dennis Jacobs, chairman of University Union Speakers, "and we thought it would be interesting for someone from the music world to speak rather than perform."

"Diverse speakers." Interesting terminology. You know, I've noticed that every time the school talks about diversity, they basically mean "black people." I know that's not really an accurate analysis of the entire "diversity" plan, but I've noticed a tendency to refer to "diverse speakers," such as Chuck D., Phylicia Rashad, and James Earl Jones.

Notice how all three of those people are, in fact, the same color? That doesn't seem very diverse. That really bothers me, especially considering the point I've made in the past that there are only 2 ways to have a "diverse speaker."

The first way, according to the actual definition of "diverse," is to have a speaker who changes color, gender, or physical form in some way throughout the presentation. I still haven't seen the advertisements for Optimus Prime's big visit.

The second way for a single speaker to be diverse is if "diverse" means "not white."

...You can find a more interesting analysis of this terminology here.