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?We Need More White People!? For Michelle Obama

Organizers for a Michelle Obama appearance at Carnegie Mellon University were careful to engineer their preferred version of ?diversity? in the visible audience, a ?diversity? that apparently had no room for an Asian student. (HatTip to Drudge)

While the crowd was indeed diverse, some students at the event questioned the practices of Mrs. Obama?s event coordinators, who handpicked the crowd sitting behind Mrs. Obama. The Tartan?s correspondents observed one event coordinator say to another, ?Get me more white people, we need more white people.? To an Asian girl sitting in the back row, one coordinator said, ?We?re moving you, sorry. It?s going to look so pretty, though.?

?I didn?t know they would say, ?We need a white person here,??? said attendee and senior psychology major Shayna Watson, who sat in the crowd behind Mrs. Obama. ?I understood they would want a show of diversity, but to pick up people and to reseat them, I didn?t know it would be so outright.?

The discomfort produced by the fact that engineered ?diversity? is inevitably ?so outright? explains why its advocates prefer the term ?affirmative action? to the more accurate and descriptive ?preferential treatment.?

Full post as published by Discriminations on April 09, 2008 (boomark / email).