Diverse types of diversity are lacking

 I had said here, at the start of the year, that I planned to do an occasional second weekly post that would likely run on Saturdays. Said posts will be about, to coin a phrase, personal applied or experiential philosophy. I've already posted one and now this, my second, which takes a personal philosophical and psychological view of employers' search for "diversity candidates."

Shortly before Christmas, I applied for an editorial writer position with a large regional seven-day daily newspaper. I easily met most the experience criteria (other than maybe a relative lack of video experience, but that, for an editorial page?), but it had one other stipulation: 

A hard push for diversity candidates.

I responded that I was a white male, but that I had two types of diversity that should be valued on an editorial page today.

Specifically, to quote from my cover letter:

I have to confess that I’m a white male, so I can’t delivery that kind of diversity.

Please note the boldface, though. Diversity goes beyond race and sex.

For example? I’m a third-party voter. I exited the “duopoly” at the start of this century on presidential voting. And, that’s a diversity directly relevant to your editorial page.

I’m also a secularist. That’s a diversity directly relevant to some First Amendment editorials.

And, there you are.

So, what diversity issues are important, not just for that position, but for a lot of professional level hirings.

The bigger picture, as a leftist, is that there's yet other diversities. A Black woman (let's say that's who Josh hired) might have come from a much richer family than I did — let's say, a family to help her get a master's in journalism (a degree about as overrated as an Ed.D.) from Columbia or something. So, income diversity is yet another diversity. (I grew up poor at times, as in, dear old dad could have applied for food stamps and gotten them. But, no small-town conservative Lutheran pastor worth his salt and self-image protection was going to do that.)

I have disagreed with leftists like Doug Henwood who claim that issue of race almost always reduce to issues of class. But I do think there's a fairly large Venn diagram overlap.

In addition, there's yet other diversities than secularism, income level and political alignment that might be appropriate, beyond race and sex, for various positions. I mean, if this newspaper, in Texas, had said Spanish-language ability, that would be understandable.

Age-based diversity is another one, of course. Assuming that only kids are "with it" on social media is part of ageism ... practiced by the managerial class at many media sites.

I'm not about to become a post-Bakke conservative. But, my ox has been gored. (The newspaper readvertised the position, and upped the title, presumably because they didn't get enough good diversity candidates, or more likely, since such candidates can write their own job tickets, they didn't get diversity candidates willing to take the original pay level.) 

But, until we move more firmly in terms of income being considered a diversity issue, at a minimum, my gored oxness will bellow louder.