Unlikely Courses on Diversity and Equity

A February 22nd story in the Arizona Daily Star said that, beginning in 2026, the University of Arizona (UA) will require undergraduate students to complete two courses on diversity and equity in order to graduate. The story went on to say:

The new general education curriculum will require students to fulfill the diversity and equity requirement by studying “how historical and contemporary populations have experienced inequality, considering diversity, power and equity through disciplinary perspectives,” according to information posted on the university’s website in October 2023.

Can the UA, or any university for that matter, be trusted to address these subjects in a scholarly, unbiased, and agenda-free manner? And what would that look like?

To answer the second question, I offer descriptions below for two hypothetical courses that would be scholarly, unbiased, and agenda-free.

If courses like the hypothetical ones will not be part of the diversity and equity requirements at the UA, then that answers the first question about whether the university can be trusted. The answer is no.

Course One: What is Race and Racism?

A required three-credit-hour course on diversity and equity.
Objectives

1) To show that the conventional thinking about race and the official racial classifications are unscientific, misleading, and barriers to true diversity, equity and inclusion.

2) To make an important distinction between “racist” and “racial” actions and comments.

Foundational Disciplines

Course content is based on genetics, history, anthropology, ethnography, and sociology. Distinguished professors from these disciplines developed the content and teach sections of the course.

Overview

Emotionally-loaded questions are raised about whether race is a social construct, is genetically determined, is in the eye of the beholder, is changeable and malleable based on perceptions and the zeitgeist of the day, and is separate and distinct from ethnicity.

The seven official racial classifications promulgated by the US government and widely accepted in America are shown to be contrived, convoluted, non-discrete, overlapping, specious, politically motivated, and even insulting.

The seven are White, Black, Hispanic, Asian, Native American, Pacific Islander, and Middle Eastern. They are a strange mix of color, geography, and ethnicity.

As the course details, the classifications are a political creation that reflects resentments, discrimination, identity politics, and racial spoils. They have little to do with science, they reinforce stereotypes, and they exclude the important considerations of social class and mixed marriages.

The hundreds of unique ethnocultural groups in the world are reviewed and shown to be distributed widely among the seven official groups, resulting in each of the seven being quite diverse in ethnicity, nationality, income, wealth, education, political power, advantages and disadvantages, and histories of being both victims and perpetrators of injustice. The denial of this fact in DEI initiatives leads to the pernicious fallacy that everyone in the White category is homogeneous in privilege, social class and racist feelings, and that no one in the category can be a minority or disadvantaged.

An important distinction is made between “racist” and “racial.” It is racist, as the course explains, to believe that a given race is genetically inferior in some regard and predisposed to negative behavior. It is racial, on the other hand, to make a factual comment about a race. For example, it would be racist to say that Italians have a genetic propensity to be mobsters. It would be racial to state the fact that most members of the Mafia and Cosa Nostra have been Italian.

The course drives home the point that such clarifications and distinctions are critical in diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and in the enforcement of equal opportunity laws. Otherwise, the unquestioned application of the seven official racial categories and the misuse of the words “racist” and “racial” can result in excluding some groups from DEI and in taking away their anti-discrimination protections.

Course Two: Social Injustice Through the Ages

A required three-credit-hour course on diversity and equity.

Objectives

1) To show the universality of the dark side of human nature across all continents and peoples, throughout all of human history.

2) To question whether violence, oppression, and conquering increased or decreased with diversity—that is, at points of contact between different tribes, nationalities, races, religions, and political and economic systems. Is diversity a strength or a weakness, and under what circumstances is it one or the other?

3) To explain the historic roots of humanism, pluralism, equality, property rights, and civil liberties, and how these ideas came together, after great struggles and setbacks, to establish political and economic systems that, although imperfect, are the best hope for diversity, equity and justice.

Foundational Disciplines

Course content is based on history, anthropology, archeology, sociology, economics, political science, and moral philosophy. Distinguished professors from these disciplines developed the content and teach sections of the course.

Overview

Findings from anthropology and archeology are reviewed to show the extent of violence, human sacrifice, and diseases in pre-history times among Stone Age cultures, including in the Americas, Africa and Polynesia, prior to contact with Europeans, as evidenced from unearthed weapons and wounds and DNA on skeletal remains.

Also reviewed is the history from antiquity to current times of conquest, bloodshed, brutality, and both European and non-European versions of colonialism, imperialism and slavery. This bloody tour of history covers the Roman Empire, the Persian Empire, the Macedonian Empire, the Ottoman Empire, the Japanese Empire, the Russian Empire, the empires and kingdoms of medieval and later-day Europe, the conquests by the Mongol leader Genghis Khan, the rise and fall of the violent Mayan and Aztec civilizations, the warrior culture of many of the indigenous tribes of North America, and in modern times, the Holocaust and other evils of the Third Reich, the tens of millions executed and starved by communists, the bloodletting in the Balkans after the fall of Yugoslavia, the ongoing killings between Shiites and Sunnis, the genocide inflicted on Tuttis by Hutus in Rwanda, and the Islamist terror inflicted on Africans in the Sahel and in Sudan.

The evils of the slave trade in the Americas are also covered, as well as the socioeconomic legacies of slavery that continue today. More coverage is given to the trade in Africans by Spaniards (a k a Hispanics) because that trade began earlier and was more extensive than the trade by the British and Dutch.

In order to elicit class discussion and debate about what systems and values are best for diversity, equity and social justice, comparisons are made between capitalism and communism, and between Judeo-Christian values and the values of Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism.

You might be thinking that it shouldn’t take special courses to learn the above—that such learning should be part of the regular K-12 and college curricula. Unfortunately, the regular curricula are full of tropes and political agendas, especially about race, colonialism, oppression, and white privilege.

Now retired in Tucson, Mr. Cantoni was at the leading edge of equal rights/opportunity over his career. Contact: craigcantoni@gmail.com.