“I’m guilty of gross violation of equality of opportunity, racism and possibly sexism.”

Professor Walter Williams admits he is  guilty of gross violation of equality of opportunity, racism and possibly sexism, as charged by his university's Office of Equity and Diversity Services who require him to “complete the in-person Equal Opportunity and Prevention of Sexual Harassment Policies and Procedures training.”

He won’t be going. He won’t be going because people discriminate all the time. Because “George Mason’s Office of Equity and Diversity Services has far more challenging equity and diversity work than worrying about the re-education of Professor Williams.” And because:

Ideas such as equity and equal opportunity, while having high emotional value, are vacuous analytical concepts. For example, I’ve asked students whether they plan to give every employer an equal opportunity to hire them when they graduate. To a person, they always answer no. If they aren’t going to give every employer an equal opportunity to hire them, what’s fair about forcing employers to give them an equal opportunity to be hired? […]
    Allied with the purveyors of equity, diversity and inclusion are the multiculturalists, who call for the celebration of cultures. For them, all cultures are morally equivalent and to deem otherwise is Eurocentrism. That’s unbridled nonsense. Ask your multiculturalist: Is forcible female genital mutilation, as practiced in nearly 30 sub-Saharan Africa and Middle Eastern countries, a morally equivalent cultural value? Slavery is practiced in Sudan and Niger; is that a cultural equivalent? In most of the Middle East, there are numerous limits on women — such as prohibitions on driving, employment, voting and education. Under Islamic law, in some countries, female adulterers face death by stoning, and thieves face the punishment of having their hand severed. Are these cultural values morally equivalent, superior or inferior to those of the West?
    Western values are superior to all others. Why? The greatest achievement of the West was the concept of individual rights. The Western transition from barbarism to civility didn’t happen overnight. It emerged feebly — mainly in England, starting with the Magna Carta of 1215 — and took centuries to get where it is today.
    One need not be a Westerner to hold Western values. A person can be Chinese, Japanese, Jewish, African or Arab and hold Western values. It’s no accident that Western values of reason and individual rights have produced unprecedented health, life expectancy, wealth and comfort for the ordinary person.

This last point is so crucial I’ll say it again: One need not be a Westerner to hold Western values. Western values are able to be embraced by anyone. They are inclusive, not exclusive. They are held by choice, not by race.

As George Reisman points out, Western civilisation is not a product of race:

Once one recalls what Western civilization is, the most important thing to realize about it is that it is open to everyone... The truth is that just as one does not have to be from France to like French- fried potatoes or from New York to like a New York steak, one does not have to have been born in Western Europe or be of West European descent to admire Western civilization, or, indeed, even to help build it. Western civilization is not a product of geography. Indeed, important elements of "Western" civilization did not even originate in the West."Western civilization is not a product of geography. It is a body of knowledge and values. Any individual, any society, is potentially capable of adopting it and thereby becoming Westernized."

I once gave Tariana Turia the example of how western values are open to everyone: After talking with her I was off to a concert in which a piece of music written by a Russian was about to be played by a Chinese soloist, under a Peruvian conductor, in front of an orchestra containing Jews, Asians, Africans, Arabs and who knows what. Their race was irrelevant; their musicality wasn’t. That’s an example of western values in practice: they are open to anyone who wants to embrace them.

This is the real antidote to racism.

I thoroughly recommend a good reading of Reisman’s essay in which he makes the argument most thoroughly: “ Education & the Racist Road to Barbarism.”