THE ISSUE: Conversations on the issue of diversity within The Daily Tar Heel have been circling the office for a while, but the way to go about solving this problem remains a point of debate. Two writers for the DTH offer their opinion on the concept of a diversity quota.
Read the opposing viewpoint here.
The Daily Tar Heel has a diversity problem. At least those who have worked at the Daily Tar Heel have said as much.
Advocated by past and present DTH editors and writers, two central arguments have recently made their way into the conversations about the workplace environment at The Daily Tar Heel: that it is uncomfortable to work at the paper as a minority and that the hiring practices of the DTH do not do a good enough job at making sure that minorities are hired as members of the paper.
The DTH may very well have a diversity issue. I can neither verify nor deny these claims as there is little available data on the demographic makeup of the paper, as well as the fact that discomfort is a uniquely individual experience not easily proven or explained to others, especially those who are not racial minorities themselves (although, having lived in Thailand for a year I am not unaware of what it might be like to live in a space where there is not a significant number of people who look like you).
However, there is an assumption that lies underneath much of this talk about diversity. Essentially, these observations of this perceived or actual inequality assume that inequality is always unjust.
It is possible that some instances of inequality are the result of some type of injustice. However, the mere existence of inequality does not prove that there is improper behavior causing the disparity. Take, for example, the fact that there is a lack of conservative writers at the DTH. There is a significant inequality between the number of liberal and conservative writers here. That does not mean that there are unjust hiring practices here at the DTH. A better explanation is that there is not a large amount of conservatives at UNC and those who have writing talent aren’t interested in writing for the DTH.
This is essentially the center of my disagreement with these well-intentioned measures. As long as we provide an opportunity for every UNC student to prove that they have the skill to work at the DTH, it shouldn’t matter if every single writer we hire next year is Black, Hispanic, trans, or white. If then there is some level of inequality in our workplace, such inequality is not unjust but merely the fact that there happened to be more qualified writers from a certain demographic this particular year. Our primary responsibility is to hire the best reporters we can, not to ensure that our demographic makeup represents the population at large.
