(from PopeCenter.org):

By James Wright

The quest for “diversity” has become bound up tightly with contemporary identity politics and identity politics have in turn become the third rail of modern university discourse. In that discourse, it is an article of near-religious faith, for example, that any unfortunate condition that can be observed among the African American or Hispanic population is the result of racism and a social structure designed to exclude racial minorities from positions of affluence, influence and power.

Similarly, all women’s problems must be attributed to an oppressive patriarchal culture.

To suggest that blacks or women (or obese people or victims of violence or any other favorite victim of the day) are in any way or sense at least partly responsible for the conditions in which they find themselves has become sociological heresy—words not to be spoken in the polite company of fellow believers. Ever since William Ryan’s 1971 book Blaming the Victim, holding anyone who could claim victimhood status accountable in any way for any aspect of their victimized condition has been a serious scholarly no-no.

I edited the scholarly journal Social Science Research for 36 years. A pair of papers we published in the last few years shows how badly sociology has fallen into a one-party mindset. CONTINUE READING HERE