Addendum.

These kids are also f*cked, because they've been *taught* they have diversity, whether or not they actually have it.

I think they see a rainbow of faces, but don't understand that there's not much socioeconomic diversity and thus the conversation is actually intellectually impoverished.

The other day, a student mentioned something to the effect of how rich the conversation was, because of all the different people sitting around the table...

She really had no context on which to make that judgment, but it felt like she was parroting something, and the conversation had been unexceptional, unlike a class I had with the artists where one who's a long-time city person and public transportation worker every once in a while brought up incisive biographically-originating questions on race and appropriation.

(He also was interested in utopian architecture, but that seemed less grounded in his demographic profile, from our conversations.)

In any case, with these elite kids, it's just so self-conscious and empty, in part b/c they're being spoonfed this image by admin who're fucking them for money but not actually paying for the level of diversity they're claiming, and the kids are stupid enough to swallow the lie, or at least too proud to consciously acknowledge what's being done to them, how they're being given a flimflam show and underdelivered.

Worst of all, the biggest enemy to something is the appearance of something, so it's not clear what motivations if any will make that situation change any time soon.

The symbolic capital these children bear is simply wasted on them.