Marathon County logo. MWC file photo.
CONLEY COMMENTARY (WSAU) – Last year, after a long debate and much bad publicity, Marathon County rejected a ‘Community For All’ resolution.
The national media painted us as bigoted and backwards. A New York Times article was embarrassingly biased. The facts that Marathon County is welcoming are indisputable. We’ve become much more diverse over the past two decades. It’s non-sensical that more minorities are moving to an un-welcoming place. If the charge were true, they’d choose to live somewhere else; we would be less diverse, not more.
Many county residents and their representative supervisors saw through the ‘Community For All’ resolution. It was not a non-binding, feel-good document. It was a first-step towards a series of policy changes that are unpopular… like racial quotas in hiring, contract set-asides, and using ‘equity’ instead of ‘equality’.
The county’s Diversity Affairs Commission was offered changes in the wording of their proposal that would have won majority support of the county board. The commission rejected those changes. Their work was voted down, and they have since disbanded.
But…
Earlier this month, Marathon County’s Infrastructure Committee had an unusual “Diversity and Inclusiveness” item on its agenda. What does diversity have to do with roads, bridges, and sewers? Apparently part of the agreement to disband the Diversity Affairs Commission was that diversity issues could be presented to other country committees. This is an outrage. Members of the public now have to follow a half-dozen county committees that have nothing to do with diversity affairs that now may pick up the agenda – and may forward those items onto the county’s Executive Committee or to the full county board.
Something similar is happening in Wausau. Mayor Katie Rosenberg offered a mayoral proclamation on diversity affairs. If you thought that was benign, it isn’t. Much of that same language has found its way into the city’s five year plan, a document that usually doesn’t get a lot of attention.
If diversity affairs is so popular, why do the resolutions keep getting voted down? If these are such great ideas, why do they have to go to unrelated committees? Good ideas stand on their own in the light of day. Bad ideas get back-doored and forced onto an unsuspecting public.
Chris Conley.
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