Steve Sailer makes a simple but fascinating point in Where the Races Relate (from the National Review, back in 1995):
Much ink has been spilled bemoaning the rancorous state of race relations on our nation’s elite campuses. Our colleges, however, has barely even considered any new solutions, due to the academic industry’s institutional tendencies toward timid conformity combined with myopic self-absorption. Rather than look beyond the cloisters for novel answers, administrators at our great research universities merely resort to ever greater doses of the hair of the dog that bit them — more affirmative action, more diversity workshops, more victims’ studies — with predictably dire results. Yet, during the same quarter century when colleges have managed to exacerbate racial tension among 18-24 year old students, the U.S. Army — using radically different techniques — has tremendously reduced racial strife among 18-24 year old soldiers.Astonishingly, though, colleges have overlooked an even more obvious source of guidance on how to manage race on campus. University presidents methodically ignore the techniques for forging solidarity among their black and white students that are successfully used by their own best paid, best known employees: their football and basketball coaches.
What could colleges learn from the Army and from their own athletes about race?