Diversity easier to achieve than empathy
SAN DIEGO -- A columnist should always admit when he is wrong, but not enough of us are willing to go to confession.
Thankfully, I'm a happily married man with a wife who is more than happy to point out when I'm wrong. And she does a lot of pointing.
Let me confess: I was wrong. For most of my life, I've assumed that diversity would lead automatically to empathy.
Seeing how the Obama and Trump administrations both handled damage control when they mangled immigration policy taught me otherwise.
I used to think -- naively -- that if you put a racial, ethnic or religious minority in a prestigious post, it would make the organization more sensitive to the plight of the less fortunate.
Alex Azar disproves the theory. The Health and Human Services Secretary is charged with putting back together what the Department of Homeland Security broke into itty bitty pieces.
Azar clearly stinks at his job. We know this because so many parents remain separated from their children, and many others have been deported back to their home countries while their children remain on this side of the border in the custody of the Trump administration.
Uncle Sam is not perfect, but who pegged him for a kidnapper?
Azar recently told CNN's Wolf Blitzer that his department should be credited with "one of the great acts of American generosity and charity, what we are doing for these unaccompanied kids who are smuggled into our country or come across illegally."
Yes, because there is no greater expression of generosity and charity than separating children from their parents -- and then failing to reunite them for several weeks or not at all.
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