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Politicophile,
I think you've got the cart before the horse. If you want to discuss this, you should be looking at the racial preferences approach to diversity instead of the diveresity approach to racial preferences. Diversity is the end, preferences are the means. The way you've framed this suggests the opposite which, I believe, is an unfair characterization of the AA crowd's motives.
I think this confusion of ends with means leads to your feelings about the meaning of diversity - "taking people of different ethnicities and putting them in the same environment." There isn't necessarily more to it than this, although the purpose is to find students of different cultural and experiential backgrounds, not just varied skin tones. All of the "quotas" (which aren't allowed) and preferences and whatnot are to serve this end, not the other way around. And incidentally, in the case of educational environments, it is thought that the benefit of having a critical mass (not just a jew token students) of different populations benefits everyone, including the majority students, because it provides a larger base of perspectives and views in the classroom and in social development. If you want to question something, you should question whether broader perspective should automatically be seen as a higher quality educational experience. I think it should, but would like to hear if you've got strong arguments against this idea.
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Cogito ergo spud -- I think, therefore I yam
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