As part of its continuing efforts to balkanize people by race, sex, and class, New York City is planning to count the number of each kind of minority at all of its cultural institutions.

"If you're living in a city like we are in New York — with 65 percent people of color right now — maybe we're missing out on some of the talent if we don't have diverse audiences, staffs and boards," said Tom Finkelpearl, the city's commissioner of cultural affairs. Mr. Finkelpearl said there was no good data on the racial, ethnic or gender makeup of New York cultural organizations and their audiences, and that the study, to be done by an outside vendor, would help make clear that diversity should be a priority for institutions when it comes to naming trustees or hiring employees.

Does that diversity protocol extend to the city's department of cultural affairs?  Because Finkelpearl doesn't sound like a black or Hispanic name.  Don't you think Mr. Finkelpearl should resign to permit a person of more diverse background to be cultural commissar?

Mr. de Blasio has made diversity a cornerstone of his administration. Of his total agency heads, 18 percent are African-American; 14 percent are Latino; 14 percent are Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders; and more than half are women.

But blacks are 25% and  Hispanics are 27% of New York City.  Don't you think de Blasio should fire white employees and hire minorities until the city workforce exactly mirrors the general population?  And what business does a white man have running a city that is majority-minority?  Do you think it would be more appropriate to let his black wife, Chirlane McCray, run the city?  (And she can also represent the gays – she's a lesbian, too!  Yes, de Blasio's wife says she's a lesbian.  Not kidding.  Really!)

And what about the sports teams?  Shouldn't the football and basketball teams more accurately represent the richness of New York's diversity?  Do you think they should fire black basketball players and replace them with an appropriate number of Japanese- and Korean-Americans of equal height?

But back to the latest de Blasio mastermind project:

Arts executives who went to the meetings said they welcomed the city's effort and did not view it with alarm.

"I came away inspired," said Claudia Bonn, executive director of Wave Hill, a public garden and cultural center in the Bronx. "It's something that you don't think about all the time."

Isn't that what liberals should be doing – thinking about race all the time?  What else should a garden director be thinking of?

"The problem is that diversity has been framed as giving up something," Mr. Walker said in a recent interview, "when in fact diversity adds value to the organization."

Almost true.  The only people giving up something are those better-qualified who are not hired because of immoral racial preferences.

Still unclear is what the city will do with the survey results, which Mr. Finkelpearl said he expected back in the fall. "We're not going to take any action at all until we have some answers," he said.

And then, suddenly, at 3 AM one night, the director of the Metropolitan Opera will hear a polite knock at his door.  "What?" he will say, as the door is bashed in.  Hooded men with batons will rush in and circle his bed.

"We're here to deal with you, you cultural racist!"

"What?"

"You better get some Asian tenors in your Opera if you know what's good for you!"

Mr. Long said almost half of his work force at the Botanical Garden is nonwhite. "It's something we think about quite a lot[.]"

I'm glad the head of the Bronx Botanical Gardens is spending so much time about race, when otherwise that would be time wasted thinking about flowers and plant collections.  I used to go to the Bronx Botanical Gardens a lot, and the gardens were a lot more diverse because of it.  The Native Plant Garden was planted by authentic Native Americans, there were lily-white carnations planted by Caucasians, Dorito-colored perennials planted by Puerto Ricans, daisies planted by gays, and so on.  It was very botanically multicultural.

In the real world, of course, this kind of racial bean-counting comes into play only when some is actually alleging racial discrimination.  And even then, racial disparities doesn't automatically imply racism, as we well know from watching the New York Knicks.  This obsession with racial counting only exacerbates racial tensions and politicizes a field that doesn't need politicizing.

But if they're going to do this, they should do this all the way.  The Bronx Zoo may have a good overall racial makeup, but it may be balkanized racially by departments.  What if it turns out that most of the Puerto Ricans work with reptiles, but most of the blacks work with the seals?  You would then need to train Puerto Ricans to work with seals and send more blacks to the reptile house.

And what about the authorship of  all the paintings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art?  Ninety-nine percent white, surely.  How appropriate is that in a city that is two thirds minority?  Don't you think they should burn two thirds of them and replace them with minority artists, preferably socialist abstract artists?

And what about the names of all the planets and the stars in the planetarium?  Want to bet that 99.99% of them are named for white people?  Let's rename Saturn "Khan Singh" and  Mars "Patrice Lumumba."  Wouldn't that make astronomy a lot more exciting and accessible to a diverse population?

Pedro Gonzales is the editor of Newsmachete.com, the conservative news site.