It was not their intent to seed the labor force with Marxists, socialists, monarchists, anarchists, or Southern Baptists or to achieve a liberal-conservative balance. The opportunity for intellectual and ideological diversity, he wrote, was lost. Five years later it is still lost, and all but forgotten. The conventiongoers talked sometimes like journalists, sometimes like activists. The tone of the convention seemed the same as that of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the American Civil Liberties Union, or any other activist group on the left.
Unity demands unanimity.
If you don't accept the left-leaning agenda of advocacy journalism, you're enabling racism. If you don't support the pursuit of racial hiring goals as a primary journalistic goal, you're selling out. Malkin is of Filipino descent, but she refuses to join race-based groups like the Asian American Journalists Association because she wants to be judged by her ideas and idiosyncrasies, not her skin color or heritage. The political conformity of Unity '99 was clear enough. George W. Bush got sour comments for not planning to attend, so he changed his schedule, showed up at Unity '99, made a whirlwind tour of the convention, and got sour comments for not staying longer.