XPost: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, alt.politics.republicans, talk.politics.guns
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'Ten Problems with DEI That Frighten the Public'
'DEI policies are facing scrutiny amid recent disasters, raising
concerns about their impact on competence, meritocracy, and public
safety.'
<
https://amgreatness.com/2025/02/03/the-problems-with-dei-that-frighten-the-public/>
'The diversity, equity, and inclusion project, often seen as a major
element of the so-called “woke” creed along with green fanaticism, keeps popping up as a possible subtext in a variety of recent tragedies.
In the case of the Los Angeles fires, Mayor Karen Bass, who cut the fire department budget, was warned of the mounting fire dangers of the Santa
Anna winds and parched brush on surrounding hillsides. No matter—she
junketed in Uganda. When furor followed, on cue, her defenders decried a racialist attack on “a black woman.”
Her possible stand-in deputy mayor for “security” was under suspension
for allegations that he called in a bomb threat to the Los Angeles city council—a factor mysteriously forgotten.
The fire chief previously was on record mostly for highlighting her DEI
agendas rather than emphasizing traditional fire department criteria
like response time or keeping fire vehicles running and out of the shop.
One of her deputies had boasted that in emergencies, citizens
appreciated most of all that arriving first responders looked like them.
(But most people in need worry only whether the first responders seem to
know what they are doing.) She further snarked that if women allegedly
were not physically able to carry out a man in times of danger, then it
was the man’s fault for being in the wrong place.
The Los Angeles water and power czar—culpable for a needlessly dry
reservoir that could have provided 117 million gallons to help save
Pacific Palisades—was once touted primarily as the first Latina to run
such a vital agency. But did that fact matter much to the 18 million
people whose very survival depended on deliverable water in the
otherwise desert tinderbox of greater Los Angeles?
In all these cases, the point is not necessarily whether the key players
who might have prevented the destruction of some 25,000 acres of Los
Angeles were selected—or exempted—on the basis of their race, gender, or sexual orientation.
Rather the worry is that in all these cases, those with responsibility
for keeping Los Angeles viable, themselves eagerly self-identified first
by their race, gender, or sexual orientation—as if this fact alone was synonymous with competence and deference.
In fact, racial or sex identity has nothing to do with whether a water
and power director grasped the dangers of a bone-dry but vital
reservoir; whether the fire department must know how many fire hydrants
remain in working order; or whether a mayor understood that in times of existential danger she must stay on the job and not fly on an optional
junket to Africa.
As of yet, we have no idea exactly all the mishaps that caused a
horrific air crash at Reagan Airport in Washington. The only clear
consensus that has emerged is that the horrific deaths could have been
easily preventable—but were not because, in perfect storm fashion, there
were multiple system failures. In that sense, both the Los Angeles and Washington, DC, disasters are alike.
When a military helicopter crashes into a passenger jet in Washington,
DC, airspace—an area that has not seen such a disaster for 43 years—the likely cause is either wrongly altered protocols or clear human error,
or both.
So, it is vital to discover what the causes of the disaster were to
prevent such a recurrence. As in the Los Angeles cataclysm, the role of DEI—the method of hiring regulatory agency administrators, air traffic controllers, or pilots on bases other than meritocracy—becomes a
legitimate inquiry.
To dispel such worries, authorities must disclose all the facts as they
do when there are no controversies over DEI. Yet we never learned the
name of the Capitol police officer who fatally shot unarmed Ashli
Babbitt for months, nor received evidence of his spotty service record.
The same initial hesitation in releasing information marked news about
the ship that hit the Francis Scott Bridge near Baltimore and why
traffic barriers were not up in the French Quarter before the recent
terrorist attack in New Orleans.
In the Washington, DC, crash, two questions arise about the conduct of
pilots, air traffic controllers, and the administrators responsible for
hiring, staffing, and evaluating such employees.
The first issue is whether hiring, retention, and promotion in the
airline industry or the military is not fully meritocratic. That is,
were personnel hired on the basis of their exhibited superior education, practical experience, and superb scores on relevant examinations in
matters relating to air travel? Or were they instead passed over because
of their race, gender, or sexual orientation?
Was the shortage of controllers a direct result not of an unqualified
pool of applicants but rather because of racial restrictions place upon
it to reduce its size?
Second, were the promoters of DEI confident that they could argue that “diversity, equity, and inclusion” were as important criteria for the operation of a complex aircraft system as the past traditional criteria
that had qualified air traffic controllers, pilots, and administrators?
Not only did DEI considerations often supersede past traditional
meritocratic requirements for employment, but DEI champions had also
argued that “diversity” was either as important to, or more important
than, traditional hiring and retention evaluations.
The answers to these first two questions make it incumbent to ask
further whether DEI played a role in the Washington, D.C., crash,
similar to how it may have in the Los Angeles wildfires.
It is not racist, sexist, or homophobic to ask such legitimate
questions, especially because advocates themselves so often give more
attention and emphasis to their race, gender, and sexual orientation
than their assumed impressive expertise, proven experience, and superior education. In other words, had one’s race, sex, or orientation been incidental to employment rather than essential, such questions from the
public might never have arisen.
Finally, what are the problems with DEI that have not just lost its
support but put fear into the public that, like the Russian commissar
system of old, it has the potential to undermine the very sinews of a sophisticated, complex society?
DEI is an ideology or a protocol that supersedes disinterred evaluation.
In that regard, ironically, it is akin to the era of Jim Crow, when
talented individuals were irrationally barred from consideration due to
their mere skin color. Like any system that prioritizes identity over merit—whether Marist-Leninist credentials in the old Soviet Union or
tribal bias in the contemporary Middle East—a complex society that
embraces tribalism inevitably begins to become dysfunctional.
DEI does not end at hiring. Rather, once a candidate senses he is
employed on the basis of his race, sex, or sexual orientation, then it
is natural he must assume such preferences are tenured throughout his
career. Thus, he will always be judged by the same criterion that led to
his hiring. In other words, DEI is a lifetime contractual agreement, an insurance policy of sorts once DEI credentials are established as
preeminent over all others.
The advocates of DEI rarely confess that meritocratic criteria have been superseded by considerations of diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Instead, to the degree that they claim such criteria are not at odds
with meritocracy, they argue that the methods of assessing talent and performance are themselves flawed. Tests then are unsound and
systemically biased and therefore largely irrelevant. Few DEI advocates
make the argument that diversity is so important that it justifies
lowering the traditional standards of competence.
Once DEI tribal protocols are established, they are calcified and
unchanged. That is when supposed DEI demographics are overrepresented in particular fields such as the postal service or professional sports,
then such “disproportionality” is justified on “reparatory” grounds or ironically on merit. If other non-DEI groups, by DEI’s own standards,
are deprived of “equity” and “inclusion” or “underrepresented,” it is
irrelevant. DEI is, again, a lifetime concession, regardless of changes
in status, income, or privilege. An Oprah Winfrey or a Barack Obama—two
of the most privileged people on the planet—by virtue of their race, at
least as it is defined in the Western world—are permanently deserving of deference.
DEI is also ossified in the sense that it makes no allowance for class.
Asian Americans, when convenient, can be counted as DEI hires even
though, in terms of per capita income, most Asian groups do better than so-called whites. Under DEI, the children of elites like Barack Obama or
Hakim Jeffries will always be in need of reparatory consideration but
not so the children of those in East Palestine, Ohio.
Because DEI is an ideology, a faith-based creed, it does not rely on
logic and is thus exempt from charges of irrationality, inconsistency,
and hypocrisy. The belief system feels no obligation to defend itself
from rational arguments. For example, are not racially separate
graduations or safe spaces contrary to the corpus of civil rights
legislation of the 1960s? There is no such thing as DEI irony: the
system contrived to supposedly remedy the de jure racism of some 60-70
years ago itself hinges on de jure racial fixations as the remedy—now, tomorrow, forever.
As in all monolithic dogmas such as Sovietism or Maoism, skeptics,
critics, and apostates cannot be tolerated. So, in the case of DEI,
logical criticism is preemptively aborted by boilerplate charges of
racism, sexism, and homophobia. And the mere accusation is synonymous
with conviction, thereby establishing DEI deterrence, under which no one
dares to risk cancellation, de-platforming, ostracism, or career suicide
by questioning the faith.
DEI is also incoherent. It is essentially a reversion to tribalism in
which solidarity is predicated on shared race, sex, or sexual
orientation, not through individual background, particular economic
status, or one’s unique character. No DEI czar knows why in the
pre-Obama era, East Asians did not qualify for DEI status, though they
seem to now, or when and how the transgendered were suddenly not
statistically still traditionally .01 percent of the population but, in
some campus surveys, magically became 10-20 percent of polled
undergraduates. No one understands what percentage of one’s DNA
qualifies for DEI status, only that any system of the past that fixated
on ascertaining racial essentialism, such as the one-drop rule of the
old South or the multiplicity of racial categories in the former South
Africa, or the yellow-star evil of the Third Reich, largely imploded, in
part by the weight of its own absurd amorality.
DEI never explains the exact individual bereavement that justifies preferentiality. All claims are instead collective. And they are encased
in the amber of slavery, Jim Crow, or homophobia or sexism of decades
past. Social progress does not exist; the malady is eternal. The
candidate for DEI consideration never must ascertain how, when, or where
he was subject to serious discrimination or bias. And that may explain
all the needed prefix adjectives that have sprouted up to prove these
-isms and -ologies exist when they otherwise cannot be detected, such as “systemic,” “implicit,” “insidious,” or “structural” racism rather than
just “racism.”
DEI never envisions its demise or what follows from it, much less
whether there are superior ways to achieve equality of opportunity
rather than mandated results. The beneficiaries of DEI seldom ponder its efficacy, much less whether resources would be better allotted to K-12 education during the critical years of development. And they certainly
show little concern about those often poorer and more underprivileged
who lack the prescribed race, gender, or orientation for special DEI considerations.
In sum, because of these inconsistencies, Donald Trump may well be able
to end DEI with a wave of an executive order—simply because its
foundations were always built of sand and thus any bold push would knock
over the entire shaky edifice.'
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