Blog #37 Consequences of DEI
Equity is supposed to be about fairness, about helping the disadvantaged.
It is fundamental to DEI, or Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.
Due to supposed oppression for decades or centuries, diversity will discriminate with favor, equity will make things right with an uneven playing field, and inclusion will create more effective teams.
Well, that is not happening.
Governor Ron DeSantis has altered the ideology term with D for Discrimination, E for Exclusion, and I for Indoctrination or Incrimination.
Worse, one must discriminate based on skin color or the "case du jour" to make exceptions for compliance with DEI precepts.
To get diversity, we have to deliberately discriminate amongst others or, for example, candidates for a job. We have progressed over centuries to stop discrimination for all the evils it creates. We fought wars and passed Congressional and State laws to stop it. Our Constitution included the concept that all men are created equal.
Equality is fundamental to our culture. Greg Stamps of the Hoover Institute said it best: “Society is pursuing the never-ending delusion that equality can advance at the expense of merit.”
To obtain equity in our society requires that we have to sacrifice merit. When equitable decisions are made, we must include those who may not have the best level of qualifications, attitude, commitment, and other requirements.
In essence, we are likely forced to lower standards to achieve diverse personalities, ethnicity, and experience. Lowering standards may be required to allow women to become infantry warriors or blacks who speak poor English to be pilots, or Hispanics who have no college degrees to teach high school students psychology.
To get inclusion, we must include everyone who may or may not qualify for a job. It is open-ended and invites those with portfolios that may not match the job and team requirements.
No matter. They must be included. DEI is like reverse discrimination or reverse racism. It may knock out someone who meets the qualifications and has all the credentials that are proven, but they are not the right color or ethnicity, the right social ideology, or the right political persuasion.
For typical competitive, innovative, high-performing organizations, a strict commitment to DEI is one step away from DIEing or failure.
Journalist Kendall Qualls, who is black, said, "Incredibly, the MLK holiday honors values disliked by some on the left. King's call to judge based on character, not skin color, contradicts the leftists' belief that worth is determined by race, and that is in direct opposition to leftists' narrative that judging people's value begins with their skin color."
Kendall goes on to describe the consequences as follows:
"Although blacks have been passing these exams for two centuries, leftists believe adjustments in bar exam standards and medical school scoring methods are necessary to combat disparities between the races in the criminal justice system, health care, and academic testing methodologies.
California and Delaware have lowered the grade points required to pass their bar exams. In the name of equity, other states are considering following suit. In addition, The Federation of State Medical Boards decided to make step one of medical school students' first major exams a pass/fail score instead of the legacy raw test results. Without claiming the changes were for diversity reasons, some black physicians noted, "it was a step in the right direction."
Simply stated, equity means reducing standards to accept the disadvantaged (however that is defined). The impact affects everything from academic achievement to job acceptance.
Worse, when standards are lowered, and consequential results follow that is unsatisfactory, there is an accepted principle that accountability is not enforced for those protected by DEI rules. It soon spreads that if they do a lousy job, they won't be held accountable, but for those not protected, they will be accountable, and that destroys loyalty, commitment, and initiative.
The challenge is to accept those who do not meet minimum standards but are selected anyway. What effect will this have on personal and team performance, skills, and future success? What is at stake is who gets accepted to college or accepted to positions ranging from doctors to pilots, auto mechanics to healthcare workers, weapons developers to military leaders.
Don't believe that this is real? Consider this: "American Bar Association and the American Medical Association have released statements supporting DEI or adjusting standards to ensure diversity."
Furthermore, if the reader is still not convinced of the terrible consequences of notions like DEI and such, consider this report:
Our entire society is affected by DEI/Woke/CRT/Race actions that are counterproductive and demeaning to those who think they are getting undeserved special treatment. It could ultimately lead to their demise and to failure. It is also offensive to those who meet the standards without compromise.
A recent example that gained national attention was the former President of Harvard University, Claudine Gay. She broke all the rules about plagiarism over several years, and after only six months on the job, she could not answer the concerns about antisemitism. It cost Harvard billions of dollars in donations towards its massive wealth/endowment fund. But there were other problems. It was all unforgivable.
Ousting Claudine Gay from Harvard was always about the money | Cognoscenti (wbur.org)
In no way is America prepared to accept lower standards for many jobs that affect people's lives, from airline pilots to surgeons, from chefs to crane operators.
For Harvard, the writing was on the wall.
In a recent newsletter from a Jewish organization, they opined, "The goal of DEI has been deployed by extremist Islamic-Leftist groups to advance a radical agenda that threatens the Jewish community and undermines fundamental American values."
The Failure of the DEI-Industrial Complex (hbr.org)
People's lives are at stake, both literally and figuratively. Careers are made, thwarted, or lost.
DEI and all its extensions must be rejected. Our educational elite had to learn the hard way. Harvard, MIT, and Penn all led the way down a path to DEI failure.
Although efforts in corporations are being made and millions of dollars spent, the results reported by Forbes are not good: In a new survey released this month (Feb 2023) from WebMD Health Services on Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Belonging: Uncovering What Employees are Offered, Want and Need, 62% of workers surveyed say Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Belonging (DEI&B) programs aren't effective, and nearly half (46%) say the programs had failed them personally.
America's future success is at stake when people are promoted by favor or color rather than merit and performance. Dictatorships rely on followers not threatening the leadership and historically have devastated the academic/intellectual ranks and innovative, self-reliant thought leaders.
Dictators don't like those who are more intelligent or more effective. Chairman Xi of China has killed or banished scores of top officials in the Government. He wants no challengers. It's the reverse of DEI.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn famously said, “… one of the biggest mistakes people make is assuming totalitarianism can’t happen in their country. Many American Christians are making that mistake today, sleepwalking through the erosion of our freedoms.”
America must return to its core values of life, liberty, and justice. To rely on a free market with minimal governmental regulation to direct national resources most effectively, to rely on excellence in performance, and to promote those who deserve it by merit, not political favor. We need more immigrants like Elon Musk or more Americans like Jamie Dimon.
Big Government gets in the way and creates rather than solves many social problems by trying to compartmentalize social issues with rules and regulations that cause unintended consequences.
One of those unintended consequences involves sanctuary states that dictate housing and welfare will be required by law for immigrants, illegal or not. None of the social leaders considered the consequences of open national borders and the cost and disruption it may cause.
Our social justice and sanctuary thought leaders are failing America.
How long will it be before America wakes up or sleepwalks over the cliff?