Guest Post by Walter E. Williams
It’s nearly impossible to have even a short conversation with a college administrator, politician or chief executive without the words diversity and inclusion dropping from their lips. Diversity and inclusion appear to be the end-all and be-all of their existence. So, I thought I’d begin this discussion by first looking up the definition of diversity.
According to the Oxford Dictionary, diversity is “the practice or quality of including or involving people from a range of different social and ethnic backgrounds and of different genders, sexual orientations, etc.” The definition gratuitously adds, “equality and diversity should be supported for their own sake.” The standard definition given for inclusion is involvement and empowerment where the inherent worth and dignity of all people are recognized.
Here’s my question to those who are wedded to diversity and inclusion: Are people better off the less they have in common with one another? For example, women are less likely to be able to march 12.4 miles in five hours with an 83-pound assault load. They are also less likely to be able to crawl, sprint, negotiate obstacles and move a wounded comrade weighing 165 pounds while carrying that load. Would anyone argue that a military outfit would benefit from diversity by including soldiers who can and those who cannot march 12 miles in five hours while carrying an 83-pound load?
You say, “Williams, the military is an exception!” What about language? The International Civil Aviation Organization has decreed that all air traffic controllers and flight crew members engaged in or in contact with international flights must be proficient in the English language as a general spoken medium. According to UNESCO, there are about 7,000 languages in the world. The International Civil Aviation Organization could promote language inclusiveness by requiring language rotation. Some years, Cebuano (of the Malayo-Polynesian language family) and in other years Kinyarwanda (of the Niger-Congo language family) could be the language of pilots and air traffic controllers. Keep in mind that it is claimed that the great benefit of diversity and inclusiveness is that it promotes and fosters a sense of belonging. It values and practices respect for the differences in the talents, beliefs, backgrounds and ways of living of its members.
Another issue is what should be done when people who should know better praise non-diversity and non-inclusiveness? Civil rights leader Rev. Jesse L. Jackson said, “I applaud commissioner Adam Silver’s commitment to diversity and inclusion within the NBA.” During the 2018-2019 season, more than 33% of NBA teams had head coaches of color. The number of assistant head coaches of color was over 42%.
The number of black NBA players was 82%. In the face of these statistics, Oris Stuart, the NBA’s chief diversity and inclusion officer said, “Diversity, inclusion and equality are central to every aspect of our game and our business.” I would like for Jesse Jackson and others who claim that there’s racial diversity and inclusiveness in professional basketball to make their case. The same question can be asked about professional football where 70% of NFL players are black, and 9% of team head coaches are black. The thornier question and challenge is what can be done to make professional basketball and football look more like the American population?
Most of the diversity and inclusiveness insanity has its roots in academia. An example is a paper titled “Equilibrium Grade Inflation with Implications for Female Interest in STEM Majors,” written by Naval Postgraduate School professor Thomas Ahn, Duke University economics professor Peter Arcidiacono, Duke University researcher Amy Hopson, and James R. Thomas of the Federal Trade Commission. The authors argue that science, technology, engineering and mathematics programs at colleges and universities lacking female enrollment can be attributed largely to harsh grading policies in these fields.
Their solution to increase the number of women’s involvement in STEM is to standardize grading curves, in order to grade less “harshly.” The insanity of this approach is to not only weaken standards for women but to weaken standards across the board. This is more evidence that George Orwell was absolutely right when he said, “There are some ideas so absurd that only an intellectual could believe them.”
Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University. To find out more about Walter E. Williams and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com
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I am so glad you said this and not me, Walter.
I’ve been researching the whole equality of opportunity versus equality of outcomes issue.
I’ve gotten so bogged down in the terminology over what constitutes diversity and what constitutes affirmative action I’m not sure if diversity even includes people like me any more.
I was looking at a diversity hiring policy that explained that while the position would be filled by the most qualified candidate, the company environment would benefit most from having a more diverse team.* They were recruiting in low-income areas for “interns” to invest their scholarship money in.
The bottom line is that certain minorities are now more equal than others. And, even if you are white and have no access to any of the equality anymore, you are still privileged and deserve to be spat upon.
*fined for some violation in hiring practices, I am betting.
CERN has a diversity in hiring program.
CERN
My experience in the upstream oil industry regarding “diversity” as interpreted through my own white male Gen-X filter is as follows.
1) The E&P industry has become such a mess of debt and other Wall Street nonsense that no company can meet its profitability or value driven KPIs, so the executives invent new KPIs that have nothing to do with profitability but are much easier to meet. Making 25% of a multi-million dollar annual bonus package based on “diversity” or “sustainability” is way easier than churning out a profit in a low oil price environment.
2) “Diversity” is the mask the company puts on when it gets down to the business of laying off it’s core of higher paid, predominantly white male staff. It covers up the rotten business of what is essentially firing your loyal staff that have done everything asked of them and delivered on many of the ridiculous KPIs set by an insulated and unrealistic executive team.
3) The oil companies are completely freaked out by any future “Climate Change” legislation, so I surmise the boards are trying to bring “diversity” and millennials on board to the oil industry so these groups have some skin in the game and can lead the social charge on push-back.
4) When your company isn’t growing its net cash flow the last thing it wants to do is to embark on a new capital program. My experience is that bringing women into the oil industry essentially puts the brakes on getting anything done. They are so risk averse, process fixated, and scared of failure that all projects just stall until the price goes up, the girls in charge can get promoted to EVP of Government Relations, and the men can get rehired and get the job done. Almost every female executive I’ve met in the oil industry has been strapped to a diversity rocket and given a progression of assignments that she can’t fuck up no matter how hard she tries.
5) In 27 years on 5 continents covering 11 countries I have never once seen a woman or minority do any E&P work of any significance outside of accounting. They are (almost) all window dressing.
Hyperb,
I agree with everything except ” oil companies being freaked out by climate change”. The oil biggies are pushing the climate change agenda! It plays into their total control of energy. If you do a deeper dig, you’ll see this is correct. Look up James Corbett and his story on big oil for starters. Big oil has been at this game for decades.
The European oil companies are pushing the agenda since they switched to a natgas focus about 25 years ago. US companies are worried about public perception and its resulting legislation, not climate change its self. Chinese just lie – they sign all the protocols but as there are no verification mechanisms in place they do nothing to meet the protocols and the West never calls them out.
US oil companies went full shale retard and that has sucked up between $240 – $280 bln in investment since 2014 that will never be fully paid back and could have gone into alt-energy. Biofuels were a bubble that burst in 2009 – there are lots of mothballed plants from Victoria to Brownsville along the Gulf Coast. I haven’t seen a wind turbine going down either I-10 or I-45 in a very long time.
In the end it is just another Wall Street shuck-‘n-jive scam. It’s always a Wall Street scam in the end.
Diversity is code speak for get rid of white men….
See #2 above.
My experience is that the Chinese are pushing it big time to destroy the western industrial base as they have no intentions of ever complying with what they sign.
I spent 6-1/2 years working for a division of Sinopec International and even spent half a day with Fu Chengyu, former CEO of the 1.2 mln person parent company Sinopec. He was on his way to the Rio summit and was basically a plant to push the de-industrializatio agenda onto the west. Sinopec’s actual operations on the ground in West Africa were an HSE basket case, yet the CEO was fully of lofty goals for everyone else to comply with.
I’ve developed the working theory from what tidbits I’ve seen behind the curtain, combined with how China is given carte blanche on anything it does, that the BIS did some kind of deal some time ago with China to hook them into their global financial yoke but the Chinese have reneged and want to renegotiate. Once they renegotiate, they will renege on that and want another renegotiation. That’s how they work – they are born liars and thieves. Trump is either the BIS spear to get the Chinese back to their original agreements, or the means by which the Petrodollar is destroyed.
Fascinating. And look what I found!
https://www.bis.doc.gov/index.php/all-articles/27-about-bis/1609-cordell-hull
Probably the Grandson. We’uns in big trouble.
BIS is the Bank of International Settlements based in Basel, Switzerland. Sorry about the confusion. Most NWOers know the BIS I was writing about.
Serendipity?
Your BIS actually shit-canned the CNOOC purchase of Unical back in 2005. Same dude that was CEO of Sinopec, Fu Chengyu, was CEO of CNOOC at the time. Your BIS actually abrograted the Unocal takeover on national security ground.
Wonder where they were during Uranium One? And why hasn’t the uranium landholding been expropriated by dame BIS?
This is absolutely correct! It is the Mega Corporations who are pushing the Climate Change agenda in order to implement Carbon Credits. Carbon Credits are a scheme to enslave all the people by controlling CO2 emissions.
You cannot do anything without creating CO2 including breathing. If you control the individuals right to produce CO2, then you have complete control over the individuals ability to do everything.
You reduce the individual to serfdom and remove all degree of self ownership.
Climate change is a natural occurrence that is dictated by the cycles of the sun and not CO2 emissions. Global warming has now been proven to be a fraud, just as the rest of the agenda.
The world is now actually entering a cooling period driven by the suns solar minimum, which I am sure the corporations will try to say is also being created by CO2 emissions, even though it is simply another lie.
The agenda of the Mega Corporation is to implement Globalism, in which they become the rulers of all governments, and therefore all the people.
The only way mankind will be able to regain freedom and self determination is to eliminate the corporate structures, and their power to dominate governments.
For many years now I’ve always entertained the stretch theory that the US backed Petrodollar will be replaced by the international Carbondollar. Instead of wars to enforce the Petrodollar, sanctions and denial of international business transactions will be the weapons of the Carbondollar. It’s a natural degeneration of money – at least the Petrodollar has oil and T-Bills behind it. What does the Carbondollar have behind it – absolutely nothing.
And since the Carbondollar is nothing, it can be anything to anybody! NWO and End of History here we come!
Sorta scary don’t you think. Somehow I don’t think this will be as easy to pull off as these psychopaths think it will be. For them there is “never” enough. This ultimately will do the butt holes in. They can only put so much lipstick on this pig I don’t care what color it is.
at least the Petrodollar has oil and T-Bills behind it.
You forgot the US Military and the thousands of bases and the see eye aye as far as backing goes.
“Almost every female executive I’ve met in the oil industry has been strapped to a diversity rocket”
Thank you for that image.
Rocket envy?
“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”
― George Orwell, Animal Farm
A college administrator’s definition of diversity is for everyone to look different but think the same.
Seems to me these intellectuals have overlooked the basic concept of Human Nature. This has all been tried before and has failed over and over again. As well educated as they profess to be, it would appear they are slow learners.
What’s that definition of insanity again?
Exactly! You see it too.
Actually, mankind has been farmed like heard animals for most of its existence. The idea of sovereign self owning people has only been tried a few times and has never lasted. The vast majority of the population are more comfortable being owned like livestock. Perhaps one day if we survive long enough, we will evolve to being civilized sovereign people…
AKA collectivism.
Not. It is for everyone to not be a white male and think the same.
https://summit.news/2020/01/21/french-intellectual-sentenced-to-2-months-in-prison-for-calling-mass-immigration-an-invasion/
ha ha ha …clown world is real.
U. of Oklahoma Workshop Leader: Being On Time Is ‘White Supremacy’
https://www.breitbart.com/education/2020/01/20/u-of-oklahoma-workshop-leader-being-on-time-is-white-supremacy/
Don’t misgender the grunch .
Sorry about your Dad.
I mean that.
The attempt to dumb down the STEM curriculum is tacit admission that the STEM fields are at the top of the intellectual pyramid. Why then should anyone listen to people from the non STEM fields for their bullshit opinion concerning how to make STEM more inclusive, etc?
What needs to happen is for large swaths of the bullshit majors to simply disappear, like the entirety of the humanities and fraudulently named social sciences. That would leave STEM as about the only option. STEM could slowly integrate medicine and a few other disciplines that have promise but aren’t really productive because they spend too much time on nonsense.
Engineering is what makes the world function and engineering processes should be adopted in non engineering fields to sharpen the focus of ongoing research to maximize effectiveness.
Are you suggesting we have Vending Machine approach to everything?
I have no idea what you’re attempting to say. What has a vending machine got to do with education?
Get rid of government/taxpayer backed student loans, and the problem of worthless degrees would end overnight. But people should be allowed to pay for whatever they can afford themselves.
The NBA needs more Mexicans.
Short, fat ones, too. Maybe 1 feminist and 1 tranny per team.
Muh diversity.
In Fantasy Rainbow World, where the unicorn of diversity advocates
shits free Skittles and everybody makes nice, all are included, none are rejected or ostracized, any nobody is held accountable for failures that cause harm.
Here in the Real World, life isn’t fair, or easy, and standards are not lowered so the incompetent and or degenerates continue to be rewarded and approved of.
Nor should they be.
If that reality is viewed as too cruel or found to be offensive, the snowflakes and
criminals need to work on their psyche and egos, besides their skill sets in order
to develope into civilized, productive members who contribute,
and not just benefit from the collective.
Be forewarned.
It takes a lot of work, constant effort and new learning,
besides much trial and error.
They’re called Dues, and most everybody has to pay them.
Pareto’s Law is pretty reliable. 80 / 20.
Out of every 100, 20% will make the grade.
80% will be sub-standard; Average at best.
Further,
From the original 20%,
Discerning them, subject to Pareto again,
4 out of 20 will be the cream of the crop. Eagles.
4 out of 100 will go on to be enormously successful,
at whatever they choose to do. Soaring above the rest.
16 will be well above average. Falcons.
80 will be garden variety, at various levels of skills
with which to contribute. Chickens & ducks.
Clucking, crowing, quacking all the time,
consuming, and shitting all over the barnyard.
Demands for Politically Correct diversity inclusion
mistakenly thinks and expects that all fowl can be
as skillful as an Eagle, if given an opportunity.
Natural Law proves otherwise, and has a long historical
track record, and the wisdom of timeless experience.
-frothy
Well put Frothy.
OT, we oughtta maybe establish off line comms,
via email…If not mistaken, we’re in close proximity.
i.e., the state surrounded by fresh water, but split into two parts;
the left handed mitten and the westward bound rabbit.
Capiche? Interested?
Not to worry as this 4th turning kicks in high gear and the nation breaks into pieces all this diversity bullshit will fall away very fast once the fighting starts. The battle over the 2nd amendment is just the beginning.
I hate to admit it but, I think you are correct.
Sentiment understandable, variety of reasons.
There’s at least 2 or 3 others that wander the platform as well, that I’m aware of.
I’ll ask Admin to forward your email address, assuming he has it, and if provided, will reach out that way.
Once established, I’ll detail more, in such a 1 to 1 comm.
If Admin doesn’t, then send him an email at his address. Can be found in the sidebar.
Anonymous; Are you in the LH mitten or the Rabbit?
Yes, I would be interested. I have to warn you I am not all that good with a computer. It is a love hate relationship for me.
You can set up a shared email address and communicate by email drafts. Set up account at library and use snail mail to communicate said account. Just some thoughts.
Intriguing option. Thx, Stacker.
It’s not an original idea, I saw it on that show where they tracked or hunted people reality show and one of them did that, they got caught by sending out ten envelopes at the same time and USPS flagged it.
I think it can still be done, you would have to be smarter on it, you could do a chain mail for the participants.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunted_(2017_TV_series)
I hated the show BTW.
Sad, that USPS red flags a bulk mailing.
Solicitors send out bulk mail all the time.
Re: your original suggestion and drafts,
thought I read somewhere that snoops at No Such Agency can view unsent emails as drafts, if they’re hound dogging some on suspicion of nefarious plans and comms.
Not a worry in this instance.
Just two like minded, reaching out to shake hands over the digital divide and
explore common ground a bit further, and off platform. Maybe meet up one day, to clink glasses and toast to the guy who makes it possible.
Amen!
Concur with the Amen.
Check UR email, OT.
Junk / spam folder,
beneath your Inbox, too.
Like I said, I am not that good with all this. I have gone to the only email accounts I have ever had and nothing there that rings a bell. Can you give me a bit of direction. It could be I have my head where it doesn’t belong.
Ok, we’ll work through this. I’ll help.
Very explicit instructions, for the inexperienced. No offense intended.
Follow these steps.
1. Open your email program on your computer. After it starts,
2. Click on “Create a new message.” to launch a new email message you want to send.
Tip:
Wherever you want to start typing text, you need to move your computer mouse arrow to a spot, and Left click one time.
Move the mouse arrow away, and a small, blinking vertical line should be where you clicked.
That’s called placing the cursor.
3. In the To: field, left click your mouse arrow there, and type in:
[email protected]
4. In the “Subject:” or “Re:” field,
Left click there, and type:
“email address request”
5. Then,
Left click your mouse arrow in the Body of the new message, the area below
To:,
Cc;
Bcc:. fields ( I’ll explain those later)
The body is where you type the main part of an email message.
Type: “Hi Jim. Please send me Lager’s (my) email address. Thanks.
Sincerely,
OldTimer505
Step 6: Click on the “Send” or “>”
field, or icon / picture.
Admin will reply to your email, but give him time.
Just periodically check you email Inbox for any new messages received.
When he does, repeat those steps, by creating another new email, but type my email address he gives you, in the “To:” field this time.
Say Hi. Introduce yourself in the body of your email to me.
Click Send again.
Watch for a reply.
It might take a day or more, but so what.
Once we do this, a 1 to 1 communication method will then be set, to use as we want, whenever we want.
Asking Admin to be the relay man, to provide email addresses avoids displaying our e-address up on this website, which reaches far and wide.
Thankful for that, too, JQ.
or send me an email at my gmail… [email protected] and I’ll send you lager’s email…
Thx, MG.
I appreciate the gesture.
Tell N I say Hi.
The real problem with education is that it is not individualized. Like your short sighted Pareto’s Law, it attempts to put everyone into a single box. The fact is, everyone is different and have different strengths and weaknesses. The key is to discover the natural inclination of each student and to steer them into the correct position for their individual skills. The best cook will be more successful than the mediocre engineer.
A nation is formed by a single vision of what that nation stands for. For the US, that vision is represented by the Declaration of Independence which declared that every man has self ownership and agrees to the Non Aggression Principal that every man is free to live his life as he pleases so long as he respects the rights of others to do the same.
Immigrants should be restricted to people who believe this vision and are willing to die to protect it.
Immigrants who do not share this vision and who come to our land only to exploit its economic advantages are not welcome. Immigrants who wish to implement socialism and communism are not welcome.
Diversity in itself is a dividing force to dilute the unity of a given group.
All people who believe in the principals that have made the United States the greatest country in the world are welcome regardless of their origins, but those who would destroy the US by undermining liberty, the Constitution, and the principals stated in the Declaration of Independence are not welcome regardless of where they were born including the US.
Anonymous: This hits the nail squarely on the head. I only wish more people would or could wrap their minds around this concept.
O K. Just for the sake of argument, let’s say you have a construction/design company which is totally “inclusive and diverse” and well noted in trade papers for it. Because of this you are awarded a contract to design and build a bridge across a deep and wide gorge. Three weeks after the bridge is opened to the public, it breaks apart and falls to the bottom of the gorge and takes a few dozen cars and trucks with it. How soon do you think your “inclusive and diverse” company will be awarded another contract. Notice I said nothing about the level of education or expertise of the employees of your company. Understand that in some instances “inclusive and diverse” don’t mean SQUAT.