Die DEI, die
The University of Arkansas issued a press release on November 16, 2022, “Ad/PR Student Attends National PR Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Summit in Chicago.”
The story said, “Breana Hicks, a senior in the School of Journalism and Strategic Media, attended The Plank Center for Leadership in Public Relations 2022 Summit on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion and Milestones in Mentoring gala in Chicago. Hicks was one of 18 diverse public relations students to receive the 2022 Plank Center DEI Student Travel Scholarship chosen from universities across the country.”
The photo accompanying the story showed 20 people. Three were white women and one was a black male. The rest were black women and Asian women.
They think there is a future in becoming a professional but DEI is a ghetto for women, minorities, LGBT and others who marginalize themselves by not availing themselves of the opportunities afforded them by the great civil rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s.
The women and the man in that photo need to develop marketable skills.
You see, while all these gals and minorities are carping about their rights, others are doing the work and making the money that allows the company the luxury of indulging these professional nags who demand equal pay without equal skills, equal experience or equal effort. Elon Musk will sleep on factory floors if necessary to get his companies running.
Being vital to the company is job protection. DEI is a good little-work, big-pay gig until the economy goes south, as it always does eventually.
On January 24, Kelsey Butler of Bloomberg reported, “Big Tech Layoffs Are Hitting Diversity and Inclusion Jobs Hard.
“Companies that made promises to hire more underrepresented groups are gutting departments meant to achieve those goals.”
The story said, “The layoffs sweeping the technology industry are gutting diversity and inclusion departments, threatening company pledges to boost underrepresented groups in their ranks and leadership.
“Listings for DEI roles were down 19% last year — a bigger decline than legal or general human resources jobs saw, according to findings from Textio, which helps companies create unbiased job ads. Only software engineering and data science jobs saw larger declines, at 24% and 27%, respectively.”
If you aren’t an essential worker who must come in when the blizzard hits, you aren’t essential on any other day of the year. And if you aren’t essential, expect a pink slip when layoffs roll.
On February 6, an alarmed Marguerite Ward of Insider reported, “Layoffs sweeping Big Tech are putting corporate diversity efforts at risk.”
She wrote, “At Lyft, one former employee on the diversity and inclusion team wrote on LinkedIn that she, along with most of her department, had been cut. Bloomberg reported Twitter's diversity, equity, and inclusion team had gone from 30 people to two.”
Besides being a drag on profits, there is no diversity in DEI.
The New York Times was shocked on Tuesday to learn Governor Glenn Youngkin appointed to the University of Virginia’s board of trustees (called the Board of Visitors) Bert Ellis, who has donated more than $10 million to the school.
NYT said, “At U.Va., an Alumnus Attacked Diversity Programs. Now He Is on the Board.”
How dare someone have an opinion that is not approved by NYT Inc. and the DEI industry. To boot, he is not one of those protected by DEI by virtue of his sex or race.
Inclusion means exclusion.
On Friday Insider honored 14 HR employees at various companies for their DEI work. Only two were male — both Indian-Americans. So much for diversity and inclusion.
Nobody really wants that. DEI is a joke — even at the college level.
On February 2, Inside Higher Education reported, “Demand for diversity, equity and inclusion specialists on campus is high—and so is turnover. Many in the field say the work can be isolating and support from top leaders is rare.”
The story said Cecil Howard resigned as vice president for diversity, inclusion and equal opportunity at the University of South Florida in July 2021.
He said, “Everybody wants to hire a chief diversity officer to throw a Black History Month event or read a land acknowledgment.
“But when the rubber meets the road—when we’re at least aspiring to become an antiracist environment—those senior leaders and major decision-makers, they don’t want to hear it. I was never going to be OK being a pawn, a token, a box-checker. So I left.”
And there was a happy ending for Howard.
He said, “It got to the point where I don’t want to do this work anymore, as much as I care about it. An experience like the one I had will just take the wind out of your sails.”
Good for him. Be a man, not a checked box. If all I am is a white male after 69 years, then I have wasted my life. I have not. I am a grandpa, husband of 45 years and father of three. I am a conservative writer and retired newspaperman in Poca, West Virginia. My color and sex don’t matter.
People have had it with DEI.
Charles Love wrote in Newsweek on April 21, “A white grievance backlash has arrived in Massachusetts, to hear the liberal media tell it. Well-funded and well-connected GOP power players masquerading as aggrieved parents have been ‘harassing educators for policies they deem unfair to white students and antithetical to their values,’ per a Boston Globe columnist. It's ‘white backlash politics’ that's ‘clearly coordinated, with right-wing money’ and engaged in a campaign of ‘whipping suburban parents into a frenzy’ to win elections for the Republicans.
“Sounds sinister! But if you talk to the parents at the center of the ongoing fight over Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in public schools in Newton, Massachusetts, you'll find something very different. You won't find MAGA Republicans opposing DEI in the schools, but rather liberal Democrats who have noticed a shift in their children's school system priorities. And their complaints have nothing to do with being white.
“One parent had a child excluded from an affinity group (a race-based social group), while other parents were dismayed to find an accelerated math program that was in place for years had been scrapped due to equity concerns. Still others were troubled to learn that their children's English and History instruction was filled with language dividing everyone into categories of oppressor or oppressed.”
So the Boston Globe stereotyped people who opposed DEI overkill instead of actually talking to them and finding out who they are. I wish I were surprised.
DEI is a dead end in part because people are tired of race hoaxes and scolds talking about microagressions such as saying “Merry Christmas.” Jussie Smollett set civil rights a century ahead by showing black people can be as bigoted as white people and that gays are just as deceptive as straights.
My unsolicited advice to Breana Hicks is dump DEI and find something useful to offer society because DEI is as big a dead end as newspapering.
I hear you, Don. I won't say much because I have to write and edit DEI copy where I work. What I would say is that if a company doesn't perform, as in sell things, employees are let go. Non-essential employees go first. Every company has goals for its employees. One of my goals is to increase website traffic this year is by 8 % with content. So far, traffic this year is up over 10% and climbing, but I have to sustain that until Dec. 31 when a new target will be assigned. No target, no bonus. ( I comment here as often as I can while working.) DEI where I work also has targets and one of them "engaging with content" which means reading it. That is usually low. Where DEI succeeds is internally with all of its "positive" messaging and its employee groups. In my case, I do what is asked of me to the best of my ability because I am a professional. Other than that, I stay in the background because I am fearful of saying the wrong thing. I am even worried about commenting here. There is diversity but not diversity of thought. This will be the last time I say anything about the topic.
Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, who planned the attack on Pearl Harbor would reportedly write in his diary, “I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.”
We can hope this is so in this case as well.