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Saturday, October 27. 2018Virtue SignalingI spent the summer of 1982 with a group of 7 other people, one who was my brother, the rest were his high school and college friends. We had a 36 year get together not too long ago, and 2 of them had become lawyers. As the weekend wound down, we were entertained as the two of them talked 'shop' and one asked the other a question - "Does your firm have a diversity officer?" The reply, not surprisingly, was "Yes." Thereupon they launched into a Q & A regarding "What exactly does a diversity officer do?" The answer from both was "I don't really know." I work at a major corporation and we have a diversity officer. I'm not sure what that position does, besides pay well and provide a public face at industry events which address diversity. The reality is the position isn't much more than virtue signaling. I happen to support diversity as a concept, but not as a goal. For one reason. It can't be a goal because it can never be 'finished'. My favorite moment at any HR event was many years ago when my firm was giving everyone an update on diversity and pointed out that our employee base mimicked the make-up of the US in terms of percentages for gender and race. That, in itself, was considered an accomplishment. But more needed to be done, of course. My boss, a female, raised her hand and asked a simple question. "When are we finished?" HR was floored. What did she mean? My boss said, when you have a goal to achieve something, you are finished at some point. She was curious what the goal of diversity was and when it would be met. I've mentioned this story before. It's important to revisit. What's really at stake when corporations invoke 'diversity' isn't anything truly tangible. I know there are almost no firms that value older employees. They are expensive and their experience is no longer valued the way it once was, so the 'diversity' they offer isn't a valued diversity. Older employees are often viewed to be technologically impaired, owning mindsets which are not as 'out of the box' or forward-thinking (I take issue with both these points). Diversity for most firms isn't really diversity at all. It's just virtue signaling to the public. True diversity is recognizing that different personalities and viewpoints have value and welcoming them as part of the mix so the overall organization benefits. It's not a goal, just something which should be done naturally. Do you need an officer to tell you how that's done? Comments
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Bulldog: My boss said, when you have a goal to achieve something, you are finished at some point.
The goal of a safe work environment being an obvious counterexample. Thanks so much for the reminder to thank the good Lord everyday in prayers, that I don’t work at a large corporation! I work for myself, and it truly is a blessing.
Of course if I did work at a company with a diversity officer, and if I went around proclaiming the good news of Christ, that would be the wrong sort of diversity. They don’t value diversity in political thought either. What diversity is is political correctness in disguise. Toe the line, or else! I remember hearing a similar goal in regards to the diversity of our workforce. One small problem in regards to where our division is located: lack of a 'diverse' population.
In order to make our workforce as diverse as the makeup of the US population we would need to import all of our 'diverse' personnel from elsewhere in the country because we do not have a diverse population. That means it is highly unlikely we would be able to meet any diversity 'goal'. Frankly, I have always thought the diversity bugaboo was just so much horse manure. It is an artificial desire that overlooks the realities of our population distribution. Trying to artificially balance the population never works as it is an effort to 'homogenize' the distribution of the various races/ethnicities across all 50 states. Unless there is forced relocation, it ain't gonna happen. At the health-focused government agency where a friend of mine used to work, racial and sexual orientation diversity were fetishized -- being a member of an underrepresented minority (Asians don't count) or LGBT were a HUGE advantage in the hiring process. Strangely enough, however, there was no similar commitment to class diversity or to hiring disabled people.
What that meant as an outcome to this "commitment to diversity" was that a lot of gay white men who went to Ivy League schools and run as a hobby got hired to be middle management. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. That is happening in my office today.
It's outlandish, and you're correct. It is fetishized. You know absolutely nothing about an office, it's clear.
That's not a goal. It's an ongoing process. There's a huge difference. Diversity could be an ongoing process, but it's always presented as a goal. That is how it is fetishized and used to do virtue signaling. I notice that rather than address the point of the article, you always choose one small point - completely miss the mark - and then assume you've somehow made a valuable contribution. Bulldog: That's not a goal. It's an ongoing process.
Similarly with diversity. As businesses expand into new markets, they may need to attract talent from new demographics. It may be difficult to break into these new markets without people who understand the culture. Sometimes that may require working with schools and colleges to make sure there are available candidates from that demographic. It may mean integrating these new people into the existing culture, so educating one another about cultural differences can be important. It may require opening up management positions to the new demographic, or risk losing talent to other, more inclusive competitors. And so on, an ongoing process with interim goals. I came to the conclusion long ago that diversity is a frivolous concept with no serious intellectual backing. Years ago I worked in the antenna section at Harris Corporation and it was almost 100% white males. Nobody believed that if we just hired some women or blacks or Hispanics we would design and build better antennas. We had some token Asians like Dr. Choi and Dr. Chung but we couldn't find any female engineers.
You all might be interested in Vox Day's two books:
Social Justice Warriors Always Lie Social Justice Warrior Always Double Down Taken from his three laws of social justice warriors. You may disagree with his politics but these are vey useful practical books for someone dealing with this nonsense in their organization or workplace. I can tell you what a diversity officer does; they set and fill quotas. They sit in on office and corporate meetings to make sure other employees and executives are following diversity polices and meeting the goals. They explain the diversity requirement to the rank and file. In general they are professional bigots. That is if they are black 99% of their "diversity" is aimed to benefit blacks. If they are Hispanic then 99% of their diversity is aimed to benefit Hispanics.
Yes, it "may." I can't fathom why one would think that was a strong argument.
I think we all get that this is the theory. But if intelligent people can't figure out years later what the value of something is, then maybe it has none. Assistant Village Idiot: Yes, it "may."
That's right. If a business is in a culturally homogenous area, then diversity may not be an immediate concern, but if they want to expand into a more culturally diverse area, such as most modern cities, then they will need to diversify their outreach, both for customers and for workers. If they want to further expand into other, ethnically distinct countries, then learning how to integrate highly disparate groups becomes paramount. In the modern, globally connected world, diversity is an essential component of business development. I use tripled reusable bags, for the thermal insulation and vertical strength carrying it on a bike luggage carrier. The milk actually lasts until the expiration date if you keep it cold on the way home.
Kroger though changed their U-scan code to not accept more than one reusable bag, so now I use plastic bags and put them in the reusable bag for transport. I think there's a path to greater competitiveness for anyone who identifies a group of talent that others are foolishly overlooking. Harvard, for instance, is deliberately passing up many fantastic Asian students because it believes in the greater value of bringing in large numbers of lower-performing students from favored ethnic groups. Other universities should be cleaning up on Harvard's mistake. I once worked for a fine law firm started in the 30s by a lot of Jews who couldn't even get an interview at the white-shoe New York firms.
We had a pretty good recruitment coordinator who cautioned us against the temptation to hire new lawyers who looked and sounded like ourselves, instead of identifying the qualities we really believed would help them succeed and improve our firm. This is not so much because it was unfair to the ones we were overlooking, but because we had a tendency unconsciously to focus on irrelevancies rather than on merit, so we would miss out on excellent candidates. But diversity just for box-checking's sake is dumb. "diversity" will never be achieved as the leftist virtue signaling idiots keep changing the goalposts.
When 100% of the company is black women, they'll scream not enough of them are muslim transgender lesbians... JTW: "diversity" will never be achieved as the leftist virtue signaling idiots keep changing the goalposts.
Diversity is a process with interim goals. Generally, a management and workforce should reflect its neighborhood. If the A&P only hires white managers and workers in a neighborhood that is largely black, then it will not be able to maintain a good relationship with the black community. If the neighborhood is national, then it should reflect the diversity of the nation. At my small business, our diversity was shot to hell when Ancestry.com changed some of our racial mixtures due to "new genetic information".
Now we have to start all over again. |
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