How To Kill Real Diversity in the Workplace

 Honestly, this story doesn't surprise me.

I saw similar things under the guise of "In Service Training" lead to distrust and dishonesty throughout the entire school. You didn't know who to trust. Teachers who smiled and embraced the New Order literally got away with murder. Their reports weren't scrutinized. They didn't get stern warnings about special ed paperwork. They avoided and even asked not to have to teach learning disabled students (something I didn't know was possible.) And all the while they postured to follow the equity based paradigm of the Leftists in charge.

That this same mindset would start to erode previously successful companies is no mystery. This is just like the mean girl who takes joy in watching others fight. These folks thrive on controversy and sincerely only want diversity on their terms-which is to say no real diversity at all.

But go ahead and read it yourself.

Basecamp

On the Dangers of Diversity

From Tao:

Lets consider how the concept of identity politics has made it almost impossible to make any sort of progress on controlling crime, limiting illegal immigration or eliminating violence. If we said things such as "People should comply with the police," we end up with a litany from various groups on why such a thing would not happen. If we say "People should obey the laws," we have countless politicians and plaintiffs telling us they will not. The Progressive desire to serve all parts based on a subjective order of "fairness" has resulted in a system that is falling apart because the key structural elements are being ignored and in some cases, such as certain Constitutional rights, in danger of being removed completely.

Consider a Ferris wheel. While the cars that carry passengers may be shiny and colorful, the integrity of the structure of the device is what makes it possible for all to ride. If we sad only the people in the green cars get cotton candy, the others are not well served. If we try to make some cars go faster for the sake of benefiting one group, the other groups are stranded. If we remove central parts of the device, the entire machine crashes to the ground. Our nation and its Constitutional structure are the Ferris wheel. Various groups have a chance to ride the wheel, but they have to do so at the same pace as everyone else. To select winners and losers, which is what Progressives seek to do, damages the very mechanisms that make the device or nation function.

When we are distracted by the colors and noise that fill our society, we forget the core values that override every other manmade "right". When we allow ourselves to be distracted by fringe issues that serve only a few, we ignore those key elements that provide us with strength. Government exists to provide security first. That means protecting and maintaining our sovereignty. Open borders and loose standards on immigration does not do that. It is a European experiment that has failed and it will fail here as well. At one point in history this nation was truly a melting pot. While we kept family heritage, all Americans shared the same language and goals. Now we're a fruit salad where the bananas and strawberries gang up against the grapes and apples. Everyone wants to be at the front of the line and everyone wants to impose their culture as an overlay on our own.

We have become blinded by too many colors and the idea that different and new are always better. To quote my Mom "we've thrown out the baby with the bath water" on some sort of wrongheaded quest for newest chattering toy instead of seeking value in what we hold in our hands.

Thought Police

I came across this meme and it made me think about how guarded we have all become on how we speak about issues and events. While I do think we should be considerate and respectful of others, it seems that progressives would prefer that we not express any ideas contrary to theirs. The penalty now can be as mild as a write up or as serious as firing and civil penalties. How did we reach this point where a diversity of ideas was more scandalous than promiscuity, dishonesty or murder? Every few years I reread "1984" and I'm always struck by how easily the population accepts whatever they are told to believe. Bombarded by screencast images, the population rarely deviates from the narrow patterns assigned by the powers that be. And even the higher castes are not immune to censure if they fail to give public voice to the same song. "We are at war with Eurasia, we have always been at war with Eurasia." How long will be before academia and media have conspired to scrub all diversity of ideas from our midst? If you look at the art from totalitarian regimes there are all the same-realistic, nationalistic, bland and vapid admiration to a cult of personality. Is this what Americans really want?

English On The Job

Story here.
I can understand the confusion of the woman who was required to speak English on the job. I mean, where else in our society do we currently support these goals? We have schools all in Spanish, we have TV, radio and newspapers all in Spanish. There are grocery stores where you can't even be hired to work unless you are fluent in Spanish. Even the DISD removed experienced teachers and replaced them with less experienced, but Spanish speaking, instructors. But here's the bottom line-when you are working at a job that requires technical know-how, you must be able to efficiently communicate problems. And you can't do that if you don't speak the language. Now telling the employee not to say "hola" is coming down a bit hard, and I would like to know if that in fact happened or was made up. But the issue is that we cannot continue to function in any aspect of this country if we cannot communicate. You wouldn't want a nurse in surgery or an EMT at a fire to be unable to convey what was happening. And in a technical or assembly situation, there could be safety issues or construction issues that would make serious errors or cause accidents. Lack of communication is no laughing matter in the workplace because failure to tell supervisors of dangerous situations leads to accidents. How many gas lines have been cut simply because the signs were placed to communicate the danger or the heavy equipement operator could not or did not read the warnings? So I am sure there will be the usual hoopla from the usual suspects shouting racism and claiming injury, but in the end, at the workplace if English is what is used in the operation of the business, then that's the rules and you abide by them.

PS. I still think if all the English language networks have to provide SAP captioning, that Univision and others should offer English language captioning. Who knows, maybe all of us would learn another language that way

Diversity and Mistrust

I was directed to this article from another blog. I read it and found it fascinating. And in looking at how modern society is evolving, I found it fairly accurate in its conclusions. Trust is something that occurs when two people have shared beliefs. This doesn't necessarily mean religious or political beliefs, but common ground or at least common aspects of the same culture. With the push for the American Salad approach to society over the Melting Pot, we have entire sectors of society that cannot even carry on a conversation with each other. That doesn't make a society and it surely doesn't inspire trust on any level. Is it any wonder that people are so resistant to the erosion of American core shared traits such as language, culture and social issues? Can we really feel assured of our safety when we have people in charge at large corporate and social institutions that seem intent on tearing apart families and neighborhoods in the name of diversity. Let me give you an example. Our first house was a smaller three bedroom in a blue collar suburban neighborhood. People planted trees and bushes, mowed their grass and maintained their homes. That was the wordless contract that neighbors shared. Four years after we bought the house, several neighboring house were bought by an absentee landlord. Repairs weren't made, painting wasn't done, lawns weren' t mowed and roves of unknown people drifted in an out of the houses leading to a series of police incidents. Our street was still pretty nice when we left. We had just painted the house, landscaped the yard and replaced all the indoor flooring and carpeting. It wasn't fancy, but it was a nice house. Five years later, I can't even drive by the house. Our former neighbors told us the nice Mexican American couple that bought the house almost immediately sold it for cash to their relatives, of who eight, four under twelve, live in the home. Cars are parked on the lawn. A porch covering was made of plywood and two by fours. The house is painted a different color on each side and the thirty foot live oak and landscape was pulled out . The carefully tended St. Augustine lawn is dirt. I won't drive by there because it makes me cry, but honestly, this house was a nice house and the lack of shared values destroyed it and is dragging down home values on all the houses around it. Sure, the neighbors can call the city and get them to cite them for flouting the laws, but in the previous situation, neighbors didn't have to do that because we shared the values of keeping our homes in order. Plus, the neighbors are older people who have been threatened by these folks. So what was a bucolic suburban retirement for our former neighbors has become a nightmare. Do they distrust their new neighbors? Of course, after seeing the neglect and the utter disregard for local customs, what do you expect? And that is the crux of the matter. If someone comes into your home and smokes without permission, you ask them to leave. Why then, when people come here and damage our local communities, AND they have no legal right to be here, can we not ask them to leave too?

College and Intellectual Rape

These days, many college educators have obvious political bias in the material they offer in the classroom. Often, this bias makes or breaks a student's grade. The student can choose to fight the bias and risk their grade or the student can write and perform to the bias, saving their grade but losing thier personal integrity. Is this right? Should students be forced to adhere to views they do not support? Should students be penalized for failure to agree with a professors point of view?

I am not talking about right and wrong here. Obviously there are disciplines such as math and science where answers are definitive. There are cut and dried responses that don't provide wiggle room for opinion. An example would be "Abraham Lincoln wrote the Gettysburg Address." Where the bias can sneak in is often with what used to be called liberal arts. Social sciences, history, literature, philosophy and even psychology can be manipulated through reading lists, lectures and expectations to create a student outcome that is defined by whether or not the student sticks to the expressed code. Is this a true liberal-in this conjecture it means free-education? Should professors not be held accountable for teaching a wide range of views rather than simply loading the course with reading that supports a narrow view?

I have had former students come back and tell me that they have experienced this in upscale private universities as well as state institutions. Regardless of the source, these schools are supported by federal dollars in the form of grants and scholarships. As faithful stewards,these institutions have a legal obligation to provide the best education possible. I am not sure that trying to indoctrinate students under the guise of education fulfills that obligation. In many respects this is a type of invasion. Many professors are using their personal bully pulpits to force students into taking views they cannot and do not hold for the duration of the class. If they were using similar methods to promote illegal activity it would be called brainwashing. But the force of the method, the resistance of some students and the outcome of resentment and fear resemble rape more than any other crime. How can we as parents, as taxpayers allow this to continue?

I am not supporting any sort of pogrom of professors based on political litmus tests. But I am recommending that universities and colleges be pro-active in the way they monitor their teaching staff. They need to demand reading lists, syllabi and lectures that expose students to the entire spectrum of intellectual thought, not just the limited range of liberal or conservative politics. By definition a university is expected to provide a "universal" source of knowledge, if we continue to limit our students by only telling them half the story, they in turn will produce increasingly flawed and limited solutions to the problems our nation and world will face in the future. Half the truth is half an education. We deserve more for our money.