The Outstater
The Gospel from a DEI Queen
I OPENED THE PAPER this morning to be instructed by the first-ever female president of our Chamber of Commerce, a comely white woman in her middle years full of social-justice sensitivity.
Now, I don’t know this woman but she knows me, a bigoted member of the unwashed in need of enlightenment. Undeserving as I may be, she had interrupted her cracking of the glass ceiling long enough to make sure I understood how the world works. “Successful businesses and organizations hire people who reflect their customers and stakeholders,” she begins. “It is a smart business decision.”
Mentioning pointedly that she has served in upper management and in corporate board rooms for more than three decades, she asserts that hiring people of varying ages, genders, races and backgrounds strengthens a business. “Many organizations have gradually come to accept and embrace this reality. More recently, this smart practice has become known as diversity, equity and inclusion.”
Not being in her employ, you can be spared her full “upper management” exposition. It boils down to this: Businesses are more successful when they mathematically select and deselect their employees by social and racial identity. The assumption is that all individuals from any background or in whatever state of mind are inherently equal in motivation, ability and potential and there will be no loss in productivity or innovation if you adopt hiring policies that make you feel good — godlike even.
Prejudice is not prejudicial? Nobody really believes that. This is Queen-of-Hearts, Alice-in-Wonderland stuff, and from what her bio says is an “award-winning broadcast executive and development professional for several local nonprofits.”
Moreover, her message was directed at a midsized Indiana city renowned for its connections to innovation and productivity. This includes the television, gasoline pump, electric wheelchair, the modern electric motor, the hand-held computer, the first American-made motorcycle, the first commercial radio station, the ATM machine and the Hovercraft — all achieved without our Chamber of Commerce lady’s guidance.
Can we just say that this woman is a fool and go about our day? No, because it might just be me; I know nothing about running a business. I asked a friend, though, the owner of a third-generation one. His critique:
“She says successful businesses hire people who ‘reflect’ their customers and stakeholders. Rather, you and I know that successful businesses hire people who serve the customers profitably. What they reflect in general society has nothing to do with it. If a business does some hiring on her basis it is only because they have enough excess capital to blow on such foolishness. There are no small, competitive businesses that put any premium on superfluous factors like skin, religion, gender, etc., unless they have some direct bearing on the tasks associated with the job. I certainly don’t care — and don’t want to know — with whom they prefer to have sex. And what’s really strange about this is I didn’t need the government (or a Chamber of Commerce) to tell me any of that; I figured it out on my own.
“And don’t get me started on ‘stakeholders.’ That’s just some social justice bull meant to elevate people without a direct investment in a business to be equal to those whose property is at stake (the real stakeholders). That she brings it up and places inordinate importance to the concept, betrays her lack of real qualifications. Who knows, maybe she was an early DEI hire.”
Perhaps none of this has anything to do with good business management or even diversity, equity and inclusion. Perhaps it is something primordial — an assertion of dominance or territory, in this case political, a “display” in the anthropological sense, as observed by primatologists and behavioral ecologists. Think Howler monkeys.
The DEI folks may be simply demonstrating that they can force on us a dabbler, call her a CEO, have her pronounce rubbish, order the newspaper to publish it and shame us into sitting still for the lesson — it being that if they can do all that to us now consider what can be done if they ever really become displeased.
I should have my tea before I pick up the morning paper. —tcl
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