I should add that being diverse means having to participate in public, and rather embarrassing sacraments of diversity.
For example, men (who start with a cloud of non-diverse, counterrevolutionary suspicion about them) must earnestly pretend in public that another man cutting off his genitals doesn’t creep them out, in fact, it must be celebrated. They must also keep a straight face when gender theorists go on about penis patriarchy and whenever the vagina slogan de jour is bandied about.
It is very important that they not show that they think these ideas are stupid, silly, meaningless, or otherwise anything less than, well, holy writ.
Whites (also presumptively suspicious) must earnestly try to figure out how their dirt poor immigrant grandparents gave them a ten generation white privilege head start—in fact mentioning that you are not a Vanderbilt is in rather bad taste. If, however, you are a Vanderbilt, but have grown dreadlocks and rejected your ancestor’s values, you get some slack on the whole diversity thing—especially if you give money to your diverse betters.
“I should add that being diverse means having to participate in public, and rather embarrassing sacraments of diversity.”
In the late 1990’s managers my employer, a multinational corporation headquarters in Chicago, jumped on the diversity bandwagon in a big way. Not only were affirmative action programs stepped up, and actual hiring quotas for minorities verbally communicated to department heads, all managers were required to attend diversity training by outside consultants. The consultants were really minority community organizers posing as human resources consultants.
The mandatory training session consisted of a two day small group session in a local hotel conference room led by one of the minority facilitators. It began with a one hour speech by the lead facilitator about white culture and the many transgressions of white men against women and minorities, particularly blacks, throughout human history. He spoke about white privilege and the continuous conscious and unconscious exploitation of other races and women by white men.
The rest of the day was all about beating up on white men in order to make them aware of the pain they were inflicting on others. Each white male manager was directed to stand up and make a statement about minorities and women. Most of the white men began by making a statement about how they did not discriminate and treated everyone equally. At that point the facilitator would yell at them, going through a list of questions designed to demonstrate they were part of the problem. For example - “How many vacancies in your department last year. So you had five vacancies. How many were filled with people of color? None. So you are a bigot!. Who was the last person you promoted in your department? A white male! See you are preventing women and people of color from getting ahead.” If the white male manager talked about performance, skills, and knowledge as reasons for his decisions he was told those were artificial constructs in his mind used to rationalize his discrimination.
During the next phase the facilitator encouraged women and minorities to attack the white managers and pile on telling about their struggles and experiences with the white managers. Perceived slights such as - “he always goes to lunch with the same white male friend” or “last week he didn’t smile at me”, were blown up into major crimes against humanity.
At the end of day 1 instead of going home like most of the rest of the group, I went back to my office to pick up phone messages. I had a very irate call from the buyer at my division’s largest customer about a shipment one of the affirmative action employees was managing that was lost and urgently needed. I walked into the politically correct white male VP’s office and asked him if I should come into the office first thing in the morning to fix the problem or go to day two of the diversity meeting. As usual, he would not give me a straight answer, instead mouthing something like, “I’m sure you’ll do the right thing.”
In my mind the right thing was to serve the customer first, after all it was our business. I spent most of the morning making calls to track down the shipment and expedite its delivery so the customer would have the goods on the sales floor in time for the promotion. Once this mission was accomplished I showed up at the seminar three hours late expecting to be berated by the facilitator. When I walked into the room, he started to speak to me. I gave him a very strong look, directly into his eyes, and simply said, “You really don’t won’t to go there.” He at first appeared startled, then a gleam of comprehension came into is expression. He smiled slightly, I sat down, and the rest of the day watched the verbal assaults on the other white males. The moderator did not address me again.
That once great, high performing corporation, struggled in the 2000’s as management focused on diversity and internal politics instead of a rapidly changing marketplace. I left in 2003, knowing the ship was sinking. By 2005 performance had declined to the point Wall Street was pressuring management to sell assets, close or sell businesses, and lay off tens of thousands of workers. The downsizing failed to turn around performance so the corporation was ultimately broken up and is no more.
Now I’m watching the same story play out on a macro level as diversity triumphs performance in every dimension of our culture and society.