White Guys Need Not Apply (vanity)

Situation: I'm taking a Diversity class and as a humble white male I was sideswiped by the revelation from the instructor and all my class mates agreed that the "good-old white-boy" network exists, which I acknowledged, and that you can't make it to the top in all upper echelon positions in business and the world unless you are white. I replied that many minorities are succeeding today and gave Condaleeza Rice, Clarence Thomas, Colin Powell and even Janet Reno (ick) as examples to which all in the room agreed that they were all tokens. I categorically rejected that in front of the whole class, which is made up of Mexican, Columbian and other South Americans. I know racism exists but seriously, can no minority make it to upper levels of power on merit?

Anyway, what I'm getting at is that I need to do a presentation on anything to do with Global Diversity and I intend to do this on reverse discrimination or something else that puts what we discussed in the proper perspective for my intructor and classmates.

To me it is so obvious they are practicing reverse discrimination. To generalize about ANY race is wrong, and that is what they have done in this case.

And so as not to make myself out to be lilly white, and as I told the class, I respect all people and my life proves that. I have dozens of minority friends including Vietnamese, Puerto Rican, A-Americans, cubans and my son-in-law is from Portugal who I love, FWIW.

So, any articles you guys can post would be greatly appreciated. I'll be leaving for work, so I won't be able to reply for a bit.

Check the website of a major corporation and you will quickly find evidence that millions are spent to put on "the diversity happy face". It is the way the left is penetrating our capitalist system outside the political realm. It will take our industries down in the end, and the situation we are in today with the idealogical tug of war vs. the war effort is a direct result of the whining of diversity and tolerance proponants.

At my previous employer (a major defense contracting corporation), we went through a Diversity Initiative. The Diversity Initiatives in major corporations were started because of the Dept. of Labor's Glass Ceiling Commission report. In that report, it was noted that although 57% of the workers were women and minorities, they comprised less than 5% of upper management. The report looked at major government contractors.

The effects of the Diversity Initiative at my former employer were thus: one black man and one woman had their pictures slapped all over every single publication the company had as the new face of our company. The woman had lied on her resume for 10 years about a degree she never got, and the solution to that was to remove her resume from the corporate resume system, and appoint her to the corporate-wide Ethics committee, and promote her to VP.

Our own division hired on about a half dozen black females (because they counted double in the counting system the Department of Defense used on their contractors -- all contracts had to report the numbers of males and females and minorities). These females were hired at about twice the salaries of everyone else at their levels. (One in particular like to brag at all-hands meetings that she spent her whole paycheck - she announced the amount too - on clothes because her attorney husband was so successful.)

She was known as a complete incompetent, who couldn't get her own work done. Everyone who worked under her left the company within a short amount of time. Our WHITE MALE VP enjoyed her fashion sense so much, he consistently held her up at staff meetings as the ideal female employee. More people left the group then.

I got stuck under the black male token first, then the white female token, and I too left the company because I grew tired of my accomplishments being touted as hers. But then, she was the designated token, and I just didn't fit the picture of the ideal female for the VPs.

1. Religious Background 2. Race 3. Success Statistics on the procedure 4. History of diverse hiring practices 5. Culture/Nationality Any person who does not choose 3 is full of s&^t.

Working for 15+ years in government contracting, with an all-white-male management structure, I can verify for you that in fact, the selection criteria in the vast majority of cases was whether or not the candidate was a white male, not the most qualified, not the most profitable. Especially in defense contracting.

Diversity initiatives are a corruption. The existing situation in corporate America, which the diversity initiatives aimed at correcting, is a corruption. The problem being that (a) the research and analyses that were done in support of the Glass Ceiling Commission report were quite thorough and very explicit in addressing cultural barriers to both women and minorities, but (b) nobody in corporate American responsible for the diversity initiatives READ THEM. And so, we have the situation where it becomes about numbers, and ways to get around those numbers the easiest and cheapest and least troublesome way possible, while at the same time, consolidating power, and improving one's position in the corporate structure.

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