Corporate Thoughts #1
Diversity is crap.
I mean that in so many ways. First, because for most people bandying the term about, it's just PC-speak for racism -- oh, sure, racism that's supposed to help victims of past discrimination, but still racism: favoring and disfavoring based on the accident of birth of skin color.
And that whole helping of victims thing rings a bit hollow nowadays. I had an intern a few summers back, a lovely, sweet, bright, witty young lady who has since joined our company. She was a "two-fer" -- the favored sex, and a favored ethnicity. But when I had to make accomodations for her to take her planned summer trip with her family to Switzerland, it occurred to me that we weren't remediating past discrimination -- we were just creating some new discrimination, favoring this young woman who'd had all the advantages that wealth and health and good looks had to offer, over some poor white trash male who was the "wrong" sex and the "wrong" color.
Recently, our HR manager joked about a young man who we had to fire that it was good he was white and male. That should be chilling, but it isn't for most people. It's the kind of thing that leads to the ghettoes and the camps and the killing. Is that where we're going?
The other thing about diversity that rings hollow is that somehow we "need" it to be successful. But the firms in China and India currently kicking our butts, and those in Japan a few years back that were doing the same before being supplanted by even more economical Asian economies, have no diversity at all. At least not the kind usually discussed in our addled conversations here in America.
But there's hope on the diversity front -- the addled conversations may be becoming less so. My company has recently been referring to real diversity -- of opinion, of background, and so on. Perhaps the accidents of birth of sex and color may one day be relegated to the background, where they belong.
I mean that in so many ways. First, because for most people bandying the term about, it's just PC-speak for racism -- oh, sure, racism that's supposed to help victims of past discrimination, but still racism: favoring and disfavoring based on the accident of birth of skin color.
And that whole helping of victims thing rings a bit hollow nowadays. I had an intern a few summers back, a lovely, sweet, bright, witty young lady who has since joined our company. She was a "two-fer" -- the favored sex, and a favored ethnicity. But when I had to make accomodations for her to take her planned summer trip with her family to Switzerland, it occurred to me that we weren't remediating past discrimination -- we were just creating some new discrimination, favoring this young woman who'd had all the advantages that wealth and health and good looks had to offer, over some poor white trash male who was the "wrong" sex and the "wrong" color.
Recently, our HR manager joked about a young man who we had to fire that it was good he was white and male. That should be chilling, but it isn't for most people. It's the kind of thing that leads to the ghettoes and the camps and the killing. Is that where we're going?
The other thing about diversity that rings hollow is that somehow we "need" it to be successful. But the firms in China and India currently kicking our butts, and those in Japan a few years back that were doing the same before being supplanted by even more economical Asian economies, have no diversity at all. At least not the kind usually discussed in our addled conversations here in America.
But there's hope on the diversity front -- the addled conversations may be becoming less so. My company has recently been referring to real diversity -- of opinion, of background, and so on. Perhaps the accidents of birth of sex and color may one day be relegated to the background, where they belong.
posted by Steady Earl at 5:49 PM
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