Diversity vs competency

Harold Robertson at Palladium Magazine has an essay “Complex Systems Won’t Survive the Competence Crisis” (h/t Andrea Widburg).  He starts off:

At a casual glance, the recent cascades of American disasters might seem unrelated. In a span of fewer than six months in 2017, three U.S. Naval warships experienced three separate collisions resulting in 17 deaths. A year later, powerlines owned by PG&E started a wildfire that killed 85 people. The pipeline carrying almost half of the East Coast’s gasoline shut down due to a ransomware attack. Almost half a million intermodal containers sat on cargo ships unable to dock at Los Angeles ports. A train carrying thousands of tons of hazardous and flammable chemicals derailed near East Palestine, Ohio. Air Traffic Control cleared a FedEx plane to land on a runway occupied by a Southwest plane preparing to take off. Eye drops contaminated with antibiotic-resistant bacteria killed four and blinded fourteen. 

While disasters like these are often front-page news, the broader connection between the disasters barely elicits any mention. America must be understood as a system of interwoven systems; the healthcare system sends a bill to a patient using the postal system, and that patient uses the mobile phone system to pay the bill with a credit card issued by the banking system. All these systems must be assumed to work for anyone to make even simple decisions. But the failure of one system has cascading consequences for all of the adjacent systems. As a consequence of escalating rates of failure, America’s complex systems are slowly collapsing.

And here’s his conclusion:

Americans living today are the inheritors of systems that created the highest standard of living in human history. Rather than protecting the competency that made those systems possible, the modern preference for diversity has attenuated meritocratic evaluation at all levels of American society. Given the damage already done to competence and morale combined with the natural exodus of baby boomers with decades worth of tacit knowledge, the biggest challenge of the coming decades might simply be maintaining the systems we have today. 

The path of least resistance will be the devolution of complex systems and the reduction in the quality of life that entails. For the typical resident in a second-tier city in Mexico, Brazil, or South Africa, power outages are not uncommon, tap water is probably not safe to drink, and hospital-associated infections are common and often fatal. Absent a step change in the quality of American governance and a renewed culture of excellence, they prefigure the country’s future.

Read the rest here. It’s a long read, and Mr. Robertson is not optimistic, but as Ms. Widburg concluded: “If we recognize and address it, maybe it’s still possible to pull the airplane of state out of its deep dive toward the earth.”

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Heather Mac Donald and "the Pursuit of Equity"

 

Some readers describe Ann Coulter as a flame-thrower, and her columns are always provocative, whether you agree with her or not.  However, at TakiMag she’s just reviewed Heather Mac Donald’s book, When Race Trumps Merit: How the Pursuit of Equity Sacrifices Excellence, Destroys Beauty, and Threatens Lives. And the review is excellent – and informative:

“No Biggie, Just the End of Civilisation”

. . . It seems that in the hysteria that followed George Floyd’s death in 2020, we agreed to destroy all of Western civilization — law, music, art, education, policing, science and medicine — to make up for black people not doing well on standardized tests.

Mac Donald cites not hundreds but thousands of institutions that have flung aside standards in order to more fully dedicate themselves to the sole, driving purpose of our nation: boosting black people’s self-esteem.

And her review concludes:

Luckily, learning to identify and treat disease isn’t such a big deal at today’s medical schools, anyway. Instead, the faculty are charged with teaching about “systems of power, privilege and oppression.” More than half of the top 50 medical schools now require students to take courses in systemic racism, Mac Donald notes. I’m sure that will be a huge relief when doctors miss your brain tumor.

In 2021, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute announced that it would spend $2 billion … to find a cure for brain cancer? Parkinson’s disease? Heart disease? NO!!! The $2 billion would go to promoting “diversity and inclusion in science.”

In 2022, the National Cancer Institute, funded by you, taxpayer, decided to change its mission from conquering cancer — and really, who cares about that? FIRST WORLD PROBLEMS! — to guess what? Yes!!! Promoting diversity! Instead of Outstanding Investigator Awards being granted solely on the basis of merit, the gender and race of the researchers would have to be considered.

All this has done wonders for the morale of doctors. Mac Donald quotes one cancer researcher: “It’s the end of the road for me as a Jewish male doctor.” A UCLA doctor told her that the smartest undergraduates in science labs are saying, “Now that I see what is happening in medicine, I will do something else.”

In response to this dystopic future, Mac Donald asked an oncologist, “When would white and Asian male scientists fight back? How much longer would they continue to allow their hard work and accomplishments to be disparaged and sidelined?”

He emailed back: “We value our jobs. We need our jobs. Our peers will turn on us. Speak out, lose job forever, be quickly forgotten and abandoned.”

That’s why, Mac Donald says, it falls to the rest of us to never shut up about the tearing down of standards, to put forth “unapologetic defense(s) of color-blind standards,” and to “relentlessly provide the data that explain the lack of racial proportionality in meritocratic institutions.”

To paraphrase Orwell: If there is hope, it must lie in the uncancelable.

Read the whole column here.

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The lethal consequences of going “woke”

 

The editorial board at Issues and Insights examines some of the lethal consequences of going “woke”:

The Wages Of Woke Are Death

Going woke means more than, as the saying says, going broke. It also means the ultimate loss of life. The grip of wokeness on our society will eventually kill Americans.

Let’s begin with health care. Medical school students, whose learning should be focused on the healing arts, are being taught social justice ideology. Apparently, white supremacy, oppression, and structural racism must be addressed by America’s doctors-to-be, as well as the sin of being white.

Diversity, equity, and inclusion studies are being required at some schools, which of course crowds out time used in the past to acquire the knowledge and develop the skills needed to be a good doctor. Politics have no place in medical schools, but there they are.

At the same time, some schools, as many as 40, are dropping standardized testing for diversity’s sake, reports the Daily Caller. The Medical College Admission Test, which “determines an individual’s ability to problem solve, think critically, and understand concepts about medical study,” does not serve the purposes of the social justice mafia. Now there are other legitimate academic avenues to medical school outside the MCAT. But as we’ve seen in other institutions of higher learning, standards designed to demonstrate and ensure competence are being killed off.

Given these facts, it’s a certainty that many of this country’s doctors of tomorrow and beyond will not have the competence needed to keep patients alive and well. Americans will die or suffer unnecessarily because wokeness demanded that the medical community marginalize them.

Dr. Stanley Goldfarb, a former University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine professor and associate dean who wrote “Take Two Aspirin and Call Me By My Pronouns,” says the ​​”quiet woke revolution” that had been capturing medicine “erupted in spring 2020 into a full-blown revolution.” 

One win for the woke insurgency is the American Medical Association’s “Organizational Strategic Plan to Embed Racial Justice and Advance Health Equity.” Goldfarb says that “unlike other social justice programs, this program is lethal” and “will tangibly reduce the quality of medical care, and almost every American will suffer its side effects.” If medical schools “cut training time in biochemistry and pharmacology for future doctors” to make room for studies that are political in nature, someone is bound to die.

Then the editors put the field of engineering under the same microscope.  Next they look at the military.  And here are their conclusions:

Wokeness is winning because our institutions have become cowardly and complicit; businesses are afraid they will fall behind if they don’t score well on the Corporate Equality Index, which is a Maoist extortion racket that demands prescribed behavior from companies; and the average American is scared of being ostracized and canceled for not just uttering but even holding opinions the mob doesn’t like.

Unless and until we overcome our fears, the malicious and depraved will continue their booted march through our culture and our economy. No one should be frightened to say that a system based on race, ethnicity, or gender over competence, intellect, and ability is dangerous. It is in fact mortally dangerous. 

The full editorial is here.

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Merit vs Diversity

AF Branco [Americans for Limited Government] cartoon at Townhall    

In his column “Destroying Meritocracy Is Deadly” at Townhall, Victor Davis Hanson discusses the decline in the aviation industries, both commercial and military, but his concerns could as easily be about the medical, educational, agricultural, energy and other professions. VDH concludes:

. . . America's security, safety, prosperity, and postmodern lifestyles are not our birthright.

They are the dividends of centuries of prior hard work, unfettered freedom of speech, disinterested research, and a meritocracy.

Tamper with any of that and the system begins to fall apart.

The United States will then resemble the miasma we see in most of the world abroad where ideology suppresses free inquiry, political correctness warps research, and tribalism trumps meritocracy.

Many of the major airlines have established racial and gender quotes for government pilot training programs. United Airlines has set quotas to ensure half of its trainees will be minorities or women. Since 2013, the FAA has been lowering standards for air traffic control qualifications to achieve de facto race and gender quotas.

In testimony before Congress our top military brass has bragged not of their reduction in standards for enlistment, but of their "diversity" hiring, as they purportedly ferret out "white supremacy" and "white rage."

In sum, our government is playing with our lives as it prefers diversity, equity, and inclusion over ensuring the best qualified employees are hired on the basis of racially and gender-blind competitive tests and experience.

Keep it up, and there are going to be a lot more Afghanistan-style surrenders, Chinese surveillance craft in our skies, and airline nightmares.

The full column is here.

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Ceding American sovereignty

More AF Branco cartoons at Creators Syndicate

The other day, this blog posted the link to the White House Declaration of North America, which effectively cedes American sovereignty and constitutional values to global communism, partnering with Mexico and Canada.  David Strom at Hot Air has a follow up, and he somehow managed to have some fun with the Declaration, more than this blog could manage.  Here’s an extract:

. . . America has a new DNA, I guess. Liberty used to be in our DNA, but apparently Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion has been injected into the country using a new mRNA vaccine or something.

The statement is a wonder to behold. And yes, that DNA reference was actually to deoxyribonucleic acid.

Today, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, President Joseph R. Biden, and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau met in Mexico City for the 10th North American Leaders’ Summit (NALS). The leaders are determined to fortify our region’s security, prosperity, sustainability and inclusiveness through commitments across six pillars: 1) diversity, equity, and inclusion; 2) climate change and the environment; 3) competitiveness; 4) migration and development; 5) health; and 6) regional security.

North America shares a unique history and culture that emphasizes innovation, equitable development, and mutually beneficial trade to create inclusive economic opportunities for the benefit of our people. We are not just neighbors and partners. Our people share bonds of family and friendship and value – above all else – freedom, justice, human rights, equality, and democracy. This is the North American DNA.

What is it about government folks being so incompetent when it comes to doing anything catchy? Bad acronyms and metaphors always.

Look at the priorities. Regional security. Nice to see it came in at #6. Immigration made it all the way up to #4.

DEI, and climate change, numbers 1 and 2. DEI is actually #1!

For God’s sake, make it stop! . . .

The rest of Mr Strom’s commentary is here.  The Declaration of North America is here. It's unconstitutional and will never be subject to ratification in the Senate.  So it is just another Biden Administration give-away of our freedoms and sovereignty.  

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Declaration of North America (DNA) : it’s Bad News

 

“White House occupant” Joe Biden is in Mexico for a summit with Justin Trudeau and Andrés Manuel Lopez-Obrador a/k/a AMLO.  Yesterday, the meeting produced a document, Declaration of North America (DNA), and it’s beyond frightening.  Read the whole thing here.  And here’s just a taste of America’s now-stated set of objectives and values that are clearly in violation of our constitution:

Diversity, equity, and inclusion is foundational to the strength, vibrancy, and resilience of our countries. We focus on providing marginalized communities opportunities for their full, equal, and meaningful participation in our democracies and economies. To advance these objectives, President López Obrador, President Biden, and Prime Minister Trudeau reiterated their joint commitment to protect civil rights, promote racial justice, expand protections for LGBTQI+ individuals and deliver more equitable outcomes to all.

Equal opportunity is not synonymous with “equitable outcomes”, which is to say, equal results.  And that's just a start.

All the alarming buzz words and phrases are in this Declaration (global, sustainability, climate crisis, electric vehicles, clean energy, expanded migration, post-COVID health security, etc). No mention of, oh, to pick one, the drug cartels.  Read the whole thing here (h/t Conservative Treehouse). It’s all about government control.  Over us.

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At Last, An American Sports Team To Be Proud Of

 

images from the linked article

The Blue State Conservative blogsite pops up occasionally on my searches.  Monday’s column by P.F. Whalen -- "At Last, An American Sports Team To Be Proud Of" -- caught my eye.  Here’s his feel-good conclusion:  

Even if you don’t enjoy golf, if you missed this weekend’s Ryder Cup competition you missed a marvelous spectacle, and you missed an opportunity to observe true American greatness. We had a great bunch of young men play their hearts out and win the coveted Ryder Cup for their country. We witnessed fans chanting “USA, USA,” and players urging on those chants. There was no kneeling or turning their backs on their flag, like we saw certain Olympians do. There was no one casting shame on our country or pointing out how bad we are for things that happened 156 years ago.  There was fist-raising, but it wasn’t in protest, it was in jubilation.

There is much about modern American athletics to be disgusted by. The NBA’s coddling of their gravy train known as China. The NFL’s promotion of having two separate national anthems based on your melanin levels. And MLB’s kowtowing to ridiculous leftist opposition to improving election integrity. And many of the athletes in those sports don’t just accept the nonsense, they propel it. But our 2021 Ryder Cup Team gave us an opportunity to forget about those absurdities and focus on America as it should be. Unified, happy, and unparalleled. God bless the 2021 U.S. Ryder Cup Team.

Full article is here.

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Diversity 360 – huh?

image credit: thedailysheeple.com

Our friend Steve Salvi at Ohio Jobs & Justice Pac posted about this on FB:

The universities have become cults, pushing BS ideas...An example from one of Cleveland's most prominent Universities...Case Western Reserve University. You can learn about your "privilege" and about "microaggressions" from the CWRU website:

Diversity 360^o is a new campus-wide diversity education program for students, faculty and staff developed in collaboration with the Office for Inclusion, Diversity and Equal Opportunity, the Division of Student Affairs and the Office of Multicultural Affairs.

Diversity 360^o can be implemented and customized into modules for undergraduate and graduate students, faculty and staff that will assist the campus community in advancing its efforts to be a welcoming, inclusive environment for learning, leading, and innovation.

Based on research from higher education and the corporate sector about cross-cultural competency and on results from university climate surveys, the modules will engage participants in learning to:

• Increase capacity to recognize and engage in dialogue across the breadth of differences;
• Deepen understanding of how affiliations in privileged and marginalized groups impact treatment on campus, campus climate and productivity;
• Deepen awareness of types of microaggressions and how they affect experiences on campus and in the local community; and
• Discover ways to become a change agent and diversity champion with new knowledge, ideas and resources about university policies, programs and best practices.

Diversity 360^o includes pre- and post-assessment of diversity-related knowledge, as well as, ongoing programming to assist members of the campus community with the goal of creating a welcoming campus climate at CWRU.

It’s worse than “ugh.” It’s politically correct indoctrination.

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Heather MacDonald on the ruthlessly competitive hierarchy of victimhood on display at Berkeley

“UC Berkeley’s descent from place of learning to victimology hothouse” 

Image credit: A Voice For Men

Heather MacDonald is always a voice of sanity, especially on her frequent topics (racial profiling, cops, homelessness). At the LA Times yesterday, she had an op-ed on political correctness and the violent “protests” on the Berkeley Campus. Here are a few extracts:

Controversy and unrest has followed Milo Yiannopoulos' speaking tour at U.S. colleges. 

Even before its students rioted in the streets, distressed that right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos would dare to open his mouth in their presence, UC Berkeley presented a visual illustration of the academy’s decline from a place of learning to a victimology hothouse. Within walking distance on the Berkeley campus are emblems of both a vanished academic world and the diversity-industrial complex that ousted it.

Emblem 1: In Bauhaus-era typography, a quotation from Supreme Court Justice Benjamin Cardozo adorns the law school’s otherwise brutalist facade.

“You will study the wisdom of the past, for in a wilderness of conflicting counsels, a trail has there been blazed. You will study the life of mankind, for this is the life you must order, and, to order with wisdom, must know. You will study the precepts of justice . . .”

. . .

No law school today, if erecting itself from scratch, would think of parading such sentiments, first uttered in 1925, on its exterior. Cardozo’s invocation of “mankind” is alone cause for removal, but equally transgressive is his belief that there is wisdom in the past and not just discrimination. He presents learning as a heroic enterprise focused not on the self but on the vast world beyond, both past and present. Education is the search for objective knowledge that takes the learner into a grander universe of thought and achievement.

. . .

Emblem 2: UC Berkeley’s Division of Equity and Inclusion has placed vertical banners across the main campus reminding students of the contemporary university’s paramount mission: assigning guilt and innocence within the ruthlessly competitive hierarchy of victimhood. Each banner shows a photo of a student or a member of the student-services bureaucracy, beside a purported quotation from that student or bureaucrat. No rolling cadences here, no exhortations to intellectual conquest. Instead, just whining or penitential snippets from the academic lexicon of identity politics.

. . .

Berkeley funds the Division of Equity and Inclusion with a cool $20 million annually and staffs it with 150 full-time functionaries: It takes that much money and personnel to drum into students’ heads how horribly Berkeley treats its “othered” students.

. . .

What this seemingly gratuitous admonition really means is: “Do not violate any politically correct taboo.”

Cardozo invited students to the life of the mind. The diversocrats who have commandeered the American university invite students to a cultural reeducation camp where they can confess their political sins or perfect their sense of victimhood.

Read the rest here.

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