The insanity of choosing skilled and talented employees based on anything other than…duh!…their skill and talent has been going on for far too long, and codifying rules demanding a particular sexuality or a particular skin color or now even a particular surgical and chemical mutilation as a prerequisite for employment is simply shoving us farther and quicker down the road to mediocrity in everything.
From building bridges that don’t fall down to examining the origins of the universe to diagnosing and treating disease, the glories of Western culture have emerged from the brains and brawn of people who have been through a selection process that rewards their skill, because frankly, nobody wants to fly in an airplane or drive a car designed by engineers chosen for their melanin and genitalia.
And it gets worse…a cursory examination of the math will yield the inescapable conclusion that shrinking the pool of acceptable candidates will yield a lower quality of applicant. Imagine a pool of 50,000 newly minted engineers or theoretical physicists or physicians or bricklayers (hah…). If your company or organization requires the top 50 of them, then the distribution of vanishingly small populations within the whole might not even be in that top 50. That transgender Eskimo you need for your “Diversity, Equity And Inclusion” plan might be the worst student in his class, but you are taking him anyway.
And that’s how planes crash and bridges fall and people die in hospitals.
Now Even Science Grants Must Bow to ‘Equity and Inclusion’
Scientists will respond to these new demands with boilerplate to the effect that they will make every effort to seek graduate and postdoctoral students from minority communities and encourage new outreach programs. This is lip service at best; it doesn’t address true societal issues of inequity. People qualified to work in these esoteric areas have all gone to good graduate schools and carried out credible research projects. They may be minorities, but they haven’t been marginalized. They are thus not appropriate targets for what should be useful societal diversity initiatives.
The extensive DEI bureaucracy at universities has already worked for decades to ensure that no STEM job announcements or hiring can be done without constant supervision to ensure that women and minorities are recruited. But given the strong wording of the new guidelines, existing programs may not be enough. This is worrisome, as university DEI boards have shown a willingness to torpedo job applications whose DEI component is insufficiently extensive or effusive. The new Energy Department review committees probably won’t behave differently.
Aside from the disgusting and pure racism/sexism inherent in these plans is the unbelievable waste of time, money, and energy! Instead of doing…you know…actual work, tens or hundreds of thousands of people across America are directing their attention toward these issues. Deans and inclusion officers are hired, meetings are held, policies are written, hiring practices are examined and reexamined for the smallest deviation from the current political tone. All of this in service to a goal that will end in the decrease in quality of whatever the organization was created to do.
There are several organizations in America that have carefully bucked this tide. Direct your attention to our professional sports organizations, whose hiring practices are ruthless when it comes to their players. How many trannies are pitching in MLB? How many woman defensive backs play in the NFL? Any Hispanic non-binary defensemen in the NHL?
Yeah…math isn’t just a good idea; it’s the law.
