When my daughter was in high school, she sang in the school chorus, a group that included 80 students. After one town-wide performance, a woman wrote to both the school newsletter and the local newspaper, complaining that the chorus was “not sufficiently diverse.”
Diversity: Only Blacks Matter
In a written reply, my daughter took exception to this view. She conveyed that students of Greek, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, and Malaysian ancestry, along with students of European ancestry, including Italian, Hungarian, Austrian, French, and Spanish, were among the chorus members.
Oh yeah, the chorus also had 12 African-Americans students and two Hispanic-American students, and a few students of mixed ancestry. Flash forward 16 years: diversity to the Left is now fully embraced as a euphemism for “black,” and the term as used today, has little relation to the original meaning of the word.
If you’re white, the Left has decided that you are an impediment to diversity. The wokesters among us, a highly prejudiced lot, regard all whites as one amorphous mass of people with no individuality, no distinct cultural backgrounds, and indelibly racist – especially prone to being anything but open to others. This supposition, of course, is balderdash, to put it politely.
Consider the Numbers
If you analyzed the race and ethnicity of the chorus – and, my God, only a Leftist would make you undertake this dreary exercise – 12 is 15% of 80. In a country where blacks represent 12% of the population, the school chorus is over-represented by black students.
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With a 19% U.S. Hispanic population, 16 of the 80 chorus members ‘ought’ to be Hispanic, which is not the case. With a 7% U.S. Asian population, there ‘should’ be five or six Asian chorus members, which is the case. However, why go down this path?
Whites are under-represented on the school’s basketball team... shocking, simply shocking! Not many of them made the cut, whereas joining the chorus is self-selection. If you want to sing, come on board. Blacks are under-represented in the chess club. Call the PC police! Joining the chess club, as with the chorus, is self-selection.
Equity: The Grand Facade
Don't get me started on equity, a topic of deep concern to Kamala Harris. She asserts that the mission of government is to ensure equity, which boils down to an equality of outcomes. Citizens, non-citizens, heck, everybody should reap the same goodies as everyone else. It’s not enough for the government to offer education, job training, apprentice programs, counseling, equal employment opportunity, and unemployment compensation.
In reality, not everyone makes the same effort. Remember your school classmates who continually slacked off? In the workplace, some people constantly underperform and concurrently seek ever more government benefits. Such people keep voting for Democrats who are skilled at dangling carrots in front of them.
Invariably, an elite class rises where a few people enjoy far more ‘equity’ than everyone else. Around the world, leaders who espouse equity, which is ‘equality of results,’ come to know that it cannot occur without significant damage to their nations. Countries that mandate equality of results prompt their movers and shakers to pack up and leave.
Inclusion: Has its Merits
Unlike diversity and equity, the case for inclusion has some merit. Including others outside of your immediate circle, apart from those with whom you naturally find favor and beyond those with whom you usually associate, requires some stretching.
Since time began, and to this day, human beings tend to flock together, as did all forerunners of the human race. In terms of culture, ethnicity, and race, benefits can accrue, however, by associating and including others outside your normal circles, the least of which is developing a greater appreciation of other cultures.
Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), the Left’s latest preferred pronoun... oops... I mean, the acronym, as a governmental policy, is a disaster virtually ensuring unfairness in hiring, suspicion about those who have been newly favored, and pockets of incompetence in performance. And do government programs ever die? Or do they keep expanding forever?
What about DEI as a corporate policy? Well, that’s up to shareholders, board members, and management of individual companies who, unfortunately, are pounded by wokesters around the clock.
Bye, Bye, So Long
Curiously, if you rearrange the letters ‘DEI,’ you come up with ‘DIE,’ and that's precisely what ought to happen to the whole notion of diversity, equity, and inclusion as some kind of exalted government formula for improving society.
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