With airplanes having blowouts midflight, it’s probably not a great idea to hire people who are severely mentally disabled. You’d think this would be a no-brainer decision. You’d be mistaken: the Federal Aviation Administration is taking diversity to extreme lengths with this move. It could put people’s lives at risk. You have to read it to believe it (via Fox News) [emphasis mine]:
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is actively recruiting workers who suffer "severe intellectual" disabilities, psychiatric problems and other mental and physical conditions under a diversity and inclusion hiring initiative spelled out on the agency’s website.
"Targeted disabilities are those disabilities that the Federal government, as a matter of policy, has identified for special emphasis in recruitment and hiring," the FAA’s website states. "They include hearing, vision, missing extremities, partial paralysis, complete paralysis, epilepsy, severe intellectual disability, psychiatric disability and dwarfism."
The initiative is part of the FAA’s "Diversity and Inclusion" hiring plan, which says "diversity is integral to achieving FAA's mission of ensuring safe and efficient travel across our nation and beyond." The FAA’s website shows the agency’s guidelines on diversity hiring were last updated on March 23, 2022.
FAA’s diversity push includes focus on hiring people with ‘severe intellectual’ and ‘psychiatric’ disabilities https://t.co/hpOg1MnOyM pic.twitter.com/4fYQV74z05
— New York Post (@nypost) January 14, 2024
https://t.co/rHEADZZaP7 pic.twitter.com/1GU1SvHj0E
— The Right To Bear Memes (@grandoldmemes) January 15, 2024
Are you kidding me? We want people who are susceptible to epileptic seizures and have “severe intellectual disabilities” at an agency that regulates civil aviation. Now is not the time to experiment with bad ideas; this could be the mother lode of bad ideas.
That’s not being ableist, either. It’s just a fact. Practically, brain-dead people shouldn’t be hired at the FAA. Sue me if you disagree, but when planes start falling out of the skies, don’t ask why.