Symbolic gestures of support aren’t enough

Just another bit of brainless Leftism below.  The author notes the under-representaion of blacks in any occupation requiring brainpower and concludes that the under-representation  is due to bias against blacks.  That blacks might not in general have high levels of brainpower she does not consider.

So how is the bias to be overcome? Employers should "conduct audits", "set timelines" and "incentivize diversity".  Ho hum!  Total vagueness. That affirmative action makes employers already keen to have "diversity" she ignores.

She is right that all the existing attempts to achieve diversity have hardly touched the problem but still thinks she has the answers.  Existing experience would suggest that there are no answers.  Only a tiny number of blacks are able to rise to the top of intellectually demanding occupations.

 But to say that is of course "racism" or even "white supremacy".  A pity that it is also reality.  And because it is reality the situation she aims at will remain a mirage.  Attempts to achieve "diversity" are flailing at an immovable object.  Great efforts will be made but will achieve nothing.  If all that wasted effort were instead used on something achievable we we would all surely be better off.  But it is the nature of Leftists to bang their heads on brick walls


For 8 min. 46 sec., “I can’t breathe,” the plaintive refrain of a prone and pleading George Floyd, commanded the screen of a Viacomcbs video. Amid nationwide protests after Floyd’s death and polls showing widespread support for Black Lives Matter, the video was among hundreds of corporate efforts to co-opt a rallying cry of the movement. Leaders in the arts, finance, publishing, fashion, entertainment and sports proclaimed, “Black lives matter,” participated in #Blackouttuesday and pledged millions of dollars to groups devoted to racial justice.

Largely left unspoken is how many of these institutions routinely exclude or marginalize people of color. Black people, who make up 13% of the U.S. population, represent just 3% of workers at the top 75 tech firms and 1.8% of law partners. Between 1985 and 2014, the proportion of Black men in management at U.S. companies with 100 or more employees crept from 3% to 3.3%.

And while people of color are roughly 40% of the population, they make up around 4% of Fortune 500 CEOs. Rather than diversifying their workforces, boards and leadership teams, many institutions have financed pricey diversity efforts that consistently fail to increase racial representation.

For instance, Facebook, which on June 1 pledged $10 million to organizations that combat racial inequity, has devoted millions to diversity initiatives, to little avail. Its latest diversity report shows that the proportion of Black and Hispanic employees combined went from 8.4% in 2018 to 9% in 2019. Instead of investing in more studies and anti-bias training, the tech industry could enlist the growing number of Black and Latinx graduates with computerscience and engineering degrees, and redirect resources to underserved urban schools.

Institutions should conduct audits of employee demographics along racial and gender lines and across job categories to detect and disrupt patterns of bias that have metastasized in unequal hiring, salaries, promotions and, in the case of cultural organizations, offensive iconography. They should also set timelines and incentivize diversity the same way they do profits and innovation. Research shows that greater racial diversity would improve both.

On June 4, Vogue editor Anna Wintour emailed colleagues, saying the magazine had not “found enough ways to elevate and give space to Black editors, writers, photographers, designers and other creators” and “made mistakes too, publishing images or stories that have been hurtful or intolerant.” Those oversights are all too common in every influential field.

Racial injustice is not an abstraction, and institutions can root it out in their midst. But this requires an honest encounter with our airbrushed history, pervasive racial illiteracy and systemic inequities. It is not enough for NFL commissioner Roger Goodell to condemn “systematic oppression of Black people,” or apologize for not listening to players earlier. He must reassess practices that have allowed coaches and executives to remain overwhelmingly white in a league in which players are nearly 70% Black.

The lightning speed with which Confederate statues are toppling and police reforms are being made illustrates that achieving racial justice does not require more time and strategies— only will. The gradualism that has defined racial progress must be superseded by the swift systemic change that a wide swath of America finally agrees is overdue.

SOURCE

1 comment:

  1. People who are in the business of burying the truth encounter the same problem, the truth is too big to be buried. Facts are little slices of reality and such fragments are found everywhere. One slice may be enough to pick up the trail.

    Really, what matters more than the truth; our preferences, our emotions, our concepts or our ideas?

    All of our great discoveries are basically discovering how things are and the left certainly has yet a lot to discover. Fortunately we all have a lot to discover.

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