Diversity Thursday

continuity from NPR to DOD

If you’ve been tracking the Uri Berliner and NPR story - and listened to any of their new CEO’s thought leadership - and like many readers here have a military background, you’ve probably detected something familiar.

Once you read his letter and the response, you know they aren’t after him for pointing out the 87-0 bias; no, they are proud of that. They went after him for going after their Vaal.

If you’re not up to speed, here’s a balanced read for you. It started with Uri Berliner’s post over at Bari Weiss’s The Free Press on Substack. Where in part he outlined this familiar story;

“When it comes to identifying and ending systemic racism,” Lansing wrote in a companywide article, “we can be agents of change. Listening and deep reflection are necessary but not enough. They must be followed by constructive and meaningful steps forward. I will hold myself accountable for this.”

And we were told that NPR itself was part of the problem. In confessional language he said the leaders of public media, “starting with me—must be aware of how we ourselves have benefited from white privilege in our careers. We must understand the unconscious bias we bring to our work and interactions. And we must commit ourselves—body and soul—to profound changes in ourselves and our institutions.”

He declared that diversity—on our staff and in our audience—was the overriding mission, the “North Star” of the organization. Phrases like “that’s part of the North Star” became part of meetings and more casual conversation.

Race and identity became paramount in nearly every aspect of the workplace. Journalists were required to ask everyone we interviewed their race, gender, and ethnicity (among other questions), and had to enter it in a centralized tracking system. We were given unconscious bias training sessions. A growing DEI staff offered regular meetings imploring us to “start talking about race.” Monthly dialogues were offered for “women of color” and “men of color.” Nonbinary people of color were included, too.

These initiatives, bolstered by a $1 million grant from the NPR Foundation, came from management, from the top down. Crucially, they were in sync culturally with what was happening at the grassroots—among producers, reporters, and other staffers. Most visible was a burgeoning number of employee resource (or affinity) groups based on identity.

They included MGIPOC (Marginalized Genders and Intersex People of Color mentorship program); Mi Gente (Latinx employees at NPR); NPR Noir (black employees at NPR); Southwest Asians and North Africans at NPR; Ummah (for Muslim-identifying employees); Women, Gender-Expansive, and Transgender People in Technology Throughout Public Media; Khevre (Jewish heritage and culture at NPR); and NPR Pride (LGBTQIA employees at NPR).

All this reflected a broader movement in the culture of people clustering together based on ideology or a characteristic of birth. If, as NPR’s internal website suggested, the groups were simply a “great way to meet like-minded colleagues” and “help new employees feel included,” it would have been one thing.

But the role and standing of affinity groups, including those outside NPR, were more than that. They became a priority for NPR’s union, SAG-AFTRA—an item in collective bargaining. The current contract, in a section on DEI, requires NPR management to “keep up to date with current language and style guidance from journalism affinity groups” and to inform employees if language differs from the diktats of those groups. In such a case, the dispute could go before the DEI Accountability Committee.

To get some opinion on what followed, first read the Official Party Organ, The Washington Post’s overview, then to recover back to center, give this Reason article a read, then come back.

The track fell into an expected rut. Berliner was put on unpaid leave after his letter, was denounced by NPR’s new CEO for WrongThink, and then he resigned.

Let’s see if the following from the Reason article linked above has any trigger words for you;

The absence of viewpoint diversity at NPR should be no surprise, however, when its CEO apparently believes that ideological diversity is a "dog whistle for anti-feminist, anti-POC stories." For Maher, diversity involves "race, ethnicity, gender, class, ability, geography"—everything except diversity of thought.

…

Some 50 of Berliner's colleagues signed a letter to Maher demanding that she enforce NPR's current editorial line by weaponizing all available tools at her disposal.

"Staff, many from marginalized backgrounds, have pushed for internal policy changes through mechanisms like the [diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI)] accountability committee, sharing of affinity group guidelines, and an ad-hoc content review group," they wrote. Elsewhere in the letter they put the term diversity of viewpoints in scare quotes.

It certainly does not sound like the DEI accountability committee works to broaden NPR's ideological perspective. On the contrary, the employees who are obsessed with DEI seem to care first and foremost about rooting out anti-DEI heresy.

Now Berliner is not a victim of cancel culture: Most journalistic organizations would exercise some disciplinary authority over an employee who publicly discussed internal company policies without prior approval. But there should be little question that he accurately described a real problem at a (regrettably taxpayer-funded) media outlet. The acronym DEI ostensibly stands for diversity, equity, and inclusion—and the public is learning precisely what those terms really mean.

See that?

“Affinity groups” … “diversity of viewpoints” … “accountability committees”

From Annapolis to OPNAV, our Navy is worm-ridden with this same socio-political, Cultural Marxism world view. Hundreds of millions of dollars in the Navy alone have been fed into this machine of resentment and hate, promoting its worst bad faith actors from the top uniformed positions.

Never forget, as we’ve discussed on Thursday’s here since the Bush43 administration, the diversity industry - especially the military’s and Navy’s branch - only care about the diversity their metrics track. This has nothing to do with improving the service or its ability to achieve its mission in time of war. As we discussed last week, their fig leaf of studies were based on lies.

Support every effort to bring their programs out in the open. They cannot survive in the fresh air and sunshine of transparency.

Follow orders as always, but don’t volunteer your or your UIC’s time without clear direction. When you get it, slow-roll it. If you’re forced to it, respectfully ask hard questions.

Be careful how far you stand up though. They will - if you don’t have the top cover - do to you what they did to Uri.

If you are someone who has actual control of funds, schedules, and setting priorities - in the finest traditions of the naval service - acts of omission and moments of human forgetfulness, well, things happen.

As the Tamarians might say, “Horatio Nelson at The Battle of Copenhagen.“