DEI at the operational side is a waste of time. It just exists to check a box and be a way to CYA when a lawsuit happens. It says the organization did tell people not to do things.
There's been a few presentations where it's been "OK, we have to spend half an hour on this, but I want to give you a break." Of course, that can change.
Of course, there's always been discriminatory things. I don't mind the existence of cultural groups in higher education, but how they game the system did start rubbing me the wrong way. It was a fun day to watch the feminists get told, "We can only give you this much for a conference, per the written policy." The Student Veterans were able to get a subsidy to go to a conference as well; IIRC the College Republicans did the same for CPAC. However, the special space the 'multicultural' groups had in the middle of the student center always rubbed me the wrong way. Otherwise, the programs for getting 'underprivileged' students in have long been a cop-out for whatever race is fashionable. Pass the flask...
HR seemed like a good idea way back when. But now HR departments can be pretty much like a UTI gone septic. DEI is a waste of time and far worse, it is more like Marburg or Ebola and nary an aspirin or battle dressing in sight.
There is a complicated explanation. The benign explanation is “protecting our turf,” the malicious one is empire building.
HR was created out of payroll departments. As employment laws got more complex, more duties were passed onto payroll. With the advent of Title VII, the law prohibiting employment discrimination, the former payroll departments began gaining power over employment decisions, power that formerly belonged to operating managers. Once a payroll Clerk gained the power to tell a business Manager, “you can’t do that,” the camel’s nose was fully inside the tent.
Once inside the tent, payroll became HR, and the units grew. (The CDR might prefer the word “metastasized.”) Now the former payroll Clerk is Director of HR and sits on the Board of Directors, opining on business matters and the law from the perspective of “what’s good for HR is good for the company.”
What was once a clerk with a desk next to the accounts receivable clerk, is a nine person department with a Manager, a staff lawyer and two paralegals. They now operate like the priests at the Oracle of Delphi, demanding obedience to their interpretation of ambiguous pronouncements.
Here are some experiences I have had which bother me. What do you think should be done when a Naval Officer in charge of a group, when asked by a young enlisted Chamorro man for permission to go to sickbay replies "Why? You got AIDS or something? Which one are you?, all you little fuckers look the same to me" This all in a crowded office of men and women sailors .
On another occasion, I was on a Navy site and the Navy work crew was taunting a civilian black man they had brought in from town to work to repeatedly say :" I am just a nigger! A goddamned useless nigger! over and over again. I was able to stop that.
I was the Engineering Head of a DoD contractor company. We had been told we had to have more minorities in our staff in responsible positions if we were to continue DoD contracts. (They do pay taxes which help fund our government). I had to attend a management meeting and make a decision that we would hire a black female DCAS inspector but let her go 6 weeks afterwards (all that was required to be legal), She was thrilled to have job but was fired on the final week in order for us to be lily white again. There are racist out there, Perhaps we can't change them but we sure as hell should be able to minimize the damage they do. How would you propose to change the thinking that leads to these situations?
How long ago was this? It is not to be tolerated. Full stop. I have never found running to HR in this age is the best answer, but a clear, concise and direct communication should be had. In private or in public, but for this I am leaning towards a public, "Not acceptable statement." As a start. Racism is here. It is fostered, especially, by those that make a living and business off of its presence.
Agreed LT B. What year was this? More importantly ... why did Mike do nothing? Knowing you personally, I damn sure know you wouldn't let this go without an immediate pushback, and neither would I.
I can think of zero, as in 0, officers who I served with from the mid 1980 as as MIDN to leaving AD in 2009 that would have allowed any of this to happen w/o stepping in, and stepping up.
This is the 3rd decade of the 21st Century. That stuff does not happen in our Navy ... and if it does (because individuals can be problems), no one would let it stand. Not for a minute.
Civilian contractor had a contract to install extensive surveillance gear OCONUS in a hot tropical jungle. This was a small Naval Facility operated by NI.The contractor brought installation personnel to site and as usual planned to hire local labor as required, but was answerable to Naval personnel for onin site activity. We also had personnel from at least three agencies on site at different times.The man in questions was chipping rust from a steel track the rollers had to run on for the equipment.He had a misread le job to do,
I concur with Lt B and Cdr below. In the 80's and 90's this behavior would never have been tolerated in any command where I served or trained, nor did I ever witness anything one tenth as egregious
I'll take "Shit That Happened 50 Years Ago And Doesn't Take Place Today Except For In the Minds Of Those Suffering White Guilt" for $200, Alex. You should organize a Drag Queen Story Hour at your local nursery school to make up for such past crimes Mike.
I had to attend a management meeting.........."and make a decision" ...............that we would hire a black female DCAS inspector but let her go 6 weeks afterwards.
And yet you were the Head of Engineering and you condoned this behavior by allowing it.
I should have said "complied with a decision". Yes, I had a choice and resigned right after she was fired. Me and a friend (her boss) paid her last months rent and I resigned.
They were very dishonest. Senior management actually owned the company so there was little discussion on decisions. After I left, one of their crooked deals blew up on them and I was called to testify by the plaintiff who had been wrongly defaulted by them on a contract. I had preserved all of my analyses and memos because I suspected what they would do.They had apparently not given this exculpatory information to the plaintiffs attorney during discovery.I was on the stand for a day and a half, mostly explaining why the alleged failures to meet the contract requirements were BS and so was the default. My lawyer said it was the longest civil trial in California history.(Karma can be a bitch.) In the end, my former employers company was sold and management all retired except my boss who died. (A miserable sob)
"...to forcibly recompose the racial demographics of the professoriate. " <---Ignores merit, equality, the good of the university and fundamental fairness in favor of quotas and this equity boogeyman.
My eldest daughter is a UF grad. Speaking for both of us, we are appalled. That was a fine university. Gov. DeSantis and his minions should be all over this like a school of piranhas. Just sent him an email with a link to this article.
DeSanits is “all over this school like a school of piranhas” and has been for six years. Drawing Florida’s flagship university into the culture wars is bad for the school and the state. Government regulation of academic liberty is not “freedom.”
Failure to free Florida’s flagship university from the culture wars is bad for the school and the state. Government failure to ensure academic liberty is not “freedom.”
We have seen exactly what happens if the government does not regulate academia - the Left takes over. Which does not result in "freedom" but in Stalinist tyranny as described above. If you don't fight a culture war, you automatically lose.
Total Quality Leadership was a fad that now looks rather tame compared to the DIE crusade. Don't Ask Don't Tell was a golden age compared to now. Now we have insanity. Never know what you will see in the communal shower.
DeSantis has promise. He would do well to stay away from Rove though. Don't think very much of Sasse. He's not a fighter. Well not for things like US economic security. He cherishes fake civility. Like Rob Portman he wants to be "One of the Good Guys." They are all Bushites. The goal is to get wealthy and promote the US CoC even if that means devastating middle class America. Sasse will do nothing. You will find him at the country club most of the time. The strategic priorities of his "elite" class (a uniparty structure) are: ensure cheap labor through illegal immigration, wealth exfiltration via lucrative contracts with entities like China, pointless foreign wars to feed the military industrial beast. Rob Portman is now at the AEI doing the same thing. Ukraine, Open Borders, Money. It's so transparent it would be laughable, except for the damage they have done.
Concur Sasse, Portman, Hutchinson and their ilk are all wanna-be-elite squishes who merely want to get paid to politely manage our decent into collectivism and insanity while they get to sit at the kid's table in the big house while the rest of us slave and starve
"No matter the weather we'll all stick together...". My father went to UF, and I am that rara avis a native Floridian . I did go to Miami (The one in Ohio) for University, but that was when there was actual and generally honest discussion about just about everything. Not surprised about the level of DEI crap at UF--I suspect that is the case in all but a very few higher education centers these days. Good to hear about the current Governor's efforts at turning around the schools. I wish him--and my native state--well.
I was part of an overseas operation involving DoD, a defense contractor (later sued by DoJ), and Naval Intelligence. It was all in a jungle board a Naval Base there. There were many problems with the program much more than that single incident, but I was particularly surprised by that incident. I later was a prosecution witness for DoD in the criminal trial resulting from different and major problems on that site. The civilian I mentioned had been hired on an ad hoc basis by the civilian contractor but it was on a Naval Base with Naval personnel present. I contend any service member should have stopped it I was there to provide technical support from an FFRDC (Federally Funded Research and Development Center) on behalf of yet another govt agency supporting the program. The fact that people on the site were setting the worst example possible of "the Ugly American" made me ashamed to be involved. The fact that that man would no doubt go home and tell his neighbors how he had been mistreated was not understood. They seemed not to care.
I later attended Defense Race Relations School in Florida in 1974 with military and Naval students from many US worldwide facilities. The stories of why there was fragging in Vietnam were common discussions and which belied a general lack of education regarding tolerance and respect which our military was trying to instill. The question is how we should educate our population in appropriate social behavior so they know that was wrong, should not happened and someone should have stepped in to stop it.
Thank you for clarifying the date. To add to my other comment, I believe the efforts to eliminate this kind of behavior (which you saw starting in '74) were largely successful, and when I started in the mid 80's none of the officers I knew or knew of would tolerate it, nor any of my senior enlisted
I respectfully disagree. I live in a highly diverse community and have close friends who are Pakistani descent (AF Intelligence Officer), Sierra Leone immigrant (PhD Stanford) , Moldova, (former Major, USSR Army)among them. They have all been harassed, especially during the last administration, by all sorts of people for their heritage. In one case, the children were attacked on the school bus. All in one of the most liberal states in our great country. The DCAS QC inspector was fired in 1996. So what should we do about that un-American attitude?
Slight aside. MTV's initial date is further from today than it was from the attack on Pearl Harbor in time. Time marches on my friends, and things change.
I know right? My son got a decent math education. But, he didn't get the higher order algebra his grandmother got in her segregated Richard school until he was into his 2nd year of college. (And it was a normal Algebra 2 course from the mid-40's.
I can only speak to what I have seen, which has been practically nothing. I have seen a lot of violence against people waving the Stars and Stripes, I've been screamed at and spit on while doing so, but I've never seen any obvious racism against anybody except Caucasians in person, but that is probably just an extension of what people see expressed in entertainment news and media, or codified in law and DEI initiatives
I saw that. It's going to be "interesting" in the Chinese "may you live in interesting times" sense. Many of us idealists have been running with "I disagree with what you say but I'll give my life for your right to say it" for half a century while these people have been raising a couple generations of zealots who will happily kill us for a 10% disagreement with the approved narrative. Eventually some critical mass of those idealists will adjust to altered circumstances.
My concern is that eventually, they are going to push too far. They are either trying to elicit violent responses to further their narrative and further their cause and widen the divide, or they just are used to being bullies and having the press behind them. But, if we actually go to war with China, these people will be purged in a hot minute. The next war will not allow CONUS to not go unscathed, it will not be over there, there will be some here. Society will no longer be so soft and gentle that people are willing to countenance this silliness and fabricated shite.
An aside... We raised and trained some pipe hitting mother effers who were shat upon by the elite by the way we retreated out of Afghanistan. They will never fight for the elite again. I would hazard that they will go after them. I think we need to calm down in the US a bit. We are about to have more issues soon, I think.
I don't see what the previous administration had to do with any of this. Especially in 'one of the most liberal states in the country' where near nobody voted for that admin. Sounds like you are equating 'liberal' with 'not racist' (and implying 'conservative' means 'racist') but that is far from true, now or in the past.
I have never seen a report card about what the outcome was of DRRS (Defense Race Relations School) and I think often about it.Students were sent from bases all over the world and it got very emotional. I heard we had 2 suicides while I was there but I do l know I learned an awful lot about what the enlisted minority members thought .
I was stationed on a WWII-built CVA in 1973-1974 era. Was an E-6 coming up on the end of my second enlistment and was seriously considering a career in fast food. Drug use was rampant, several OD's resulting in death, race relations were in the toilet, most of the ship was filthy. My compartment never had less than an inch of water sloshing on the deck. Felt like I was living in East Berlin. When in our homeport of Alameda liberty in Oakland was like a trip to Disneyland, back when that used to be wholesome. 1973 was also the time of UPWARD seminars. The idea of mandatory training in racial sensitivity seemed like a great idea. The facilitators in UPWARD? Let me quote Obi Wan Kenobi. "You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy." 4 facilitator, 3 were POC, 1 was White. All were militant true believers with the power to say STFU to all trainees E-1 to O-5. IMO, UPWARD did nothing to help race relations. Might have been different elsewhere, but on CVA-19 it was awful. A new CO, Captain Frederick "Fieldday" Fellowes, pretty much fixed everything before I transferred out, having just promoted to Chief. He came in and commenced a reign of terror, cleared out the ROAD's with the jawbone of an ass, and conducted brutal command wide cleanliness inspections every Thursday. Failure of any space or compartment meant that whatever petty officer had his name in grease pencil on the white plastic Petty Officer in Charge placard went to NJP. Capt. Fellowes was hated. He didn't care a lick. The crew had it coming. Any one of us could have tried to make things better and collectively we could have made ourselves a better ship, with or without the new Captain. That Captain was a master at jerking a knot in someone's as_. I only came to appreciate his style later. "Good" leadership, however you define it, always seems to trump a narrower focus of just sensitivity training and singing Kumbaya alone.
On a side note, when I entered the Chief's mess on that Carrier, there was a palpable malaise. Many had given up and blamed Adm. Zumwalt for taking away their "Authoritah". Clowns. I remember when the new Captain got all the Chiefs and Officers in the wardroom after coming aboard to read us the riot act. Afterward, he took questions and comments. An SHCS said, "Yes Captain, it sounds easy but if I tell someone to do something they'll slash my tires." We all looked to the Captain. It looked like he was trying to swallow a baby hedgehog. After a brief pause, he said calmly but with a death-stare, "You need to retire, Senior Chief."
I had a good friend who joined in '71 on the "go to war or go to jail" plan as he told it. He started as a BT (was an LDO LCdr when we met). The NAVY he recalled from the early 70's was much as you describe.
Back in 2013 my B-i-L was a SWO CWO4 (ex-GSEC(SW)) snipe aboard USS America (LHA-6). The ship was in Pascagoula, MS at the time. I hosted all the snipe Chiefs and Officers to a BBQ and a day at the gun range here in Pensacola. Gah! We went through some ammo. The lead snipe was a SWO LDO Commander, an ex-BT. Might be the same guy...the pool of BT's becoming an LDO O-5 being so small. Nice guy. Don't recall his name. His wife was a charming lady. I'd been retired for 22 years by then. It was like being with good life-long friends again.
I wish it was the same guy (he retired O-5 too) but sadly sea life was not agreeable to any long term marriages for him. He was definitely single again by '05.
The day must have been fun though:) I was a relatively new product of Canoe U in non-nuke Engineering on a CVN, and most of friends ended up being LDO and Warrants. A lot of tremendous technical knowledge those guys had (and most were not afraid of a party either...)
What about a enacting a law requiring that all DEI commissars and lecturers spend ten hours a week personally cleaning outhouses and emptying septic tanks?
Sorry. The March of the Progressive Zampolit through the institutions has been successful.
We might be lucky to live long enough to watch the modern Comité de salut public purge the opposition and useful fools, but that will be a pyrrhic victory at best.
Yeah, a Pyrrhic victory is better than no victory at all. Me? I take comfort knowing that Antonio Gramsci, the father of cultural hegemony and of the ruination of the West, spent "over 11 years in prison, his health deteriorated: 'His teeth fell out, his digestive system collapsed so that he could not eat solid food ... he had convulsions when he vomited blood and suffered headaches so violent that he beat his head against the walls of his cell'." (Wiki) I hate that Gramsci made me such a horrible person.
The new fiscal year is upon us and its employee review season. While I received my yearly attaboy, I do not look forward to annual goal setting statements for the upcoming year, one of which will likely be to explain how we're upholding and living the company's values.
While not as over-the-top as other high-profile companies, it is no less a branch off the very extensive DEI-tree that has reached deep into the C-suites, and large HR companies...ahem! Workday.
DEI at the operational side is a waste of time. It just exists to check a box and be a way to CYA when a lawsuit happens. It says the organization did tell people not to do things.
There's been a few presentations where it's been "OK, we have to spend half an hour on this, but I want to give you a break." Of course, that can change.
Of course, there's always been discriminatory things. I don't mind the existence of cultural groups in higher education, but how they game the system did start rubbing me the wrong way. It was a fun day to watch the feminists get told, "We can only give you this much for a conference, per the written policy." The Student Veterans were able to get a subsidy to go to a conference as well; IIRC the College Republicans did the same for CPAC. However, the special space the 'multicultural' groups had in the middle of the student center always rubbed me the wrong way. Otherwise, the programs for getting 'underprivileged' students in have long been a cop-out for whatever race is fashionable. Pass the flask...
HR seemed like a good idea way back when. But now HR departments can be pretty much like a UTI gone septic. DEI is a waste of time and far worse, it is more like Marburg or Ebola and nary an aspirin or battle dressing in sight.
There is a complicated explanation. The benign explanation is “protecting our turf,” the malicious one is empire building.
HR was created out of payroll departments. As employment laws got more complex, more duties were passed onto payroll. With the advent of Title VII, the law prohibiting employment discrimination, the former payroll departments began gaining power over employment decisions, power that formerly belonged to operating managers. Once a payroll Clerk gained the power to tell a business Manager, “you can’t do that,” the camel’s nose was fully inside the tent.
Once inside the tent, payroll became HR, and the units grew. (The CDR might prefer the word “metastasized.”) Now the former payroll Clerk is Director of HR and sits on the Board of Directors, opining on business matters and the law from the perspective of “what’s good for HR is good for the company.”
What was once a clerk with a desk next to the accounts receivable clerk, is a nine person department with a Manager, a staff lawyer and two paralegals. They now operate like the priests at the Oracle of Delphi, demanding obedience to their interpretation of ambiguous pronouncements.
So they didn't build an empire, instead built a corporate deity that requires complete obeisance. 😁
It helps that the law, particularly employment law, is somewhat opaque.
Sacrifices must be made to the great god, Litigation, lest he lay waste to the gardens of business. Only we in HR can properly divine his commands.
Great, we're reduced to being dependent upon the Gamma Trianguli VI acolytes who feed Vaal.
Title VII has long outlived its usefulness, time to repeal it.
Here are some experiences I have had which bother me. What do you think should be done when a Naval Officer in charge of a group, when asked by a young enlisted Chamorro man for permission to go to sickbay replies "Why? You got AIDS or something? Which one are you?, all you little fuckers look the same to me" This all in a crowded office of men and women sailors .
On another occasion, I was on a Navy site and the Navy work crew was taunting a civilian black man they had brought in from town to work to repeatedly say :" I am just a nigger! A goddamned useless nigger! over and over again. I was able to stop that.
I was the Engineering Head of a DoD contractor company. We had been told we had to have more minorities in our staff in responsible positions if we were to continue DoD contracts. (They do pay taxes which help fund our government). I had to attend a management meeting and make a decision that we would hire a black female DCAS inspector but let her go 6 weeks afterwards (all that was required to be legal), She was thrilled to have job but was fired on the final week in order for us to be lily white again. There are racist out there, Perhaps we can't change them but we sure as hell should be able to minimize the damage they do. How would you propose to change the thinking that leads to these situations?
How long ago was this? It is not to be tolerated. Full stop. I have never found running to HR in this age is the best answer, but a clear, concise and direct communication should be had. In private or in public, but for this I am leaning towards a public, "Not acceptable statement." As a start. Racism is here. It is fostered, especially, by those that make a living and business off of its presence.
Agreed LT B. What year was this? More importantly ... why did Mike do nothing? Knowing you personally, I damn sure know you wouldn't let this go without an immediate pushback, and neither would I.
I can think of zero, as in 0, officers who I served with from the mid 1980 as as MIDN to leaving AD in 2009 that would have allowed any of this to happen w/o stepping in, and stepping up.
This is the 3rd decade of the 21st Century. That stuff does not happen in our Navy ... and if it does (because individuals can be problems), no one would let it stand. Not for a minute.
"Navy work crew was taunting a civilian black man they had brought in from town"
Navy work crew? Do you mean working party?
A civilian brought in from town for temporary day work?
Sounds quite odd.
It's sounds very odd indeed. Methinks Mike should elaborate.
Civilian contractor had a contract to install extensive surveillance gear OCONUS in a hot tropical jungle. This was a small Naval Facility operated by NI.The contractor brought installation personnel to site and as usual planned to hire local labor as required, but was answerable to Naval personnel for onin site activity. We also had personnel from at least three agencies on site at different times.The man in questions was chipping rust from a steel track the rollers had to run on for the equipment.He had a misread le job to do,
Mr. Moore, when was this? How long ago? As was mentioned by another poster, that sounds plausible fifty years ago, but more recently?
I concur with Lt B and Cdr below. In the 80's and 90's this behavior would never have been tolerated in any command where I served or trained, nor did I ever witness anything one tenth as egregious
I'll take "Shit That Happened 50 Years Ago And Doesn't Take Place Today Except For In the Minds Of Those Suffering White Guilt" for $200, Alex. You should organize a Drag Queen Story Hour at your local nursery school to make up for such past crimes Mike.
I had to attend a management meeting.........."and make a decision" ...............that we would hire a black female DCAS inspector but let her go 6 weeks afterwards.
And yet you were the Head of Engineering and you condoned this behavior by allowing it.
SILENCE IS ACCEPTANCE AND RACIST.
I should have said "complied with a decision". Yes, I had a choice and resigned right after she was fired. Me and a friend (her boss) paid her last months rent and I resigned.
Good for you. Should have gone to the Government as well. But, the risk of black listing (I'm such a racist.) is real.
They were very dishonest. Senior management actually owned the company so there was little discussion on decisions. After I left, one of their crooked deals blew up on them and I was called to testify by the plaintiff who had been wrongly defaulted by them on a contract. I had preserved all of my analyses and memos because I suspected what they would do.They had apparently not given this exculpatory information to the plaintiffs attorney during discovery.I was on the stand for a day and a half, mostly explaining why the alleged failures to meet the contract requirements were BS and so was the default. My lawyer said it was the longest civil trial in California history.(Karma can be a bitch.) In the end, my former employers company was sold and management all retired except my boss who died. (A miserable sob)
Still grinding that axe...let it go man.
"...to forcibly recompose the racial demographics of the professoriate. " <---Ignores merit, equality, the good of the university and fundamental fairness in favor of quotas and this equity boogeyman.
My eldest daughter is a UF grad. Speaking for both of us, we are appalled. That was a fine university. Gov. DeSantis and his minions should be all over this like a school of piranhas. Just sent him an email with a link to this article.
DeSanits is “all over this school like a school of piranhas” and has been for six years. Drawing Florida’s flagship university into the culture wars is bad for the school and the state. Government regulation of academic liberty is not “freedom.”
Academic ‘freedom’ is frequently anti-White hatred and should be regulated.
Public schools should not be able to squander tax dollars on things the tax-payers do not support, and this DEI garbage is all waste
Failure to free Florida’s flagship university from the culture wars is bad for the school and the state. Government failure to ensure academic liberty is not “freedom.”
We have seen exactly what happens if the government does not regulate academia - the Left takes over. Which does not result in "freedom" but in Stalinist tyranny as described above. If you don't fight a culture war, you automatically lose.
What should government do when government-owned schools interfere with the academic freedom of their own faculty?
"Ignores merit, equality, the good of the university and fundamental fairness in favor of quotas and this equity boogeyman"
And that is why I'll never cross a bridge or board an aircraft designed after 2010
Total Quality Leadership was a fad that now looks rather tame compared to the DIE crusade. Don't Ask Don't Tell was a golden age compared to now. Now we have insanity. Never know what you will see in the communal shower.
DeSantis has promise. He would do well to stay away from Rove though. Don't think very much of Sasse. He's not a fighter. Well not for things like US economic security. He cherishes fake civility. Like Rob Portman he wants to be "One of the Good Guys." They are all Bushites. The goal is to get wealthy and promote the US CoC even if that means devastating middle class America. Sasse will do nothing. You will find him at the country club most of the time. The strategic priorities of his "elite" class (a uniparty structure) are: ensure cheap labor through illegal immigration, wealth exfiltration via lucrative contracts with entities like China, pointless foreign wars to feed the military industrial beast. Rob Portman is now at the AEI doing the same thing. Ukraine, Open Borders, Money. It's so transparent it would be laughable, except for the damage they have done.
Concur Sasse, Portman, Hutchinson and their ilk are all wanna-be-elite squishes who merely want to get paid to politely manage our decent into collectivism and insanity while they get to sit at the kid's table in the big house while the rest of us slave and starve
Republicans use power to get money. After abortion & the guns thing in FL, they're running out of issues to fund raise.
"No matter the weather we'll all stick together...". My father went to UF, and I am that rara avis a native Floridian . I did go to Miami (The one in Ohio) for University, but that was when there was actual and generally honest discussion about just about everything. Not surprised about the level of DEI crap at UF--I suspect that is the case in all but a very few higher education centers these days. Good to hear about the current Governor's efforts at turning around the schools. I wish him--and my native state--well.
Did she actually use the word "cadres"?
Isn't it cadreseses?
I was part of an overseas operation involving DoD, a defense contractor (later sued by DoJ), and Naval Intelligence. It was all in a jungle board a Naval Base there. There were many problems with the program much more than that single incident, but I was particularly surprised by that incident. I later was a prosecution witness for DoD in the criminal trial resulting from different and major problems on that site. The civilian I mentioned had been hired on an ad hoc basis by the civilian contractor but it was on a Naval Base with Naval personnel present. I contend any service member should have stopped it I was there to provide technical support from an FFRDC (Federally Funded Research and Development Center) on behalf of yet another govt agency supporting the program. The fact that people on the site were setting the worst example possible of "the Ugly American" made me ashamed to be involved. The fact that that man would no doubt go home and tell his neighbors how he had been mistreated was not understood. They seemed not to care.
I later attended Defense Race Relations School in Florida in 1974 with military and Naval students from many US worldwide facilities. The stories of why there was fragging in Vietnam were common discussions and which belied a general lack of education regarding tolerance and respect which our military was trying to instill. The question is how we should educate our population in appropriate social behavior so they know that was wrong, should not happened and someone should have stepped in to stop it.
Mike…it isn’t 1974. This is the third decade of the 21st Century.
Thank you for clarifying the date. To add to my other comment, I believe the efforts to eliminate this kind of behavior (which you saw starting in '74) were largely successful, and when I started in the mid 80's none of the officers I knew or knew of would tolerate it, nor any of my senior enlisted
I respectfully disagree. I live in a highly diverse community and have close friends who are Pakistani descent (AF Intelligence Officer), Sierra Leone immigrant (PhD Stanford) , Moldova, (former Major, USSR Army)among them. They have all been harassed, especially during the last administration, by all sorts of people for their heritage. In one case, the children were attacked on the school bus. All in one of the most liberal states in our great country. The DCAS QC inspector was fired in 1996. So what should we do about that un-American attitude?
1996 was 27 years ago. It would be another decade until most of those enlisting today were even born.
Slight aside. MTV's initial date is further from today than it was from the attack on Pearl Harbor in time. Time marches on my friends, and things change.
Dude, that just made me feel very, very old.
Martha Quinn was a babe, just sayin.' :)
It is funny. MTV does not show music anymore, really. Martha was a super cute little pixie of a lass. Yeah, I was born mid to late last century. LOL
"All in one of the most liberal states."
- You mean like the liberal algebra teacher that told my son that he was a credit to his race? That kind of liberal?
You mean like the young kids that come into the bar from the local private Liberal Arts College and make bigoted and racist comments?
You mean like Blue cities that haven't seen republican governance in seventy or eighty years that blame conservatives for everything?
Enough of this Islamic crap being taught in our schools. No child should be exposed to Al Gebra!
I know right? My son got a decent math education. But, he didn't get the higher order algebra his grandmother got in her segregated Richard school until he was into his 2nd year of college. (And it was a normal Algebra 2 course from the mid-40's.
I can only speak to what I have seen, which has been practically nothing. I have seen a lot of violence against people waving the Stars and Stripes, I've been screamed at and spit on while doing so, but I've never seen any obvious racism against anybody except Caucasians in person, but that is probably just an extension of what people see expressed in entertainment news and media, or codified in law and DEI initiatives
Or Riley Gaines being beaten by a man (in a dress, natch!) for arguing that she should not have to compete against men.
I saw that. It's going to be "interesting" in the Chinese "may you live in interesting times" sense. Many of us idealists have been running with "I disagree with what you say but I'll give my life for your right to say it" for half a century while these people have been raising a couple generations of zealots who will happily kill us for a 10% disagreement with the approved narrative. Eventually some critical mass of those idealists will adjust to altered circumstances.
My concern is that eventually, they are going to push too far. They are either trying to elicit violent responses to further their narrative and further their cause and widen the divide, or they just are used to being bullies and having the press behind them. But, if we actually go to war with China, these people will be purged in a hot minute. The next war will not allow CONUS to not go unscathed, it will not be over there, there will be some here. Society will no longer be so soft and gentle that people are willing to countenance this silliness and fabricated shite.
An aside... We raised and trained some pipe hitting mother effers who were shat upon by the elite by the way we retreated out of Afghanistan. They will never fight for the elite again. I would hazard that they will go after them. I think we need to calm down in the US a bit. We are about to have more issues soon, I think.
Why do I get a 1960ish “some of my best friends are Negroes” vibe from Mike?
I don't see what the previous administration had to do with any of this. Especially in 'one of the most liberal states in the country' where near nobody voted for that admin. Sounds like you are equating 'liberal' with 'not racist' (and implying 'conservative' means 'racist') but that is far from true, now or in the past.
I have never seen a report card about what the outcome was of DRRS (Defense Race Relations School) and I think often about it.Students were sent from bases all over the world and it got very emotional. I heard we had 2 suicides while I was there but I do l know I learned an awful lot about what the enlisted minority members thought .
I was stationed on a WWII-built CVA in 1973-1974 era. Was an E-6 coming up on the end of my second enlistment and was seriously considering a career in fast food. Drug use was rampant, several OD's resulting in death, race relations were in the toilet, most of the ship was filthy. My compartment never had less than an inch of water sloshing on the deck. Felt like I was living in East Berlin. When in our homeport of Alameda liberty in Oakland was like a trip to Disneyland, back when that used to be wholesome. 1973 was also the time of UPWARD seminars. The idea of mandatory training in racial sensitivity seemed like a great idea. The facilitators in UPWARD? Let me quote Obi Wan Kenobi. "You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy." 4 facilitator, 3 were POC, 1 was White. All were militant true believers with the power to say STFU to all trainees E-1 to O-5. IMO, UPWARD did nothing to help race relations. Might have been different elsewhere, but on CVA-19 it was awful. A new CO, Captain Frederick "Fieldday" Fellowes, pretty much fixed everything before I transferred out, having just promoted to Chief. He came in and commenced a reign of terror, cleared out the ROAD's with the jawbone of an ass, and conducted brutal command wide cleanliness inspections every Thursday. Failure of any space or compartment meant that whatever petty officer had his name in grease pencil on the white plastic Petty Officer in Charge placard went to NJP. Capt. Fellowes was hated. He didn't care a lick. The crew had it coming. Any one of us could have tried to make things better and collectively we could have made ourselves a better ship, with or without the new Captain. That Captain was a master at jerking a knot in someone's as_. I only came to appreciate his style later. "Good" leadership, however you define it, always seems to trump a narrower focus of just sensitivity training and singing Kumbaya alone.
On a side note, when I entered the Chief's mess on that Carrier, there was a palpable malaise. Many had given up and blamed Adm. Zumwalt for taking away their "Authoritah". Clowns. I remember when the new Captain got all the Chiefs and Officers in the wardroom after coming aboard to read us the riot act. Afterward, he took questions and comments. An SHCS said, "Yes Captain, it sounds easy but if I tell someone to do something they'll slash my tires." We all looked to the Captain. It looked like he was trying to swallow a baby hedgehog. After a brief pause, he said calmly but with a death-stare, "You need to retire, Senior Chief."
God bless this man: https://www.history.navy.mil/research/library/research-guides/modern-biographical-files-ndl/modern-bios-f/fellowes-frederick-gale-jr.html
I had a good friend who joined in '71 on the "go to war or go to jail" plan as he told it. He started as a BT (was an LDO LCdr when we met). The NAVY he recalled from the early 70's was much as you describe.
Back in 2013 my B-i-L was a SWO CWO4 (ex-GSEC(SW)) snipe aboard USS America (LHA-6). The ship was in Pascagoula, MS at the time. I hosted all the snipe Chiefs and Officers to a BBQ and a day at the gun range here in Pensacola. Gah! We went through some ammo. The lead snipe was a SWO LDO Commander, an ex-BT. Might be the same guy...the pool of BT's becoming an LDO O-5 being so small. Nice guy. Don't recall his name. His wife was a charming lady. I'd been retired for 22 years by then. It was like being with good life-long friends again.
I wish it was the same guy (he retired O-5 too) but sadly sea life was not agreeable to any long term marriages for him. He was definitely single again by '05.
The day must have been fun though:) I was a relatively new product of Canoe U in non-nuke Engineering on a CVN, and most of friends ended up being LDO and Warrants. A lot of tremendous technical knowledge those guys had (and most were not afraid of a party either...)
I subscribe to Rufo. His project at the New College is very interesting.
What about a enacting a law requiring that all DEI commissars and lecturers spend ten hours a week personally cleaning outhouses and emptying septic tanks?
R U kidding? You know where they'd be dumping the refuse, right?
They'd never be able to finish purging their emails or files.
I do understand your position.
v/r, Mike Moore
Sorry. The March of the Progressive Zampolit through the institutions has been successful.
We might be lucky to live long enough to watch the modern Comité de salut public purge the opposition and useful fools, but that will be a pyrrhic victory at best.
Yeah, a Pyrrhic victory is better than no victory at all. Me? I take comfort knowing that Antonio Gramsci, the father of cultural hegemony and of the ruination of the West, spent "over 11 years in prison, his health deteriorated: 'His teeth fell out, his digestive system collapsed so that he could not eat solid food ... he had convulsions when he vomited blood and suffered headaches so violent that he beat his head against the walls of his cell'." (Wiki) I hate that Gramsci made me such a horrible person.
A Pyrric victory is a loss. “If we are victorious in one more battle with the Romans, we shall be utterly ruined.”
The new fiscal year is upon us and its employee review season. While I received my yearly attaboy, I do not look forward to annual goal setting statements for the upcoming year, one of which will likely be to explain how we're upholding and living the company's values.
While not as over-the-top as other high-profile companies, it is no less a branch off the very extensive DEI-tree that has reached deep into the C-suites, and large HR companies...ahem! Workday.
I am immensely happy to have embarked on a relatively independent consulting path a decade ago
You must feed Vaal!
Have you read Neil Gaiman‘s “American Gods?”
No. A quick gander shows it's not in a genre of fiction I find appealing.
Browsing through my Ancestry matches, turns out that I am a distant cousin of Bomani Spell, Dean of Students at FAMU:
https://www.diverseeducation.com/home/article/15105730/bomani-h-spell
Have a mind to take a road trip to Tallahassee...
Hey Cuz!
Imagine being dumb enough to think that anything you say at the Racists Anonymous struggle session will remain anonymous.