Had no idea the USMC had gone this far down the DEI---? rabbit hole. So well meaning folks, or grifters earning a paycheck pushing DEI are two categories, how about those quietly funding the private firms who then gain contracts to push this into business and government? It all started somewhere, and has now reached critical mass and is self sustaining. That original funding source should be of interest to "important officials", would it not? Or not, I guess, if they don't really care to know the who and why they did it.
The consequences for pushing individuals beyond their competence in order to meet a quota in Naval Aviation range from merely(?) lost opportunities for actually qualified individuals, to fatal or near fatal incidents. Example of the latter? Auburn Calloway. DON shares responsibility for what would have been another Oklahoma City but for the sheer guts of the crew members of FEDEX 705. As to the former, their name is legion.
Absolutely correct. In aviation, gravity is the final arbiter, not diversity. I'm a fraud examiner under federal contract and what's going on today is fraud in the name of diversity. The problem is, the feds know about it because they designed it, appropriated money for it and are willfully blind to the consequences.
Seen it done, need a man due to quotas for his race and they go out no scores declined and promote to NCO after the dust settles they are simply busted for some infringement and the clock resets.
Excellent column. I take issue only with the words "well meaning." DEI is about payback. Pure and simple. Those advocating DEI are not well meaning and do not have good intentions. They are not naive idealists but very vicious people who know exactly what they are doing and do not care about the harm they are inflicting.
The Air Force recently removed the additional points awarded to pilot applicants who already hold a pilots license, on the argument that this disadvantaged low-income minorities who did not have the opportunity to seek a pilots license outside the military.
So now, we will be ignoring a specific hard truth (a candidate has already proven they can pass the FAA flight exam, and is therefore MUCH more likely to be successful in military flight school) in favor of more racial division and animosity.
Yeah, that is seriously jacked-up. It's like a culinary school telling an applicant, "You're running a successful restaurant? It doesn't count, you're just another applicant."
A quick anecdote. I've worked in my industry (pharma R&D) for a little over a decade, and I've worked with more Kenyans than African Americans.
Meanwhile, Hollywood made Will Smith a movie star in the mid 90's as a marine fighter pilot, and that still hasn't inspired this particular demographic.
Nope, they're more into the "inspirational" story of how a young picked-on kid from the Bronx built a crack-cocaine empire and ran it with an iron fist.
When monuments to Lee and Jackson and their troops were erased I saw that diversity does not included their descendents. DEI are just a bunch of words to mask a very sinister program. Old communist trick. Sort of like People's Democratic Republic.
Was living in Clear Lake Tx with numerous NASA acquaintances when Bolden dismantled US manned spaceflight under the guise of, "NASA's New Era of Innovation and Discovery"...
They all regarded him as a destructive fonctionnaire, who liked to regale the troops with really stupid analogies while conducting his wrecking campaign.
Nothing particularly positive will come out of this.
Yeah, it was great when President Hussein announced publicly that NASA's new mission was muslim outreach. Talk about a guy who is afraid of no repercussions.
One important add to your analysis is in this quote:
"One takeaway from the Boldens’ study was that Black Marines often take themselves out of the running for these positions at the start of their military careers by pursuing fields such as logistics or administration that transfer more readily to future civilian employment."
It's self selection in part.
Another quote that caught my eye:
"The Boldens’ study noted only a few reported incidents of racial hostility within the Marines’ aviation units, and none from recent years, but it described a culture of “silence” in which Black and White Marines are unwilling to engage in conversations about race and representation. Often, the study says, as the only minorities in their unit, non-White Marines deem it necessary to “adapt to the cultural circumstances in which they find themselves if they want to be accepted by peers.”
Ever wonder why "White Marines are unwilling to engage in conversations about race and representation."?
Exactly. Talking honestly about race in any function means your career is over. It's not said, it just understood.
The only time ancestry should come into play is for certain hereditary conditions, like Sickle Cell. Otherwise, it's just going to be used against a most of us.
Exactly. These people get 100 military and civil-service into a mandatory training session on racial diversity and wonder why they can't get any participation out of the group. Nobody wants to put their head out on that chopping block. In an actual academic class with academic freedom, there are laws about non-attribution. In a military training seminar, forget it, you're screwed if any of a couple dozen people in authority hear something they don't like. You can't un-ring that bell.
It's worse, as even academics are into group think. You cannot be blunt about race in any fashion in any organization in this country. Even simply being an individualist is a prior wrong to those zampolits.
“adapt to the cultural circumstances in which they find themselves if they want to be accepted by peers.”
Oh, for effing Pet's sake. "Minorities" of any and all races, sexes, classes, etc. adapt to the "cultural circumstances in which they find themselves". Almost everybody here has done so when they joined the military, which definitely has as "cultural circumstance" a bit different from civilian culture. Children do it every year when they enter a new class in school, or when they move to a different neighborhood. Move to a different state?----you "adapt to the cultural circumstances in which they find themselves". When I moved to Massachusetts I had to learn what a "regular" or a "three-decker" was (still not sure what "scrod" is).
Those Bolden guys sure do have a nice scam going for them. They must make the Marine Corps proud.
Yeah, that happens any time you take a new job or get into a new workcenter. There's always that period of having to hang back and get the feel of how things are.
As a 17 year-old new midshipman, Caucasian, not particularly wealthy, fairly intelligent and perhaps spoiled only child, I also found it necessary to “adapt to the cultural circumstances in which they find themselves if they want to be accepted by peers.”
Is that not what basic, indoc, plebe summer, beast barracks, and every other military initial training is supposed to do?
Yeah, kinda like being from Wyoming, living in the same small town my whole life, and going to Navy boot-camp in Florida at 18. Just a tiny bit of a culture-shock there!
My observation: Agency on the part of the recruit/officer candidate explains much of the variance. My observations come from company, battalion, and brigade command in combat arms and teaching at a Service Academy.
Minority officer candidates seemed to buy into the incentive that a military background or career is a leg up and they are much more attuned to "what can I do with this experience afterwards." I observed many more minority officers gravitating toward the combat support branches (signal, field and air defense artillery, engineer, etc.) and the service support/tech branches (transportation, quartermaster/logistics, finance, etc.) than combat arms. This frequently tracked with their bachelor's degree major.
Trying to force an arbitrarily "equitable" outcome in branch or operational assignments will only result in a lot of resentment within the ranks from both majority and minority officers.
"This frequently tracked with their bachelor's degree major."
Imagine that. People wanting to work in a field in which they have an interest and training. Perhaps they actually listened to their guidance counselors in school.
Recently VP-45 flew a (the squadron operates the P-8) mission with a all "female crew" and all "female maintence support." The MPRA has had female officer and enlisted aircrew since the mid 1970s. VP-50 deployed with female maintenance support in the early 1980s. I spent 24 years in the MPRA community and I was taught "one team, one fight." Guess today's MPRA prefers to segregate their people by sex. Just the rambling thoughts of an old hermit.
Segregation is becoming fashionable again. Generations of Klan Kleagles are laughing in their graves. Maybe George Wallace was right (as in accurate, not as in moral) when he said/predicted " segregation today . . . segregation tomorrow . . . segregation forever."
Yeah, it's going that way with a lot of things. Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben's rice are just horribly racist, gotta get them off the food packages right now!!! That's great, you only get to be on a food package if you're lily-white. Tell me again how that isn't racist? John C. Stennis, namesake of CVN-74 and segregationist extraordinaire, would be loving this.
Often overlooked in these studies is self-selection, especially as regards advancement. There are way more advancement opportunities in the Army if you are in the combat arms but some ethnicities eschew the opportunity, opting instead to less rigorous specialties.
1. Maybe the civilian STEM fields offer a better lifestyle and pay for minority candidates who are hunted down like unicorns by hungry HR departments.
2. Several major airlines are actively recruiting minority candidates for ab initio training which directly bypasses the traditional route military pilot training used by people who ultimately wanted to be airline pilots.
Couple that with a smaller pool of qualified candidates?
Not a single one of these clowns will acknowledge that it just ain't raaycist issues.
Depressing. Still: Has anyone bothered to try and understand why it is that the service with the least problems with attaining recruiting goals(That would be the USMC) is, coincidentally the service with the least DEI/politically correct culture (Also USMC)?
DEI is morphing into DEIA and now into DEIAB. The B is "belonging."
DEIQA+ ???
Had no idea the USMC had gone this far down the DEI---? rabbit hole. So well meaning folks, or grifters earning a paycheck pushing DEI are two categories, how about those quietly funding the private firms who then gain contracts to push this into business and government? It all started somewhere, and has now reached critical mass and is self sustaining. That original funding source should be of interest to "important officials", would it not? Or not, I guess, if they don't really care to know the who and why they did it.
The consequences for pushing individuals beyond their competence in order to meet a quota in Naval Aviation range from merely(?) lost opportunities for actually qualified individuals, to fatal or near fatal incidents. Example of the latter? Auburn Calloway. DON shares responsibility for what would have been another Oklahoma City but for the sheer guts of the crew members of FEDEX 705. As to the former, their name is legion.
Absolutely correct. In aviation, gravity is the final arbiter, not diversity. I'm a fraud examiner under federal contract and what's going on today is fraud in the name of diversity. The problem is, the feds know about it because they designed it, appropriated money for it and are willfully blind to the consequences.
How was Calloway thwarted? He was bested by 2 former Naval Aviators in the cockpit of FedEx Flight 705 who were better men. Meritocracy at work?
Seen it done, need a man due to quotas for his race and they go out no scores declined and promote to NCO after the dust settles they are simply busted for some infringement and the clock resets.
The results are Chaos.
Excellent column. I take issue only with the words "well meaning." DEI is about payback. Pure and simple. Those advocating DEI are not well meaning and do not have good intentions. They are not naive idealists but very vicious people who know exactly what they are doing and do not care about the harm they are inflicting.
You nailed it. DoD, the VA, and in the aggregate, OPM are now nothing more than job programs for the aggrieved of any stripe.
Yep, it's the ole "I didn't get the promotion, pay-raise, or career-path I wanted, so I'm gonna burn this place down".
I really think it should be written "Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity".
DIE Commissars is so much more entertaining to say, as well as accurate.
DIE are America’s new Zampolit.
And we can't take them for tea.
IDLÉ. Inclusion, Diversité, L'équité in the Jacobin style.
Aye! I hear the pipes and the walking drums, they are playing,
What is Right, and What is Wrang, by the law, by the law?
What is Right and what is Wrang by the law?
What is Right, and what is Wrang?
A short sword, and a lang,
A weak arm and a strang, for to draw, for to draw
A weak arm and a strang, for to draw.
Burns for the win?
The Air Force recently removed the additional points awarded to pilot applicants who already hold a pilots license, on the argument that this disadvantaged low-income minorities who did not have the opportunity to seek a pilots license outside the military.
So now, we will be ignoring a specific hard truth (a candidate has already proven they can pass the FAA flight exam, and is therefore MUCH more likely to be successful in military flight school) in favor of more racial division and animosity.
No offense to the Air Force, but that is inanity.
Brother, you ain't kidding.
(apologies to David Carradine)
Yeah, that is seriously jacked-up. It's like a culinary school telling an applicant, "You're running a successful restaurant? It doesn't count, you're just another applicant."
A quick anecdote. I've worked in my industry (pharma R&D) for a little over a decade, and I've worked with more Kenyans than African Americans.
Meanwhile, Hollywood made Will Smith a movie star in the mid 90's as a marine fighter pilot, and that still hasn't inspired this particular demographic.
Nope, they're more into the "inspirational" story of how a young picked-on kid from the Bronx built a crack-cocaine empire and ran it with an iron fist.
When monuments to Lee and Jackson and their troops were erased I saw that diversity does not included their descendents. DEI are just a bunch of words to mask a very sinister program. Old communist trick. Sort of like People's Democratic Republic.
Our Cultural Revolution is starting whether we would have willed it or not.
China 1966. The good news that it only takes a nation 40 years to recover from a cultural revolution.
Was living in Clear Lake Tx with numerous NASA acquaintances when Bolden dismantled US manned spaceflight under the guise of, "NASA's New Era of Innovation and Discovery"...
They all regarded him as a destructive fonctionnaire, who liked to regale the troops with really stupid analogies while conducting his wrecking campaign.
Nothing particularly positive will come out of this.
Yeah, it was great when President Hussein announced publicly that NASA's new mission was muslim outreach. Talk about a guy who is afraid of no repercussions.
We don't want to win wars. We want to lose them.
Sal,
One important add to your analysis is in this quote:
"One takeaway from the Boldens’ study was that Black Marines often take themselves out of the running for these positions at the start of their military careers by pursuing fields such as logistics or administration that transfer more readily to future civilian employment."
It's self selection in part.
Another quote that caught my eye:
"The Boldens’ study noted only a few reported incidents of racial hostility within the Marines’ aviation units, and none from recent years, but it described a culture of “silence” in which Black and White Marines are unwilling to engage in conversations about race and representation. Often, the study says, as the only minorities in their unit, non-White Marines deem it necessary to “adapt to the cultural circumstances in which they find themselves if they want to be accepted by peers.”
Ever wonder why "White Marines are unwilling to engage in conversations about race and representation."?
cause of you DIE Commissars.
Exactly. Talking honestly about race in any function means your career is over. It's not said, it just understood.
The only time ancestry should come into play is for certain hereditary conditions, like Sickle Cell. Otherwise, it's just going to be used against a most of us.
Exactly. These people get 100 military and civil-service into a mandatory training session on racial diversity and wonder why they can't get any participation out of the group. Nobody wants to put their head out on that chopping block. In an actual academic class with academic freedom, there are laws about non-attribution. In a military training seminar, forget it, you're screwed if any of a couple dozen people in authority hear something they don't like. You can't un-ring that bell.
It's worse, as even academics are into group think. You cannot be blunt about race in any fashion in any organization in this country. Even simply being an individualist is a prior wrong to those zampolits.
“adapt to the cultural circumstances in which they find themselves if they want to be accepted by peers.”
Oh, for effing Pet's sake. "Minorities" of any and all races, sexes, classes, etc. adapt to the "cultural circumstances in which they find themselves". Almost everybody here has done so when they joined the military, which definitely has as "cultural circumstance" a bit different from civilian culture. Children do it every year when they enter a new class in school, or when they move to a different neighborhood. Move to a different state?----you "adapt to the cultural circumstances in which they find themselves". When I moved to Massachusetts I had to learn what a "regular" or a "three-decker" was (still not sure what "scrod" is).
Those Bolden guys sure do have a nice scam going for them. They must make the Marine Corps proud.
it's part of joining the new tribe.
a necessary part.
When I was a Drill SGT, the only color I wanted to see was green.
To be fair, when I think of one or two of my upper classmen, I wouldn't have minded seeing a little red, too.
concur; made my response before seeing yours:)
Yeah, that happens any time you take a new job or get into a new workcenter. There's always that period of having to hang back and get the feel of how things are.
As a 17 year-old new midshipman, Caucasian, not particularly wealthy, fairly intelligent and perhaps spoiled only child, I also found it necessary to “adapt to the cultural circumstances in which they find themselves if they want to be accepted by peers.”
Is that not what basic, indoc, plebe summer, beast barracks, and every other military initial training is supposed to do?
Yeah, kinda like being from Wyoming, living in the same small town my whole life, and going to Navy boot-camp in Florida at 18. Just a tiny bit of a culture-shock there!
My observation: Agency on the part of the recruit/officer candidate explains much of the variance. My observations come from company, battalion, and brigade command in combat arms and teaching at a Service Academy.
Minority officer candidates seemed to buy into the incentive that a military background or career is a leg up and they are much more attuned to "what can I do with this experience afterwards." I observed many more minority officers gravitating toward the combat support branches (signal, field and air defense artillery, engineer, etc.) and the service support/tech branches (transportation, quartermaster/logistics, finance, etc.) than combat arms. This frequently tracked with their bachelor's degree major.
Trying to force an arbitrarily "equitable" outcome in branch or operational assignments will only result in a lot of resentment within the ranks from both majority and minority officers.
"This frequently tracked with their bachelor's degree major."
Imagine that. People wanting to work in a field in which they have an interest and training. Perhaps they actually listened to their guidance counselors in school.
Recently VP-45 flew a (the squadron operates the P-8) mission with a all "female crew" and all "female maintence support." The MPRA has had female officer and enlisted aircrew since the mid 1970s. VP-50 deployed with female maintenance support in the early 1980s. I spent 24 years in the MPRA community and I was taught "one team, one fight." Guess today's MPRA prefers to segregate their people by sex. Just the rambling thoughts of an old hermit.
A PR stunt if ever there was one. Girl Power ‘n stuff. This is how “they” think, which speaks volumes.
Segregation is becoming fashionable again. Generations of Klan Kleagles are laughing in their graves. Maybe George Wallace was right (as in accurate, not as in moral) when he said/predicted " segregation today . . . segregation tomorrow . . . segregation forever."
I swear I didn't read this before making my post about segregation coming back.
Did they get a guest spot on "The Marvels?"
Yeah, it's going that way with a lot of things. Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben's rice are just horribly racist, gotta get them off the food packages right now!!! That's great, you only get to be on a food package if you're lily-white. Tell me again how that isn't racist? John C. Stennis, namesake of CVN-74 and segregationist extraordinaire, would be loving this.
Often overlooked in these studies is self-selection, especially as regards advancement. There are way more advancement opportunities in the Army if you are in the combat arms but some ethnicities eschew the opportunity, opting instead to less rigorous specialties.
1. Maybe the civilian STEM fields offer a better lifestyle and pay for minority candidates who are hunted down like unicorns by hungry HR departments.
2. Several major airlines are actively recruiting minority candidates for ab initio training which directly bypasses the traditional route military pilot training used by people who ultimately wanted to be airline pilots.
Couple that with a smaller pool of qualified candidates?
Not a single one of these clowns will acknowledge that it just ain't raaycist issues.
There's no money in analysis that does not highlight racism as the cause of all inequity
There's no money in giving results that are different than what the customer paid for?
It's just not fair, is it? :)
Depressing. Still: Has anyone bothered to try and understand why it is that the service with the least problems with attaining recruiting goals(That would be the USMC) is, coincidentally the service with the least DEI/politically correct culture (Also USMC)?
I like how people can't connect the basic Marine recruiting message, "Are you good enough to be the best?" and their ability to meet recruiting goals