How Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity Programs Act Against the Law
I've seen merit increase decisions get proposed based on skin color at my job
It’s impossible to get a job in Corporate America without getting subjected to hearing about race and sex issues. Diversity, inclusion, and equity get introduced on day 1 of every job you take. You may never think about race or sex in your everyday life, but your employer or educational institution will make sure you are aware of it at every opportunity. They think the more things you view through the prism of immutable characteristics, the better.
Gone are the days when you could go to work and go home without hearing about how the company doesn’t have enough people in certain jobs based on how they look or what anatomy they have. It doesn’t matter that men and women have different interests for the type of work they choose to do. We must encourage women in tech or promote them to the C-suite, even if not the most qualified person for the job. It only works one way because no one talks about getting more men in nursing even though 11.5% of nurses were men in 2019.
Some major corporations still claim to be a meritocracy despite promoting diversity and inclusion programs at every turn to engineer their desired outcomes to appear equitable. Equity and meritocracy can’t co-exist. The most qualified person gets the job or he/she doesn’t. If the most qualified person is a woman or minority, then fantastic. The company promoted the best candidate available.
I’ve witnessed diversity discrimination first-hand in my job as a Human Resources Business Partner at a major global consulting firm. We were completing performance evaluations and total rewards for the fiscal year and diversity goals were the most important subject. There were three people up for an achievement award and only two could end up getting it at the time. The budget conveniently ended up allowing all three to get it, but it was close to not working out that way.
The discussion about who would get it if all the candidates couldn’t was a direct violation of The Civil Rights Act of 1964 which states on the Department of Labor website that, “provisions of this civil rights act forbade discrimination on the basis of sex, as well as, race in hiring, promoting, and firing.” My supervisor said that if only two people could get it, the White male wouldn’t because the other two people were minority or female employees. I could tell he didn’t feel comfortable saying it and his comment was met with silence, which is typical in the workplace when most people hear something shocking like that.
We were completing performance evaluations and total rewards for the fiscal year and diversity goals were the most important subject.
The White male was out of luck because of how he looked and his biological sex. There was no consideration of who the people were that deserved it the most. We would never know if both minority candidates got the award if they were the most qualified. How would they feel if they knew the only reason they won was because of race and sex, not merit? The White male would have one hell of a lawsuit if he found out why he lost out because of those factors.
I regret not speaking up, but I needed to keep my job since I live in an area of the country where it’s borderline unaffordable to live for a person making a decent salary and can’t go without work for long because of that. One of the fastest ways to get on the wrong side of your job or fired is to question diversity, inclusion, equity, or any social justice cause. Doing that is even more dangerous in the left-wing Human Resources departments in Corporate America.
My supervisor said that if only two people could get it, the white male wouldn’t because the other two people were minority or female employees.
I could have warned how making decisions like that are illegal according to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and worried about “protecting the company,” but the higher-ups would have found a way around it in the name of diversity, inclusion, equity, and social justice. They would have seen right through my intentions and knew I was against their Marxist orthodoxy. Being “woke” is now the top priority for Corporate America even if they don’t believe in it because it’s too risky not to be. The last thing a corporation wants is Black Lives Matter accusing them of racism.
These race and sex-focused diversity programs don’t welcome diversity of thought. In a sane world, these initiatives should tear companies apart. They don’t because a vocal and powerful minority has silenced over half the country because of the dangers of speaking out and questioning their ideas. Lives get ruined by saying the wrong thing now and free speech is a thing of the past. You can get branded a racist by opposing race-based initiatives.
These programs go against the traditional liberal ideal of a color-blind and merit-based society. The last thing Martin Luther King Jr. wanted to focus on was race. He valued the content of a person’s character, not how they look. Racism and sexism must be eradicated everywhere, but these programs practice another form in the name of the utopian sounding cause of social justice so that makes them acceptable to the Left.