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 






Amazon Doubles Down on Excluding Some Conservative Nonprofits from Customer Donations

In yet another slap in the face from far-left tech giants to conservatives, Amazon.com recently doubled down on its policy that prohibits customers from donating proceeds from their purchases to well-established conservative nonprofits like the Family Research Council and the Alliance Defending Freedom.

While Amazon customers can use the AmazonSmile program to donate a portion of each purchase to left-leaning organizations like Planned Parenthood, the Freedom From Religion Foundation, and the Center for American Progress (and to be fair, to many right-leaning organizations, too), Amazon has decided to single out a few well-known conservative organizations like FRC and ADF from receiving part of the tens of millions of dollars the program raises each year from customers.

That’s because the company uses the radical, left-wing Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) as the standard-bearer to decide which nonprofits customers are allowed to direct their contributions to.

SPLC has labeled some of the mainstream conservative organizations it disagrees with as “hate groups” and publishes their names in a directory alongside real hate groups like the Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazis. Amazon won’t allow any group that’s on SPLC’s “hate list” to participate in AmazonSmile.

The SPLC itself is a completely discredited organization. It bills itself as being on the front lines in the fight against racial inequality and injustice, yet last year, its own staffers accused its leadership of years of racial and gender discrimination and of widespread sexual harassment.

Whistleblowers said that the organization had a “systemic culture of racism and sexism within its workplace.” As a result, its cofounder and president were both forced out.

With all this baggage and SPLC’s known bias against conservatives, one has to wonder why Amazon is using the center to determine which nonprofits are acceptable and which are not. Yet, recently, at the urging of Amazon’s board of directors, shareholders defeated a resolution that would have ended the use of SPLC’s defamatory list.

That means long-established, venerable organizations like the Family Research Council continue to be excluded from receiving contributions because the SPLC considers an organization that adheres to traditional Christian teachings about marriage a hate group.

Alliance Defending Freedom, a respected organization of Christian lawyers dedicated to defending religious liberty and free speech rights, was also designated an anti-LGBT hate group because of its defense of traditional marriage in the courts. SPLC also considers groups like the Center for Immigration Studies that advocate for stricter border enforcement as anti-immigrant hate groups.

The people at SPLC certainly have a right to disagree with these groups’ policy positions; but it’s unconscionable that they would label decent people as hateful and consider them on equal footing with neo-Nazis and the Klan.

It’s also unconscionable that Amazon would legitimize SPLC’s list. In doing so, Amazon is telling millions of its customers who share the same traditional Christian or conservative beliefs that they are hateful, too.

A piece of free advice for Amazon’s board of directors: I’ve served on several corporate boards during my career, and it’s just bad business to alienate upwards of half of your customers.

When Amazon’s board recommended that shareholders reject the resolution, it said, “The policies and procedures we have in place for our employees, sellers, and customers are intended to foster diversity and inclusion and promote respect for all people.”

How ironic. Amazon wants to show it is diverse and inclusive – just not diverse and inclusive enough to include religious groups that espouse traditional Christian beliefs or immigration groups that believe in protecting the nation’s borders.

While Amazon is within its rights as a private company to conduct its business the way it wants, consumers also have a right to complain to Amazon and to ultimately decide not to do business with the retailer if their complaints aren’t taken seriously.

In the wake of COVID-19, there are plenty of local businesses that need our support to help bring the U.S. economy back. Perhaps that fact, combined with Amazon’s refusal to change its ways, will provide the impetus for people to shop locally more often. Local business owners may have their own political opinions, but most are smart enough not to insult half of their customers by injecting those opinions into the shopping experience.

SOURCE 





Instagram Brands Christian Worship ‘Harmful’

Sean Feucht is a worship leader and songwriter who recently ran for political office in California. He is also a conservative Christian.

On June 23 he tweeted, “This is what we’ve come to in America! “Instagram is now classifying my WORSHIP videos as ‘harmful or false information’ “Religious Liberty? Freedom of Speech? Big Tech censorship?”

Included in the tweet was a screenshot from Instagram, explaining that the company had removed his video post because it was violation of Community Standards. (Oh, those dread community standards again!)

Specifically, Instagram stated, “Story removed for harmful or false information.”

What on earth does this mean? What can it possibly mean?

Feucht’s tweet got the attention of Missouri’s Senator Josh Hawley who tweeted, “Cancel culture meets #BigTech. Now @instagram is censoring a Christian worship leader who wants to post videos of praise and worship from places where there has recently been unrest. And that doesn’t meet ‘community standards’? Can’t wait to hear the explanation for this.”

As of this writing (late Thursday night, Eastern Time, June 25), we are still awaiting explanation.

A few years ago, I repeatedly challenged Facebook for censoring some of my posts for alleged violation of community standards, exposing the rank hypocrisy of their decisions.

For example, my factual, fairly-worded post dealing with LGBT issues would be deemed hateful, while the most blasphemous, unimaginably profane, anti-Christian Facebook pages were allowed to operate without restriction. Seriously?

Thankfully, in most cases, with the help of an internal contact, Facebook reinstated my posts (or, restored my status). But other colleagues of mine did not fare so well, having their pages permanently shut down for alleged violation of the dreaded (and oh so ambiguous) community standards.

It seems that “hate” meant one thing for one group and something entirely different for the other. (For a recent video exposé, see here.)

When it comes to YouTube and Google, the battle continues, with large channels like Prager U still experiencing discrimination and unequal treatment. (Where are all the social justice warriors calling for equality? Somehow, they don’t seem to be raising their voices for Prager U.)

In my own experience, after having over 1,000 of my channel’s videos branded unsuitable for advertising in a single stroke (!), YouTube has actually been fair with me, even surprising me at times by what it approves for monetization. At the same time, we know that the other shoe could drop at any moment and suddenly, we could be banned.

It is a big mistake to put our trust in Big Tech.

What happened with Instagram, though, seems even more bizarre and extreme. What on earth were the all-powerful censors thinking?

There are endless videos on Instagram showing disturbing clips from the recent protests and riots, all of them somehow in conformity with community standards. (Right now, over on Twitter, I’m watching a video of the “CHOP” call from Seattle, with specific reference to guillotines. I imagine similar videos can be found on Instagram.)

But when a video is posted showing Christian worship in the midst of these protests, it is removed for alleged “harmful or false information.”

Since there is nothing “false” about the video, then it must be considered “harmful” – hence the headline to this article.

Is this actually what Instagram meant? Could they possibly be claiming that worshiping the Lord on the streets of our divided cities is harmful?

If so, I would encourage every worship leader and every worship team to hit the streets of their own communities, posting similar videos and sharing them as widely as possible, starting on Instagram. (Hey, it’s a great thing to do anyway and just what America needs.)

If Instagram has made a mistake, I hope they own up to it and say, “We totally blew it! There is no excuse.” Otherwise, this means spiritual war.

So, no hatred. No carnal aggression. No fleshly anger. And, of course, of course, of course, no violence.

But lots of prayer. Lots of worship. Lots of preaching. And lots of standing up and being heard. If not now, then when?

Ironically, as if to drill the point home, as I as writing this article, I spotted another tweet from Sen. Hawley from a few hours ago. He wrote, “Now @Twitter is actively censoring Bible verses? Seriously? Why?”

Hawley retweeted another tweet from Sean Feucht, stating, “Not only is big tech blocking worship videos, now they’re blocking Bible verses about PEACE!  

“RT if you believe social media needs more peace, more worship, and less censorship of Jesus followers.”

Feucht included a screenshot of tweets from Beni Johnson, then using the handle @prayfor5, which at present is not appearing on Twitter. Her tweets, posting Bible verses, were blocked, with the note, “This Tweet may include sensitive content.”

So, worship is deemed “harmful” and Scripture verses about peace are deemed “sensitive content.” Really?

Let us, then, flood Big Tech with the Word and worship. And let us report and challenge every unjust infraction about the practicing of our faith.

It’s beyond time.

SOURCE 






Remuneration season might bring the virtuous unstuck

To their growing horror, some corporate leaders will soon discover their virtue signalling comes at a very personal price. Their Faustian pact with environmental, social and governance ­activists is about to hit them where it hurts, right in their hip pockets. And big time.

Unless, of course, they admit, as many of us always suspected, that the “social licence to operate” guff was only ever intended as a marketing ploy, and never meant to have a serious impact on real corporate decisions, such as executive remuneration. It was meant to be the equivalent of a heartwarming musical for the corporate world with corporate leaders parading on stage spouting sweet-sounding monologues in synch about their social responsibility. When the curtains went down, it was back to the real world.

Coinciding with the end of the financial year, many of Australia’s largest corporations will be making decisions about remuneration for their high-flying executives in the next few weeks. Specifically, when deciding how much, if any, to award in bonuses, the words of Australian Council of Superannuation Investors chief executive Louise Davidson will be ringing in their ears: “We would expect boards to be using discretion to review variable remuneration outcomes over the coming months, taking into account the appropriateness of any payments in light of the experiences of their investors, staff, customers and the broader community.”

Even for those directors who have not been told the news directly by proxy advisers, industry super funds and other adherents of the environmental, social and governance movement, no translation is necessary because money talks. Given that ACSI advises non-profit super funds with something in the region of $1.5 trillion in assets on how to exercise their votes on AGM decisions such as remuneration reports and director elections, there is nothing subtle about the message. If you don’t take an axe to remuneration, ASCI members will vote against you.

Now, for companies in trouble, or for those cutting or suspending dividends, this may be perfectly appropriate. And many chief executives, senior executives and boards have taken a whopping cut to their pay already. That is as it should be. Despite activists deriding the shareholder primacy theory, the law has, for many centuries, held that boards can, and should, have regard to the interests of other stakeholders, and to their reputation, when making these kinds of decisions.

But the ESG industry has latched on to the “social licence to operate” theory to go much further. It tells us that shareholder primacy is dead, and the interests of shareholders is just one factor, and not a specially important one, among many that boards should take into account.

When the US Business Roundtable released its Statement on the Purpose of a Corporation last August, it proclaimed that the 181 chief executives who signed it “commit to lead their companies for the benefit of all stakeholders — customers, employees, suppliers, communities and shareholders”. It was not accidental that shareholders came in last.

Never mind that this amounts to expropriating shareholders’ money for social purposes. Under this new dispensation, what ACSI calls “the broader community” takes precedence.

Why is this frightening the pants off virtue-signalling corporates? Because they may be forced into taking pay cuts, or at least accept pay restraint, even though their own corporation is in terrific shape and even though it’s not in the interests of their own shareholders to take a pay cut.

It’s not hard to see the ESG industry, or the anti-shareholder primacy gang, saying that in times of widespread unemployment and significant social hardship, paying executives big bonuses would not be in the interests of “the broader community”.

Ignore for one moment the rank hypocrisy of this view emanating from obscenely well-paid fund managers.

Ignore too the sheer chutzpah of ACSI and industry super funds setting down prescriptive corporate governance rules for listed companies while studiously rejecting similar governance standards for themselves.

The key issue for this remuneration season is that the activists will say executives of listed companies wallowing in handsome bonuses while many are on the dole will be in breach of the “social licence to operate”.

You might think this is all terribly far-fetched. Surely the corporate musical called “social licence to operate” can’t require executives of strongly performing companies to take pay cuts just because of a pandemic. It makes no sense. But that’s the point, and the beauty, of the phrase “social ­licence to operate”. Like that awful Hollywood movie-musical La La Land, it conjures up dreams. It can, and does, mean whatever activists want it to mean.

Maybe it’s fair enough that a company that has maintained its dividends by laying off workers, or increasing prices to consumers, or reducing services, will get a bollocking if it pays bonuses. But even companies that haven’t laid off staff, or cut costs, will be at risk if they pay bonuses in a time of social misery. In a world of co-equal stakeholders, community pain could outrank sound business practice.

Those corporate executives who have spent years waxing lyrical about their commitment to a “social licence” will now, like Kurtz in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, be screaming “the horror, the horror” for their advocacy. “Social licence to operate” wasn’t supposed to mean this, they will plead. It was meant to warm hearts, allow us to hold our heads up high at Toorak dinner parties, or to justify voting for Zali Steggall or the Greens. It was only a marketing ploy, they will beg. It wasn’t meant to justify pay cuts in the interests of “the broader community”, they will wail.

Well the ESG industry has news for you. Whether your company is doing well or poorly, you have to take one for the team. It doesn’t matter if you worked all the hours God gave you, if you produced a stellar result, or if your company discovered the cure for coronavirus due to your work. Inclusivity means pay cuts for all.

Alternatively, this might be a wake-up call for some executives about virtue signalling.

Perhaps they will be less effusive about the social licence industry and start admitting it was never meant to be taken seriously if it costs real money. Here’s a novel idea for the pre-COVID-19 virtue signallers: they might stand up to the corporate equivalents of Antifa.

It’s hard to know which alternative will be more fun to watch.

SOURCE  

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the  incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of  other countries.  The only real difference, however, is how much power they have.  In America, their power is limited by democracy.  To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already  very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges.  They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did:  None.  So look to the colleges to see  what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way.  It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  Email me (John Ray) here. 
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