Monday, November 11, 2019



Diversity as a snark

Below is most of an article from "The Economist" in the form of a letter to a chief excutive. It is about "diversity" -- i.e. getting women and blacks into well-paid jobs that they may or may not be suited for.  It is quite good on what to do and what not to do in accomplishing that political goal. 

But the list of dos and don'ts is very extensive. In effect, practically everything you do has to be changed.  One is reminded of the old German socialist (and Nazi) slogan:  "Alles muss anders sein" (Everything must be changed).

So an obvious question in that case is whether diversity-mongers are trying to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. Is an impossible task being attempted? The figures below certainly suggest that. They suggest that diversity is an immovable object. So are the coveted minorities just not very suited for what is asked of them? If everything has to be upended to get them in, that is an obvious question

And experience elsewhere reinforces that question.  Indians, Chinese and Jews are minorities but nobody needs a diversity program to get them wherever you want them.  They get into the top echelons all by themselves.  The highest earning ethnic group in America is Indians.  Being brown men with a tendency to funny accents certainly does not hold them back.  Not many went to Ivy League schools either.

So it looks like diversity efforts are just another of the unnatural goals that Leftists are always setting for other people. The way things are never suits Leftists.  So they impose on others all sorts of difficult tasks with dubious benefits.  Their never-ending speech codes are a prime example of that. So given the vast abusive screeches that Leftists go on with, I guess some appearance of diversity-seeking has to be attempted -- but it would be unwise to take it very seriously. It won't work



This is where we are: lots of talk, plenty of initiatives, little change on the ground. Between 2015 and 2018 the share of female executives at large (mostly) American and British firms went from 12% to 14%; for ethnic minorities it moved from 12% to 13%. The FTSE 100 has fewer female CEOs (six) than it does bosses who share your name (seven). In American companies with over 100 employees, the share of black men in management was 3.4% in 2017, half their share in the population as a whole—and virtually unchanged from 3% in 1985. White women make up 25% of executives and senior managers, compared with 60% for white men. Something is clearly amiss.

In the past this letter would have gone straight to your legal department. Since the term “diversity” entered the corporate lexicon in the 1960s it has been code for avoiding lawsuits—especially in America, where companies have coughed up billions in fines for discrimination over the years. The financial sector still treats it mostly as a compliance issue.

Deep inside, you may be wondering if anything really needs solving. The short answer is: it does. With that in mind, you should ask yourself three things.

Are you hoping that diversity will boost the bottom line? To be perfectly honest, I have no idea if it does. It is hard to tell if diversity helps firms do well, or if successful firms are also more enlightened on other matters. But variety has been linked to innovation, productivity and, for example in diverse teams of surgeons, fewer mistakes. Lack of it breeds groupthink— which in turn can lead to disasters. The Bay of Pigs invasion and the Lehman Brothers collapse stemmed from narrow-minded-ness. And employees who believe their firm cares about gender diversity are 40% more likely to be satisfied at work—and possibly more productive as a result.

Once you have sorted out the why, consider where you want to get to. Some firms, like Facebook, Nike or P&G, say they wish to mirror their customer base. Others are keen not to recruit from an artificially thin talent pool. Goldman Sachs claims its new entry-level recruitment targets—50% female and, in America, 14% Hispanic and 11% black—are based on things like graduation rates. Clear goals make it easier to assess if you are on track. But make them attainable. Qantas’s goal of 40% of its pilot intake to be female by 2028 is as admirable as it looks unrealistic: today just one in 20 pilots worldwide is a woman.

The third question concerns barriers that stop diverse talent from flourishing at your firm. Mapping how it flows through your organisation and where the blockages and leaks happen is a start. A McKinsey study of more than 300 companies identified the second step of the career ladder, from entry level to manager, as the “broken rung”: for every 100 men only 72 women (and just 68 Hispanic and 58 black ones) earned that critical early promotion. When Google was losing women in disproportionate numbers it homed in on maternity as the principal cause; the technology giant increased maternity leave and support for mothers returning to work.

Now you’ve got your diversity-and-inclusion (D&I) priorities straight and diagnosed what needs fixing. Good. Before you order a rainbow float for a Pride parade and send staff on a micro-aggression avoidance course, here is what not to do.

The don’ts

American firms spend billions a year on training. Half of large ones have unconscious-bias seminars. Most of these “D&I” programmes are a waste. Or worse: recent research from America shows that diversity statements can put off minorities, possibly because they perceive them as tokenism. Often, firms do D but forget I, which is about ensuring that the workforce is not just diverse, but thriving. Too many try to fix people instead of procedures. Training women to be more assertive in asking for a promotion or pay rise is pointless; they are just as likely to ask for these but also likelier to be seen as pushy when they do. Ushering your managers onto the “Check Your Blind Spots bus”, currently touring America as part of the CEOs’ drive, is unlikely to do much. “Days of understanding”, popular in American offices, risk causing “diversity fatigue”. It is hard to beat bias out of individuals—easier to root it out of systems.

Take Silicon Valley. Big Tech has splurged on D&I to little effect. Representation of blacks and Hispanics has been flat (see chart). Girls Who Code, an industry-sponsored NGO, found that a quarter of young women who applied for internships at tech firms said they were asked inappropriate or biased questions. Others reported being flirted with or demeaned. It’s no use hiring diverse coders if the message then is: wear a hoodie and pretend to be a guy, or this is no place for you. They will underperform—or flee, leaving you as undiverse as before. Firms that do not change their ways beyond recruitment see high attrition rates of diverse talent. A lack of diversity is a symptom of deeper problems that a few diversity hires won’t mend.

The how

At this point the how should be relatively clear. In a nutshell, it is all about creating a level playing field. When recruiting, software can mute biases by concealing giveaways to a candidate’s gender or ethnic identity. These include names but also less obvious hints like the sports they play. If only the usual suspects apply, look harder. Specialised recruitment drives, such as visiting “black” colleges or advertising in women’s forums, appear to work. The Bank of England no longer visits the Russell group of top universities, whose graduates apply in spades anyway, and focuses instead on less elite schools. BHP, an Anglo-Australian mining giant, broadened its search for female miners by recruiting from professions, such as nursing, with some similar skills.

In an effort to find trainees from different backgrounds, British law firms are trying “contextual recruitment”. An applicant with Bs from a school where everyone got Cs may be more impressive than one with As from a place full of A* pupils. Rare, a recruitment firm, has developed software which screens candidates for disadvantage and gauges their outperformance against the average for their school.

Once in the workplace, the clearer your criteria for professional advancement, the better. Informality is the enemy of women and minorities. It perpetuates bias. Surveys of American engineers and lawyers found that female workers were nearly twice as likely as their male peers to be saddled with “office housework”, like setting up meetings and conference calls. White men were likelier to be given career-enhancing tasks such as client meetings.

Sponsorship schemes are an effective way to ensure traditionally sidelined groups get a fair shot. Payscale, a pay-com-parison site, found that employees with a sponsor made 11.6% more than those without. The Bank of England has offered most of its sponsorship places to ethnic-minority women. Staff surveys, if bite-sized but regular, can bring clarity to fuzzy inclusion metrics. “Psychological safety”, lingo for an environment where people feel free to speak their mind, can be tracked with questions like “are your ideas regularly attributed to someone else?” or “are you regularly interrupted in meetings?” Rotating who chairs a meeting, or a firm word with loudmouths who dominates it, can help.

Many employers—yourself included— would be horrified to learn that they implicitly require employees who want to be considered leadership material to adjust their behaviour. Women shouldn’t need to “act like a man”, gay employees to “act straight” or people with frizzy hair to treat it to “look professional” (ie, white). Let grievances fester and your workers will lose motivation or simply leave.

SOURCE 






UK National Health Service to Deny Treatment to ‘Racists’ and ‘Sexists’

A peril of government medicine.  You can be denied treatment on political grounds:  Hospitals as a place to keep your mouth shut

What could possibly go wrong? A National Health Service (NHS) trust in the UK has announced that it will deny treatment to patients it deems are ‘racists’ or ‘sexists’.

No, this is not the Onion. The North Bristol NHS Trust said that “threatening and offensive language,” as well as “racist or sexist language, gestures or behaviour” and “malicious allegations” would all be punishable offenses.

Patients who commit such an infraction will be subject to a “sports-style disciplinary yellow card and then final red card in which treatment would be withdrawn as soon as is safe.”

“We have staff from many different backgrounds, from all over the world, and we pride ourselves on our commitment to equality which is a fundamental value of the NHS,” said Andrea Young, Chief Executive for North Bristol NHS Trust.

“We’re sending a strong signal that any racism or discrimination is completely unacceptable – we want staff to challenge and report it and we want everyone to know that it will have consequences,” she added.

The problem here of course is that the definition of what constitutes ‘racism’ or ‘sexism’ gets broader with each passing day.

As Jack Montgomery highlights, “In late 2017 an NHS patient who requested a female nurse to carry out a cervical smear complained when the hospital sent a person with “an obviously male appearance… close-cropped hair, a male facial appearance and voice, large number of tattoos and facial stubble” who insisted “My gender is not male. I’m a transsexual”.

Foster parents have also had children removed from their care by the state because they were supporters of UKIP and not vehement supporters of “multiculturalism.”

The University Hospitals Bristol NHS Foundation Trust also ordered that the British flag be removed from security staff stab vests after one person complained that it was “offensive.”

This is even worse than China’s social credit score, which to my knowledge doesn’t yet punish people by withdrawing medical treatment if they engage in wrongthink.

First it was deplatforming people from social media websites, then it was deplatforming people from bank accounts and mortgages. Now it’s deplatforming people from hospital treatment.

Literally eliminating people’s right to basic health care because of their political or social opinions.

This is where we’re at, and this is why the UK is truly the capital of Clown World Order.

SOURCE 





Wisconsin governor returns ‘holiday tree’ name to evergreen

MADISON, Wis. — Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers has gone back to calling the evergreen on display at the state Capitol a holiday tree, reversing his predecessor who declared it a Christmas tree.

The state Department of Administration places a huge evergreen in the Capitol rotunda every year ahead of Christmas. The tree has been a tradition since 1916.

Politicians called it a Christmas tree until 1985, when they began referring to it as a holiday tree to avoid perceptions that they were endorsing religion. DOA allows other groups to place displays in the rotunda as end-of-the-year holidays approach, including a menorah and a Festivus pole, a nod to the fictional holiday in the ‘‘Seinfeld’’ television series. But the controversy over what to call the tree has never really died.

Former governor Scott Walker, a Republican, declared the tree a Christmas tree when he took office in 2011.  Evers, a Democrat, called the tree a holiday tree on Friday.

SOURCE 






Transgenderism, Child Abuse, and Medical Malpractice
Medical decisions must now be informed by "woke" political considerations


In 2015, for the first time in nearly 25 years, the Association of American Medical Colleges — which is one-half of the only government-approved accrediting entity for U.S. medical schools — revised the Medical College Admissions Test (MCAT) in such a way as to fundamentally alter the way medical schools assess their applicants.

The leader of this change was Dr. Darrell Kirch, president and CEO of the AAMC. “Kirch often insists that social justice is the neglected core tenet of medical ethics; in a 2015 essay, he praised the White Coats for Black Lives movement, a medical-student organization inspired by Black Lives Matter, for ‘sparking dialogue rather than division’ by ‘staging on-campus die-ins,’” explains columnist Devorah Goldman.

“White Coats for Black Lives lobbies, among other things, for the creation of ‘national medical school curricular standards’ that would mandate the teaching of ‘structural racism’ and ‘unconscious racial bias’ in medical schools.”

In an interview that same year, Kirch stated that his greater goal with regard to the MCAT was to test “not just what students know but how they think.”

Translation: medical decisions must now be informed by “woke” political considerations.

This nonsense has also infected the American Psychological Association (APA). For the first time ever, the APA determined this year that “traditional masculinity — marked by stoicism, competitiveness, dominance and aggression — is, on the whole, harmful.”

Thus, clinicians are advised to be aware of their own bias and face the reality that “power, privilege, and sexism work both by conferring benefits to men and by trapping them in narrow roles.”

What’s not harmful? The transgender agenda. In 2012, the organization removed the term “gender identity disorder” from its directory of mental illnesses, reclassifying it as “gender dysphoria.” Today, the Treatment section of the APA website recommends that gender dysphoria should be addressed by “counseling, cross-sex hormones, puberty suppression and gender reassignment surgery” — for adults.

What about children? Political waffling. “A child’s treatment typically involves a multi-disciplinary team of health care professionals, which may include a pediatrician, a psychiatrist, other mental health professionals, a pediatric endocrinologist (specialists in hormone conditions in children) and an advocate,” the APA website states. “Treatment may focus primarily on affirming psychological support, understanding feelings and coping with distress, and giving children a safe space to articulate their feelings. For many children the feelings do not continue into adolescence and adulthood.”

“Many” children? According to the American College of Pediatricians “as many as 98% of gender confused boys and 88% of gender confused girls eventually accept their biological sex after naturally passing through puberty.” Feelings? “No one is born with a gender,” the ACP asserts. “Everyone is born with a biological sex. Gender (an awareness and sense of oneself as male or female) is a sociological and psychological concept; not an objective biological one.”

It’s far worse than that. Gender has become a political term. One so removed from biological and chromosomal reality that children in the UK are being taught there are more than one hundred “gender identities,” and The Royal College of General Practitioners recognizes six: male, female, “gender-neutral,” “nonbinary,” “gender-fluid,” and “gender-queer.”

All well and good save for one inconvenient reality: If one undergoes gender-reassignment surgery — arguably the most drastic capitulation to gender dysphoria — one gets only two choices: man or woman.

Sadly, “man and woman” now includes boy and girl. In the latest debacle, Austin, Texas, Judge Kim Cooks of the 255th district, who won an unopposed general election in 2018, has essentially remained agnostic regarding whether or not seven-year-old James Younger should undergo the chemical castration necessary to satisfy his physician mother’s wishes to turn him into a girl named “Luna” — despite the largely under-publicized reality that James has a twin brother named Jude.

Cooks issued joint custody to both Dr. Anne Georgulas and father Jeffrey Younger, who is desperate to prevent his son from getting puberty blockers. Cooks also issued a gag order to both parents so they cannot speak to the press about the case — meaning Younger’s “Save James” website will have to be shut down.

Ironically, Cooks is the voice of reason here. She overruled an 11-1 Dallas jury’s verdict that awarded sole custody of James to his mother.

James Younger is hardly an outlier in what amounts to a monstrous collaboration between a politically compromised medical community and ideologically addled parents. As the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) website reveals, doctors are also performing double mastectomies on healthy 13-year-old girls, even as it admits professional guidelines “lack clarity … because there are no data documenting the effect of chest surgery on minors.”

Puberty blockers? Although they are championed by the Endocrine Society and the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Food and Drug Administration isn’t on board due to the inconvenient reality that the agency has recorded more than 41,000 adverse events reported with their use between 2013 and June 30, 2019 — including 6,370 deaths.

How much more “woke” can the medical community get? As woke as society at large will let them, it seems. A society at large that apparently prefers avoiding accusations of bigotry to the point where it abides the teaching of the transgender agenda in elementary schools, “men” getting pregnant, biological males dominating women’s sports — and what amounts to the mutilation of physically healthy children.

 “From 1933 to 1945, Nazi Germany carried out a campaign to ‘cleanse’ German society of individuals viewed as biological threats to the nation’s ‘health,’” the Holocaust Encyclopedia recounts. “The Nazis enlisted the help of physicians and medically trained geneticists, psychiatrists, and anthropologists to develop racial health policies.”

In modern-day America, the Rainbow Mafia has enlisted the same cadre of professionals to develop gender-health policies. And much like their Nazi forebears, they will attempt to crush anyone who dares to defy their morally bankrupt agenda. Thus, calling the surgical and chemical transition of children the parental child abuse and medical malpractice it is truly has become a “revolutionary act.”

Let the revolution begin — in earnest.

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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