Happy Friday, Flyover Country!
I was at a meeting for our local Chamber of Commerce this week. The primary topic related to the results of a recent employer survey.
Our area, like many others across Flyover Country, find ourselves with a mismatch right now between employer staffing needs and local talent willing and able to fill those roles. To the Chamber’s credit, they engaged the local university to survey employers and find out where the gaps are, what is needed, and use that data to brainstorm solutions to address it.
A funny thing happened along the way.
One of the survey questions dealt specifically with Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity (what I call D.I.E., but many propagandists try to sell it as DEI). If you’re unfamiliar with this rapidly spreading, retribution-based cancer, you can read more here:
You probably won’t be surprised to find that employers placed the lowest priority, by a WIDE margin on this particular aspect of employer needs and culture. Employers need bodies that actually show up and know how to interact with other humans and do so in ways that actually help them to generate revenue.
Win-win, right?
It also would appear, that DIE didn’t rate overall high with employees, either. They preferred workplace flexibility most of all. They also suggested that local employers need to increase their compensation and benefits packages as a close second. They asked for more culture and entertainment opportunities in our local communities.
They weren’t clamoring for more diversity, inclusion, and equity.
That finished dead last for them as well.
They want to be paid for their skills and create some sort of meaningful work/life balance.
The local Ph.D and her Master’s graduate assistant attempted to reconcile this objective real world reality with the echo chamber ecosystem of academia.
I found it amusing as they grappled with their bubble bursting.
It was what happened next, though, that was most instructive.
Employers and employees find little real-world value in DIE.
But, there are a LOT of interested parties, some would call them “biased”, who need DIE to stay relevant instead of burying it six feet under where it belongs.
I noticed as one of the attendees squirmed in her seat. She works in HR at the largest employer in town, where I’m fairly certain (based on what former colleagues there have said) she pushes the ideology in her role in Human Resources. She also sits on the school board of one of the local school districts - one that has invested heavily into DIE, including hiring a Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.
Seated a few chairs down, was the superintendent of that same school district, who has advocated frequently for DIE and made hiring that Director a top priority.
Then, there was the chair of this particular committee that I sit on. He’s the VP of HR for a local hospital.
Are you starting to notice a pattern here?
The chairman of this particular group, before these university presenters could move onto the next slide, decided he needed to interject and “contextualize” the data.
He went on to explain how he had viewed that question, relative to other questions in the same section of the survey. This man, who is white, felt compelled to explain how his answers and how/where the question were presented in the survey explains why he didn’t rank DIE as high.
But he twisted himself into a pretzel to explain why that didn’t diminish the importance of DIE.
He attempted to rationalize that he simply viewed aptitude and availability of prospective employees (that thing we used to call “merit”) ahead of those characteristics valued by the toxic DIE ideology.
He concluded his remarks, looking around the room at some of the minority attendees, by saying that employers are struggling just to find people to fill roles.
It screamed “I’m not a racist” as he tried to elevate DIE from 9th out of 9 survey questions (again, by a WIDE margin) to still important and worthy of “inclusion” (oh, the irony).
Several others chimed in at this point, to prove that, they, too, are not racists and that they value DIE, and these results shouldn’t reflect poorly on DIE in the scheme of things.
But, it couldn’t be more clear, if you don’t look at things through this lens of diversity, inclusion, and equity. In a practical sense, it’s clear that DIE is not a critical component that’s holding back local employers or local employees (and prospective employees).
The decibel level of the virtue signaling approached “eleven”.
A couple of rational individuals, including a superintendent of a different local school district, stressed the need for practical solutions that created mutually beneficial relationships for employers and employees, which will also, by extension, at the end of the day, improve quality of life and quality of place in our community.
One small business owner in the room added, “if something is too complex and isn’t going to make me money, then it doesn’t get done.”
That’s an uncomfortable reality for academia and the HR class that sticks their fingers into every aspect of the corporate world. The chair and the presenters quickly moved the group past that point with one more plug for the importance of DIE.
They hoped you would ignore the man behind the curtain and still believe in the great and powerful Oz.
And that’s the problem. HR and administrators continue to be the staunchest champions of DIE. They insist on maintaining the illusion of Oz, in spite of overwhelming evidence of its nominal, if ANY, benefit in real-world economics. They wish to deny the reality that it’s the practical, not the conceptual that enable large businesses and small business owners to make prosperity possible for America.
It’s precisely this practical prosperity that allows academia, HR “Karen’s”, and local government (like school districts) to indulge in fringe exercises that benefit a few at the expense of the many.
It’s these people who refuse to let D.I.E. die already.