Is Diversity a Job Qualification?

The answer to that question should be an obvious “no” but sadly it has become, in a world of “woke” political correctness, a resounding “yes.”  And yet, what does someone’s identity group membership have to do with whether or not one can perform the tasks of a specific job or enter an institution that will educate one for future jobs?

Back when I was first looking for work in the late 60s, as a woman there were very few jobs available to me, not because I could not do the work, but simply because of my gender.  African-Americans faced similar limitations at the time because of the color of their skin. 

This was frustrating and disheartening, but people worked hard, spoke to their government both softly and loudly and things began to change.  And so, as I really settled into a career I had far more choices open to me and for the most part felt that, as an applicant, I would be judged on the quality of my ability to perform the job and not simply because of my sex.  The same began to be true for people of color and others who had been discriminated against because of some immutable characteristic.

And yes, I realize there is still a way to go in some areas, but the point is that we were beginning, at least in the work force and in higher education to begin judging people not by their gender or the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.  We were beginning to move toward that ideal voiced by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.  People could work hard and succeed based on that work; their success or lack thereof would not be because of characteristics with which they were born and could do nothing about.

And then something happened.  The progress toward that ideal of Dr. King stopped.  We again began judging people by those immutable characteristics.  We started placing people into identity groups and we wanted to be sure we had enough members from each group in anyplace where we could show off numbers.  It now became different groups who had the advantage and the disadvantage.  Businesses and schools wanted to show their positive numbers of minority groups, to prove their political correctness.  Everyone wanted to show their diversity.

So, now perhaps the White male, fully qualified, will be overlooked for the woman or for someone of color.  The heterosexual female may be less favored than the homosexual or bisexual female or male.  Victimhood becomes a plus.  These become qualifying factors, more important than actual ability.

At least in the past when certain groups were denied jobs or education, it was because, however wrongly so, those in charge believed that something about that person’s immutable characteristic made him or her less capable of performing the required tasks.  Now members of certain identifiable groups are denied simply because they are a member of that disfavored group or not a member of one that is favored by those in charge, those making the rules of political correctness and identity politics.

In Soviet Russia individuals were denied promotions, education, and other benefits simply because they were not a member of the Party.  The need of the Left, the “woke” ones, to make decisions based on membership in this or that identity group in order to further a political agenda is not that different.  Their “wokeness” is a clear form of the discrimination that they claim to detest.  It is detrimental to the individuals who are discriminated against simply because they are in the wrong identity group and also detrimental to the people who will be served by those who may or may not be the most competent for the job but who received their promotion or education or other benefit based on membership and not on valid job criteria.

So, now, rather than “Blacks or Women need not apply” we have “only those who meet politically correct diversity requirements need apply.”  It’s the same thing.  It’s discrimination.  And it has nothing to do with whether or not someone has the skills necessary for that to which he or she is applying.

Victimhood, Group-think, and Identity Politics: “MeToo” for Everyone

I have been thinking a lot about victimhood lately.  I have come to believe that we in large part encourage and have indeed become a society of victims.  This victim mentality seems to have merged with identity politics and together they seem to be pushing us to a place of superficial group-think that is a danger to our democracy.  Let me explain:

A victim is someone who is harmed or injured as a result of a crime, accident, or other event or action.  We have all been victims of something at some time in our lives.  There are many ways that one can deal with victimhood.  One can ignore the harm or injury completely – hard to do if it is much more than a stubbed toe.  One can seek an appropriate remedy for the injury – legal recourse, medical treatment, perhaps just an apology – and then move forward.  Or, one can bemoan one’s hard luck for a day, a week, or perhaps even a lifetime.   It is when one chooses to assume that permanent label of victim that they begin to demand attention beyond that which the actual injury merits. 

There are individuals who relish their victimhood; perhaps they emphasize or even exacerbate it simply as a way to get attention and special treatment (we will leave it for the psychiatrists to determine what was lacking in their childhood or their psyche that gave them this need for attention).  I suspect that these individuals are not very happy; I know that they can disrupt as well as make demands on the happiness of those with whom they interact.   But, what happens when we have a whole group, if not a whole society, filled with victims?

Identity politics seems to have co-opted the victim mentality.  Every group has its grievance and that grievance, they believe, gives them a permanent victim status with rights of special treatment for past wrongs. This does not mean that the original harm or injury was not real or that an identifiable group did not suffer some particular harm.  But, what groups seem to do is to choose not to seek redress and then move forward, but instead to assume the permanent label of victim seeking continuing and ever-more redress.   All those within any particular group are required to buy into the victim hood of the group or be cast out from that group identity.  Thus, we have blacks or gays or women who choose not to proclaim permanent victimhood being condemned by their respective black or LGBT or feminist groups. 

This group-think is important to the politics of identity, as is the inherent victimhood.  If one wants to use a particular class of people to one’s own advantage, one way to do so is to make those people unite in dependence on you and in opposition to some enemy.  This is a classic technique of community organization:  rile a particular community up against a caricatured evil enemy, make the community a victim of the oppressor.  Identity politics labels people according to group.  One must think and behave exactly as all members of one’s identified group.  Thus, group-think becomes required within the groups one supports and is assumed of all members of groups which one opposes. And, if a particular leader is seen as the advocate or savior of the aggrieved group, that group’s dependence on that leader will sustain the leader’s power.

Group-think is certainly an easier way to approach interactions with others than getting to know individuals.  It is also far more superficial and in the end very dangerous.  Victimhood combined with group identity and its incumbent group-think completely destroys dialog between individuals; it does not allow for differing viewpoints.  When one disagrees with a victim, they are often accused of challenging or attacking the victim.  This becomes a way for a victim to assert his or her position and/or demands without any push-back.  Because the victim is a victim their every need should be acknowledged, believed, and attended to.  Facts become irrelevant as the victim’s feelings become all important.

Here is an example from current events.  A woman claims she was a victim of sexual assault by current Senate candidate Moore when she was 14, nearly 40 years ago.  When Kellyanne Conway suggested in an interview by Martha Raddatz that we should wait for and look at the evidence, she was accused of calling the woman a liar and the conversation effectively ended.  Yet, one should be able to question allegations and seek further evidence without that being an attack of the person claiming victimhood.  This is especially true when the event alleged is 40 years old.  It is common science today that our memories are memories of memories.  One can fully believe that their recollection is accurate and as such it is true for them, but facts could prove otherwise.  That is, our memories can and do alter historical reality.  We are in a very dangerous place if the mere claim of victimhood means that anything one says or does must be accepted as true and tolerated without challenge or even discussion. (And this is so for either side in a he said-she said situation).

Permanent victims claim an inability to handle not only the past harm, but any and all future harms.  They become overly sensitive to any real or perceived words or actions that might harm them or that they find in some way offensive.  Because there is no opportunity for dialog about this, because we instead are asked to cave into every demand of the victim, we instead provide safe-spaces, trigger warnings, and try to avoid even the least micro-aggression.  We all walk on egg-shells trying to protect the victim from future harm or upset of any kind.   This does nothing but encourage more victimhood.

In our group-thinking identity groups every member of the group is encouraged to proclaim their own victimhood.  They are on the look-out for the slightest affront to which they can proclaim “me too.”  Thus we have women finding solidarity with their sisters who were raped by claiming “me too” for a cat call heard when walking down a crowded street, or a person of color claiming “me too” when they were looked at a little too long by a store clerk, thinking this gives them solidarity with a black man unjustifiably beaten because he was black.  This group-think victimhood has become a way of belonging, of joining the in-crowd instead of being left on the sidelines. 

And what this group victimhood does is perpetuate the group’s status as victim, creating anger, fear, and hatred against those outside the group who are the perceived victimizers.  Must all women hate all men because some women have been victims of sexual harassment or assault by some men?  Must all people of color hate all whites because some people of color have been victimized by some whites?  Must all Muslims be feared and hated because some Muslims have committed atrocities?  The list goes on.  But identity politics tends to force an affirmative answer to these questions. 

Those groups and those answers are useful to those seeking power through politics.  And that is why this culture of victimhood combined with identity politics is so dangerous.  Our democracy is based on education, dialog, and compromise.  All of these require free speech and none of these are possible when speech is foreclosed because someone might be upset by it.   In addition to ending the dialog necessary for democracy, victimhood can lead to a frightening police-like state that allows punishment based only on a victim’s claim, effectively destroying our justice system.  Again, Martha Raddatz in her interview with Kellyanne Conway urged an articulated standard of guilt it the court of public opinion.  Apparently, from Raddatz and other political and media urging in regard to the allegations against Moore, the claim of a victim alone should be enough for a verdict of guilty. Imagine how this can only encourage false claims of all sorts in order to remove individuals from positions of power (this is not meant to imply that the claims against Moore are necessarily false).

Group-think victimhood and its silencing of dialog and free speech also results in a superficiality that perpetuates rather than solves problems.  Take gun-control for example.  Every time there is a mass shooting the claim is for gun control, as if simply taking away the guns will solve the illness within our society that is the ultimate cause of the ever-increasing numbers of killings within our country.  We have become a society of victims and with that victimhood comes an alarming increase in hatred of those outside our victim-group, those seen as our group’s victimizers.  Taking away guns won’t fix this, though those who perceive themselves as possible victims may nonetheless believe they have the safe space they seek.

So what do we do?  First, let us stop encouraging victimhood.  Think of the child learning to walk who falls and scrapes his knee.  His mother can pick him up, brush him off, add a bandage if necessary, give him a hug, and then encourage him to get up and move on.  Or, she can fall all over his victimhood, teach him to never run again lest he be hurt again, and essentially send him the message that he is sadly unable to run like other children and needs a safe space along with all the benefits that those who are able to run, who are not victims, have.  Of course, that might be easier than getting back up and learning to run, but which would you choose for your child? 

In our society there are many individuals who have suffered a variety of wrongs.  In some instances, these individuals can be identified as belonging to a group – for example, Blacks descended from slaves who did suffer the injustice of slavery or women who have been denied equal pay.  There were unquestionably injustices and victims involved.  But permanent victimhood is not the way to respond.  And encouraging victimhood as a way of belonging to a group is also not the way to respond.  Looking for a safe and protected space where one will never be hurt again is also not useful (and probably impossible).  Better is to help victims to deal with their victimization appropriately and in a timely manner, resolving the situation, and then moving forward.  In the case of individual harm, this might mean a lawsuit, a complaint of some sort, medical attention, etc.  In the case of an injustice directed at a particular group, for example refusal to pay women equally, the remedy may involve both individual and class lawsuits, lobbying for laws or regulations, etc.  But in all cases the point is to promptly deal with the harm and then move forward, not wallow in one’s victimhood.

If society consists of perpetual victims always looking for their next injury, no matter how slight, then we will be stuck in a world where all dialog is silenced for fear of affront, where everyone demands their own safe space, where feelings, especially feelings of hurt are the driving and ruling forces, countered by fear and hatred between groups.  The individual will become lost in the group-victimization-think, as will our intellect, reason, and judgement.  Easier as it may be to fall and cry for others to pick you up while crying “woe is me,” it is more rewarding to pick yourself up and move forward.   Politicians seeking power would rather keep others as victims so that they will be dependent upon the politician’s power to carry them.   We need to see the danger of all this and stand up, each and every one of us, and refuse to support a society of victimization and divisive group-think.  Instead of crying “woe is me” we need to scream “we can be” – we can be ourselves, we can be problem solvers, we can work together with those unlike us, we can listen, we can think, we can be!   In the democracy that is America, the democracy that gives us our individual freedom, the “me too” victimization and group-think of identity politics is not for everyone; indeed, it should not be for anyone.

Sanitizing Reality

Today, as usual, there were many disturbing stories in the news.  Many will be discussed ad nauseum.  But let me mention three that I find disturbing for their attempt to sanitize reality or turn it into something it is not.

I learned that a mural of a Dr. Seuss character in a Massachusetts museum dedicated to Dr. Seuss will be replaced because it is being called racist (http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2017/10/06/dr-seuss-museum-mural-to-be-replaced-amid-claims-racist-depiction.html).  This is Dr. Seuss we’re talking about - the children’s books revered by parents, children, and children’s librarians until recently when Melania Trump attempted to donate some Dr. Seuss books to a library whose librarian was severely anti-Trump.

I also learned that a new holocaust memorial in Canada had absolutely no mention of Jews as being the target of Hitler’s “final solution.”  When this was pointed out after the unveiling of the memorial, a plaque which had simply stated that millions of people were murdered during the Holocaust was replaced to reflect the experience of the Jews.

A third story this week also involves an attempt to sanitize, though it may be somewhat more understandable in light of the current debates about removal of civil war statues.  This story involves the request to remove the Pittsburgh statute of Stephen Foster, composer of such songs as "Oh! Susana,” "Old Folks at Home,” and "Old Black Joe.”  This statue, which stands outside the Univ. of Pittsburgh’s Stephen Foster Memorial, was erected in 1900.  It portrays the composer with a Black man sitting below him playing a banjo.  There was a city hearing on removal of the statute:  of 126 written comment, 60 favored removing or relocating the statue and 19 advocated altering or adding signage.  80 people attended the hearing and about a dozen spoke, with the majority of those favoring moving the statue to a non-public venue.  (The population of Pittsburgh is just under 304,000). 

The above three news items all involve some sort of attempt to sanitize something from the past that is or may be upsetting to some people or some group or some segment of society today.  What they don’t involve is any attempt to understand the time, place, culture, or reasons that led to those upsetting acts or images; the news stories don’t involve this because when one simply wants to sanitize or remove something, there is no attempt to understand that something, or the time, place, culture, reasons, or people who created it.

Let me digress for a moment about my childhood.  I attended schools in which I had classmates of a variety of ethnicities.  Some today would refer to themselves or be referred to by others as “people of color.”  At the time, I just saw them as classmates with a slightly different skin or different hair or different foods in their lunch boxes.  I also had some Black classmates.  I did recognize that they were a different color, but that was about it.   I don’t recall grouping them into one identity; rather there was the one who was a wonderful singer, there was the bully, there was the one who was good at math, and even the one who for a period of time I referred to as “sister.” Identity politics was not the way we looked at the world; if we had, I might have assumed that all Blacks were bullies or out to get me because one was. But in those days we saw beyond group think and saw people as people. And, when something offended someone, we talked about it. 

I grew up in a predominately White world.  I was first introduced to the N-word when I was assigned Huckleberry Finn.  The beauty of that word being in that book was that our teacher could lead us into a discussion of not only the history of the word, but the history of the people to whom it referred.  It became an avenue to discuss slavery and the treatment of Black people following slavery and into our current daily lives.  That would not have happened had the word been sanitized from the book (and I know there was a movement to do so after my schooling ended; I do not know if the word appears in Huck Finn today, but I hope that it does so that current and future generations can learn what I did upon reading the book).

The point is, that having to face unpleasantries and worse from the past is an opportunity to learn about that past and all the people involved in it.  That some might find the drawing of a Chinaman in a Dr. Seuss book published in 1937 offensive is an opportunity not to cleanse it from our sight and minds, but an opportunity to discuss why one would have drawn that picture in that way at that time and why it is offensive.  It is an opportunity to understand history, people, and culture. 

The horrors of the Holocaust are emotional and upsetting, but they are not just another mass shooting.  Cleansing them to make them seem so again denies us the opportunity to understand and to learn from the horrendous philosophy of Hitler and the Nazis and the evil that it can impart on one identified group of people.

The image of the Stephen Foster statue is one that people of all colors might take offense at.  But the remedy to such offense is not to pretend it did not happen.  The remedy is to discuss it:  why is it offensive?;  why was it not seen as offensive when the artist created it and it was erected?;  what are we as a society aware of that we were not aware of then?

History, even offensive history, can provide us understanding, it can open dialog, it can help us from repeating ugly and horrendous mistakes.  It is that dialog that I remember having, not only in school when faced with such things as the N-word in a book, but when I or someone I know sees an image or a piece of history differently than the other.  Not until identity politics became such a driving force in our society did people seem so determined to be offended to the point of hatred of entire groups and then to cleanse all offense from reality.  

An act or depiction that might be uncomfortable now, but that was created in a different time and place is not an act of hatred directed at one group by all members of another group.  It is an opportunity to talk and to see beyond group identity.   And in order to do that, people must be able to talk with one another and discuss their different experiences and histories.  And our shared history, even when viewed differently, is one way to open that dialog and that understanding and to see people as people. 

Cleansing history may do away with unpleasant emotions and memories, it may give us another justification for hate, but it does not make for a healthy present.   We need those unpleasantries of history to remain with us as venues for understanding one another and making reality not sanitized but honest, genuine, open and, improvable.