Diversity
Today at work we’d one of our so-called Town Hall
meetings
(really, an all-hands meeting for everyone in Denver & the
surrounding areas). The speaker was our employer’s vice president
in charge of diversity. What, one might ask, is diversity?
Why, it is giving funds to black student associations, and Hispanic student associations, and Asian student associations, and women’s student associations, and creating gay/bisexual/transsexual student associations. It’s funding summer camps for girls, to encourage them in a subject they are highly unlikely to excel in (rather than investing the money where it’s likely to yield a far, far, far better return on investment). It’s funding special opportunities for cripples (not in itself a particularly objectionable thing, although as a stockholder I wonder how it increases my holdings). It’s installing footbaths for Mohammedans.
The message that I took away is that my noble employer has no use for me. After all, it spends an absurd amount of money trying to attract everyone but those like me. Apparently, we spend not a single penny on those of my own sort: white able-bodied males interested in girls and worshipping the true God.
I am not against equal opportunity: in fact, I am a strong proponent of picking the best candidate for the job. When it comes to business, I really don’t care what my co-workers do in their free time: that’s their own business. I want to know that those who work alongside me are the absolute best that money can buy—I don’t care what race they are, what sex they are, what God they worship, whom they find attractive, which of their body parts fail to work, what they ingest when they’re not working, which political party they vote for or anything else unrelated to our common goal.
What I am against is unreasonable discrimination. My employer discriminates against whites: I cannot imagine it ever funding a White Engineers’ Association. My employer discriminates against men: I cannot imagine it ever funding a Male Engineers’ Association. My employer discriminates against heterosexuals: I cannot imagine it ever funding a Heterosexual Engineers’ Association. My employer discriminates against Christians: while it allows Mohammedans to conduct their prayers on-site, I cannot imagine it ever allowing Christians to pray the Divine Office at work.
All this would be forgivable if there were a business reason. But I don’t see it. Business sense is hiring the best candidate—it’s throwing money down a hole. I’m fairly certain that East Asians don’t need too much encouragement to enter the sciences, and I’m as certain that it’s a waste of money trying to encourage the vast majority of women to enter the same (although I’ll admit that I know some extraordinarily intelligent gals—much smarter than am I—in the sciences, they are statistical outliers). Men are most emphatically not equal in ability: some of us are good at one thing; some at others. That’s why Africans tend to excel in certain kinds of running; that’s what East Asians excel in certain professions; that’s why women predominate in other careers—and yes, that’s why some jobs are almost entirely staffed by guys like me. We all have our fortes; to deny someone an opportunity because of his colour or sex is wrong, but to waste resources barking up the wrong tree is just foolish.
