I am firmly of the conviction that the DEI fad is primarily a ruse to justify discriminating against whites and men. It amazes me that white actors, in particular, haven’t had the courage to protest and even sue: I suppose that living in the brutally woke show business bubble is sufficiently intimidating that they will accept the illegal stealing of their paychecks and the crippling of their careers. Before Grace died, I had scheduled a day to watch broadcast and cable TV all day and night, tallying up the demographics of the commercials, taking particular note of mixed race couples. By the standards employed by courts and the EEOC to find actionable discrimination based on racial composition alone even in the absence of any evidence of intent, the current treatment of whites is discriminatory, and obviously it is intentional. But I had to cancel my survey, so I don’t have hard evidence other than that of my own two eyes.
I’m digressing: sorry. The point of all that is that I may be one of the last commentators you would expect to register some support for the over-hyped benefits of diversity in the workplace. Yet I think I just experienced an example of when diversity has tangible benefits.
I had to take Spuds in for his annual comprehensive physical, including shots, this morning. I use the Banfield Pet Hospital in Falls Church now, though the Alexandria one is much closer, so I lose about 45 minutes that I would otherwise have on my deathbed. We used our neighborhood Banfield’s for many years, but during the pandemic the staff turned over, and suddenly all of the non-veterinary staff were rude, curt and seemingly hostile black women who never smile, never say”Hello,” “please” or “thank-you,” bark out orders, and seldom looked in my eye except with an expression of barely restrained contempt, perhaps based on their assumption that I was a descendant of Simon Legree. Talk about microaggressions. Their phone manner was the same.
It eventually became so stressful dealing with these women—stressful because the little unethical devil on my shoulder kept whispering in my ear to tell these women, loudly and with people in the lobby, that they were unprofessional and offensive—that I decided to take my dog and my business elsewhere. It seemed clear to me that along with having poor training, lax oversight and management, the Alexandria Banfield’s staff had developed a culture of arrogant black privilege and hostility toward white customers, or perhaps the world in general; for all I know, the staff treated black customers with equal rudeness. Nonetheless, all of the women were black and behaved in the same hostile manner, and it seemed to be self-reinforcing. The vets in the back, meanwhile, probably have decided that it isn’t worth fighting with the whole support staff, so they just tend to the needs of their four-legged patients while the abuse of the two-legged customers continues.
The Falls Church Banfield is like a little U.N. Today, while dropping Spuds off, I counted two African American women, two white women, one of whom is handicapped, a Filipino, two Asians, an Indian or Pakistani, and some brand of Hispanic. They were all professional, friendly, and a pleasure to deal with, and there was no sense of any “group,” just a well-managed, well-trained staff. (Women outnumbered men out front, but as with the Alexandria branch, the veterinary staff was more or less gender-balanced.)
It occurred to me that a diverse staff can be an effective prophylactic against toxic organizational cultures taking over, as the “Screw Whitey” vibe has poisoned the my neighborhood Banfield’s.
Competent management, hiring, effective training, and a professional staff not dominated by weenies also helps.
Ethics Alarms 
There’s a balance to diversity, and the kind of diversity matters.
I’ve famously used the example that a football team is not made stronger by drafting a quadriplegic dwarf Samoan trans lesbian, although that would definitely increase the diversity of the team. The less offensive, or perhaps more offensive – because it’s happening, example would be the lowered standards for women on firefighter teams. The rubble doesn’t become 30% lighter because women attend the emergency, I don’t see why standards should lower to increase the participation rate of people unable to haul my fat ass out a window. These are obvious ways that diversity don’t make teams stronger.
But move away from physical strength… Culturally, are diverse teams stronger? And the answer is that I doubt it. Again… it doesn’t take much effort to imagine examples of it not. Imagine a work team randomly plucked from their home nations: An Israeli Jew, a Saudi woman, an African American, and a Chinese man. I have the feeling there would be tensions would be high during those meetings. I’m just saying. So merely getting people from different cultures isn’t really what we’re talking about.
What we’re really talking about is a diversity of experience that still fit within the generally accepted paradigm of the task being asked for. If you’re in a group that is entirely made up of accountants, your financial controls might be stellar, but good luck managing HR or marketing. You need a diversity in backgrounds to cover the blind spots of other people on the team. Diversity in this context wasn’t supposed to refer to skin pigmentation or genitals (unless people want to make the argument that a race or a sex is superior to others, and I don’t think that we want to make that argument, just saying).
This is one of the topics where progressives lost the narrative over time. The original thought was that because of discrimination, women and ethnic minorities were being unfairly kept out of positions that they should have had. There was probably something to that. If all people are equal, you would expect workforces to be generally representative of the population, and diverting from that might be an indication of bias.
The problem is that all things aren’t equal. As I said, on average, women’s bodies are different than men’s, for reasons that seem biological, they tend to different interests. And while I make no qualms about the dearth in opportunities black kids have, as a function of so much that isn’t their fault in growing up, higher education and the board room isn’t the place to correct that. If they don’t have the foundation to build off of, you’re just setting them up to fail, and the problem has to be addressed long, long before we get to those environments.
But addressing those realities would be both hard and complicated. How does one divest from the idea of equity once reality has asserted itself and equity no longer makes sense? And for the problems facing ethnic communities… In the environments we’re talking about – Early years care and education, Democrats don’t have a Republican to blame. Much easier and safer is to fail those kids generationally, do the bare minimum plus lip service, and make it someone else’s problem. Because the goal isn’t to fix the problem, correct inequality, or plan for success… The goal is to torture certain metrics towards a bumper sticker of a goal: We WaNt DiVeRsiTy!1!”
Your comment about lowered physical standards for female firefighters, HT, conjures two memories for me.
When I lived in Kansas in the late ’90s. I volunteered for an organization called Audio Reader. Their mission was to provide current reading material for the visually impaired. There were enough volunteers that we had the entire Kansas City Star recorded by 9:00 a.m. every day.
I’d been doing a shift a week on that for a couple of years when I got a call from the volunteer coordinator. I’d said on my application that I’d read anything, so she was calling to see if I’d take over a once-a-month gig for someone who was moving out of the area. It was reading Penthouse. We’d get two 56-58 minute shows out of one issue. Usually, the other guy got there first, and he seemed to prefer the smuttier stuff, which was fine by me. Anyway, that left me with the interviews and the investigative journalism… the latter of which was my introduction to the concept of lower standards for female firefighters. You were no doubt hoping that the writers for that estimable journal agreed with you (and with me). They did.
My other memory goes back further. If my cousin wasn’t the first woman the Navy assigned to Shore Patrol, she was pretty close. To hear her tell it, at least, they really didn’t want women SPs, so they set a bench press requirement they figured no woman could achieve. It was about my cousin’s body weight… but she did the required reps, and they no longer had an excuse. She got the job. I’ve always been proud of her for that.
I would pay good money for a recording of Curmie Reads Penthouse.
I may have found the way to supplement that retirement nest egg!
I guess, when it comes to diversity “making the place better,” perhaps the best choice for comparison wouldn’t be the dysfunctional Banfield from which you transitioned Spuds.
It’s easy to be better than a train-wreck, diversity or no.
With respect to what I’ve seen of vets, although I’ve used the same provider for routine car for over 30 years, (including the selling of the business to another vet), I’ve had various emergency situations in which I’ve patronized a fair number of providers.
Anecdotally, I’ve come to believe that these days women dominate the retail pet veterinary industry in both assistants and in actual veterinarians. My last 5 interactions with my non-primary vet have included 4 female and one male vet, with the one male being in an end-of-life situation. Front-of-house personnel have also been majority female. My primary was originally male, but he sold his business to a female when he retired and there are currently no males at that practice.
Admittedly, this is just my experience, but I wouldn’t be surprised to find it replicated most places. In fact, a quick search produced this article which substantiates my perception.
I think this is related to the culture change that we have seen over the last 15 or so years, and also the “feminization” of many such caregiver industries. I am not decrying this, but can you imagine if the reverse were the case? It would be a cause for protest.
Alas, this is no country for white men.
Roughly 65% of college students (2/3) have been female for 20+ years. What you are seeing is the feminization of all college careers that don’t require large amounts of applied mathematics. Mathematics itself now appears to be female dominated. The female domination of K-12 has destroyed education itself and intentionally destroyed the education for the boys. The Algebra I books are now 1/2 vocabulary to make it appeal more to girls and destroy the interest of the boys. The teachers are now taught ‘there is only one way to solve a math problem’. Look at our math performance compared to the world. To improve the scores of girls, they destroyed the education of the boys.
This seems plausible to me, although veterinary medicine would seem to require a significant amount of STEM instruction, particularly chemistry, biology, physics, biochemistry, zoology, organic and inorganic chemistry.
Many of those require significant math skills, particularly physics, but also chemistry.
You don’t understand what a math-intensive field is. Veterinary and other medicine are not math intensive. They usually don’t even require Calc II. They don’t ever require even freshman-level calc-based physics. Their science classes in med school are usually on par with upper-level undergraduate biology courses. People in math-intensive fields usually start in multivariable calculus in their first semester in college and then keep going for at least 3 more semesters of math and courses that intensively use math.
I don’t recall using the the phrase, “math-intensive”.
Our dermatologist sold his huge practice to a corporate entity within the last year or so. He’s still working there but has stepped away from management. At my most recent appointment I was guided to my consultation room by a really ornery young black woman. She came to the waiting room, called my name and that was the last thing she said to me. No response to “Good morning, how are you?” Nothing. She just pointed to my room as she strolled by. I was shocked. The staff used to be pleasant. Now they’re diverse, doubtless per the new corporate owners’ pledge to DEI.
“The staff used to be pleasant.“
Up WESconsin way, we say: We’ve Gone From Bad To Diverse…
PWS
The behavior you describe is what I called “Oakland syndrome” when I lived in that fair city. Oakland syndrome, though not universal, was common enough to have earned its name, and it wasn’t seen in San Francisco or Berkeley, where I also lived.
I was unaware there were chains of veterinarians. Of course, I only recently became aware of dental clinic chains.