For someone as old as I am, one of the more horrific side effects of reading Christopher Caldwell\u2019s book \u201cThe Age of Entitlement\u201d is reliving all of the political debacles that he chronicles.\u00a0 Each one comes back and delivers the same pain you felt originally plus the additional grief you get from reflecting on how that defeat reverberated through the years.<\/p>\n
To select a specific example, Caldwell details the 1978 court case in which a white male applicant to the UC Davis medical school, Allan Bakke, was rejected in favor of a minority student.\u00a0 Allan Bakke had board scores in the 96th<\/sup>, 94th<\/sup>, 97th<\/sup> and 72nd<\/sup> percentile while the minority candidate had scores in the 34th<\/sup>, 30th<\/sup>, 37th<\/sup> and 18th<\/sup> percentile.\u00a0 Back then the California court rightfully ruled that Bakke had been discriminated against and also ruled that the California program that made this preference was racially discriminatory and must be eliminated.\u00a0 But the University of California appealed to the Supreme Court and by a five to four vote the Court decided that although discrimination was being practiced, diversity was so important that quotas were acceptable as long as they were masked by calling them diversity \u201cplus factors.\u201d\u00a0 Previous to this, no one had ever heard of diversity as a constitutional requirement.\u00a0 So what we had was the very same anti-discrimination laws that the civil rights movement championed ten years before would now be purposefully broken by their government allies to disadvantage a population of people on the basis of race and gender.\u00a0 How ironic.<\/p>\n This was the decision that sealed the fate of white male students across the country.\u00a0 Women and various minorities would be put at the front of the line and regardless of how low their scores were they would get the seats ensured by the hidden quotas that all the universities employed.\u00a0 And eventually the same system would be used by all the major corporations that were monitored by the Federal government which is essentially every one that had more than a handful of employees.<\/p>\n And that is where we are today.\u00a0 The only difference is that additional \u201cprotected groups\u201d like homosexuals and illegal aliens have been added over time to the rolls of the favored.\u00a0 And now we have reached a place where every organization, whether a college, corporation or non-profit social group justifies this by employing a mantra that they drum into their employees, namely, \u201cdiversity is our strength.\u201d<\/p>\n Diversity is our strength.\u00a0 What does that even mean?\u00a0 In what sense is it a strength?\u00a0 I have personally witnessed diversity hires who have proven so incompetent that they effectively destroyed the functionality of a whole department.<\/p>\n I can remember a technical director standing up at a company meeting and during the \u201cdiversity and inclusion\u201d sermon stating that he knew diversity was our strength because a company culture survey had confirmed that it was.\u00a0 I tried not to smile, but failed because I remembered the last time a supposedly \u201canonymous\u201d culture survey had provided results that contradicted the official narrative.\u00a0 But anonymity was only maintained at the individual level.\u00a0 All survey respondents were identified to the level of the supervisor above.\u00a0 The low-level supervisors of the anonymous dissenters were told that their poor managerial skills were responsible for the \u201cuninformed\u201d nature of the contradictory responses of their direct reports and if the trend continued it would be handled by demoting the supervisors.\u00a0 Naturally, the supervisors then begged their reports to toe the line if they didn\u2019t want to see them fired.\u00a0 So essentially the proof of diversity being a strength is that the company told the employees that it is.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s look at it rationally.\u00a0 If you wanted to hire mechanics what would you be looking for?\u00a0 Several things; mechanical aptitude, strength, conscientiousness, experience and resourcefulness.\u00a0 Now several of these general qualities we could hope to find in applicants of any race or either gender.\u00a0 But if you are looking for strength and mechanical aptitude you would not be surprised to find that the great majority of the best applicants were men.\u00a0 So, hiring an equal number of men and women as mechanics, while obviously producing more diversity than with an all-male staff is going to provide you with a weaker crew both in terms of strength and skill.<\/p>\n If you wanted to choose good medical school students what would you look for?\u00a0 Until 1964 you would be looking for emotional composure, honesty but most importantly for very high analytical intelligence.\u00a0 That is why science and math are the most important prerequisites for medical school.\u00a0 But if after the civil rights era you would accept candidates solely based on their sex or race regardless of how low their testing scores for analytical intelligence were then you would get a weaker class of medical students.<\/p>\n This same exercise can be employed for any job that requires anything more than rudimentary skills.\u00a0 In each case choosing candidates by a quota, regardless of fitness for the position does not give you a stronger employee, it gives a weaker one.\u00a0 From this analysis I conclude that \u201cdiversity is our strength\u201d is not just untrue but that the opposite statement is shown to be true.\u00a0 If choosing applicants according to core job competency is subordinated to checking off gender and race boxes then you have purposefully picked less talented individuals as part of your selection process.\u00a0 That is stupid.\u00a0 And worse than stupid, it is dishonest.\u00a0 And since the victims of this dishonesty, namely the co-workers, have to pretend they don\u2019t see what\u2019s happening it is also highly demoralizing for them.<\/p>\n There it is.\u00a0 A dishonest process to defend an illogical goal.<\/p>\n There are many things that a conservative Supreme Court needs to do.\u00a0 Reverse the homosexuality agenda, re-establish the right of free association and protect the First and Second Amendment Rights of all Americans.\u00a0 But if I were to rank the priorities, I would say that ruling affirmative action unconstitutional is the first priority of a conservative agenda.\u00a0 American society as a whole would benefit from the elimination of the dishonesty, incompetence and resentment that this insane practice foists on all of us.<\/p>\n Will the Supreme Court take up something like this?\u00a0 Under John Roberts and with the current conservative\/liberal 5\/4 split it will not.\u00a0 But with the 6\/3 split that might soon exist it is possible.\u00a0 And that is why I especially hope that President Trump ends up with a strong majority in the Senate after this year\u2019s election.\u00a0 I know he will be making an additional nomination within the next five years.\u00a0 I want it to be a bold conservative judge who will make a bold step like eliminating affirmative action.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" For someone as old as I am, one of the more horrific side effects of reading Christopher Caldwell\u2019s book \u201cThe Age of Entitlement\u201d is reliving<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[241,5,237],"tags":[683,2348,2311,305,604,2349,2312],"class_list":["post-9980","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews","category-current-events","category-reviews","tag-affirmative-action","tag-allan-bakke","tag-christopher-caldwell","tag-diversity","tag-diversity-is-our-strength","tag-diversity-is-our-weakness","tag-the-age-of-entitlement-america-since-the-sixties"],"yoast_head":"\n