When I was young I used to resent “skinny, well-put-together blondes” at first sight. Particularly if they were named Ashley. No. I don’t know why, but we lived in North Carolina at the time, and I swear they were cranking these girls out in a factory somewhere, and they were all named Ashley.
Why did I resent them? Stupid reasons. Mostly, they had this air of having been brought up to wealth and privilege, the kind that always told them what fork to use and what clothes to wear in all situations and– Well, in my twenties and having just changed culture/country/language, I felt like a complete mess, and like I was falling apart all the time, and never knew what to do, what to wear, when to speak and when to keep my mouth shut. (The last one might be incurable.)
So my perception is that these people had it too easy while I had it too hard. I think I was wrong on both counts. I mean, I’m not going to recommend moving across the world in your early twenties and invalidating both your professional credentials such as they were and your nascent ability to pass as an adult, but if you do and survive, and acclimate, you’re probably better able to make it in life than if you hadn’t. Not less.
And having met a few of these women over the intervening decades, some of them actually from the background I imagined from them, we’ll say they had their own challenges, and in the end I probably did better (maybe not monetarily, but in every way that counts than they did.)
So, what is this all about, other than confusing all my readers named Ashley? (No, I don’t hate the name.)
Well. It’s the whole Diversity, Equity and Inclusion bullshit. (They probably thought Liberty, Fraternity, Equality was too tainted.)
Today again I woke up to talk of “reparations” from people who never held slaves to people who were never slaves, which is this type of thinking all over.
Sure, some of us come from backgrounds that were less than ideal. As a friend told me recently, having come to the same conclusion I did a few decades ago, the Bible is right about sin marking a family for seven generations. Not because it’s a curse from above, but because it’s almost impossible to get past the echoes of bad thing in less time.
Thing is — think about it — you’re descended, proximally, (Those you might have met) from four individuals, the products of four different families. Now think about human families in general. If you’re descended from four families that within the last seven generations didn’t have a major trauma, you’re a rare unicorn and should register yourself as an endangered species.
And trauma passes on, and affects people. Then there are neurological conditions and physical conditions and–
Look, I hate the ‘neuro typical’ and ‘neuro atypical’ slang, because almost all of us are battling something, even if just minor sensory stuff. But then again, I’ve just recently convinced myself (kind of) that being ADD is NOT a MORAL failing.
I don’t know every one of you reading this, but I would bet almost everyone of you has something you battle with on the regular. Either illness, or a weird brain glitch, of the PTSD fall out of a less than sane family/growing up situation. Because we’re human. We’re broken.
“But Sarah,” you say. “The American revolution was based on equality.”
Kind of. It was based on equality before the law. You weren’t a nobleman and exempt in certain circumstances; you weren’t a peasant and able to be killed impunely, etc. etc. etc.
That’s fine. In fact that’s great, and if we could get back to that equality under the law, I’d be ecstatic. But that’s not what the Equity BS is about.
The Equity nonsense claims to look into your life, and see where you’re not on a par with those around you, and do something to compensate you. But before you get all excited about how they’re going to compensate you for ADHD, or because your parents had a messy divorce when you were five, or because your great grandfather was a murderous drunkard… yeah, no.
You see, even individuals can’t tell when others are being held back by something. We all tend to imagine anyone bluffing their way to life and presenting an “okay” face have it easy. Well, like anything like this administered by government, it’s all about punishing success. If you managed to get your ducks in a row (I’m fairly sure one of mine is a turkey) and make it, particularly monetarily, because that’s what government is best at measuring, then you must have had it easy, and people who didn’t make it must have stuff given to them.
It’s kind of like the whole slavery stuff. Oh, please. If you want to give someone compensation for stuff done to their ancestors, compensate people for their ancestors being forced onto welfare, and the perverse incentives of the same, but abolish welfare first. (First, do no harm.) Because that has had a far more permanent impoverish-and-destroy effect on the population.
People who came out of slavery were doing pretty well, despite legal hobbles and other issues, before the shackles of victimhood and welfare were dropped on them (and others.) Not saying slavery and transport across the ocean was good, right or something to repeat, but let’s face it, not many immigrants came to this shore under ideal conditions, and three? four generations later trauma is trauma is trauma and the fine lines worn out. And while the people actually enslaved deserved compensation, they are long dead, and what plagues their descendants is not even the ghost of slavery, just a society offering all sorts of perverse incentives (of which reparations would be another.)
Also, how are they going to determine this? by level of tan? Because a lot of darker-skinned people are descended from voluntary immigrants. Take Kamala Harris (Or don’t. Judging by the dead eyes, she’s been taken enough) she might tan, but she has no African ancestors and certainly no enslaved ancestors. Barrack Obama has African ancestors, but no traceable slave ancestry. Etc, etc, etc.
Why should the Obama daughters be entitled to “reparations” and my kids (whose family this side of the ocean never owned slaves, ever) have to pay them?
Well because government is not going to go over the ancestry of everyone in the US — and you’d be surprised how many “white” Americans are descended from enslaved Africans. Heck, so would a lot of them — and examine all claims. They’re going to assume you’re entitled to compensation if you tan. (And I look forward to a discussion of the levels of tan.)
Unfortunately that’s how the whole DEI thing is being administered. No, scrap that, it’s unfortunate the whole DEI project is being administered at all. I liked it better when they first came out calling it DIE before deciding it was too on the nose and changing it to DEI. Because there is no way way to do it ethically, rationally or even in a way that causes no harm.
First diversity. Diversity of what? Not of opinions. That’s anathema to the left who is in charge of this. There is only one set of beliefs. And yet “diversity” is somehow supposed to improve everything, by bringing in people who look different but think exactly the same. So, you know… multiple levels of tan, different genitalia (there are only two types), different types of sexual attraction, and let’s count the people who say they should have had different genitalia, and…. apparently now we’re supposed to include the people who can’t or won’t lose weight (as one of the can’t I still think this is stupid.)
Here’s the thing all these games are a problem, because hiring or promoting or giving privileges to anyone for any reason other than competence slowly degrades society. There is never “just as capable.” That’s not how people work. And if you’re hiring for anything but capable, you’ve got a really high chance you’re not hiring someone who is capable.
Take the whole “women” being a downtrodden minority and having to be preferentially hired for male dominated professions. Men and women are different. And no, we’re not going to play the games of ‘but the same nutrition’ because we know that’s not true. It’s not how any of this works. Hormones have consequences, and they have consequences before you are born. There is a long post coming on this, and I’ve pointed out I have a lot of sympathy for people who think they were born in the wrong body, and if they’re adults, it’s their decision to make whether living under the appearance of the other sex is better (the appearance because in current state of science you can’t really change) and I only get really upset at messing with kids or people too young to know better. HOWEVER hear me out: none of us knows what living as the other sex truly is. We are, however “non-conforming” we consider ourselves to be, all locked into being who we are well before we are born. Hormones form us before then. Not just in how our bodies grow and are arranged, but in our brains too.
Now I’m not going to say women can’t be almost as strong (or stronger than some) men, or that they can’t be good at visual and spacial reasoning, or even good in male professions. Human ability is a continuum and a few women make better engineers than even the best men. And some women are strong enough to be firefighters. And–
However, the women whose minds and bodies run that way, and who have an interest in the fields will find them, in a free society.
The fact is that for whatever reason most women prefer to work with people; most men prefer to work with things. (Note, most. Not all.)
Trying to do DEI and bring those numbers to parity ignores that people aren’t the same and even groups can’t be made the same. Forcing it just brings in people who don’t want to do the thing, and might in fact be incapable of doing the thing.
In the end it does nothing, except create very unhappy people and destroy society. It’s sort of like Liberty, equality and fraternity: Two things that can’t be enforced or even measured with any kind of general rule, and one that will destroy everything.
It’s a bad idea, instituted by people who act as if they’ve never met a living human, in the service of lies they were told as children, and which not even children should believe. And if continued (it’s been in place a long time, though not by that name) it will literally dismantle human civilization.
It’s time for DEI, but really DIE to die, die, die!
