A Look At The Pipeline For Future "Diverse" Tech Workers, Professionals And Corporate Executives

September 11, 2021/ Francis Menton @ Manhattan Contrarian

As we have seen, corporate American has now fully bought in to the mantra that “any racial disparities are the result of racist policies.” See Friday’s post focusing on Google for one example of a company whose “antiracist” training materials use just that language. Essentially every major institution in the country — corporations, professional firms, universities, you name it — is on a mission to get the percentage of minorities in high-paying technical, professional and executive positions up to the percentage that those minorities represent of the population as a whole. That goal particularly applies to African Americans.

Yet despite all the pledges and commitments, change occurs at a glacial pace. As Friday’s post reported, the likes of Googe and Facebook, despite seemingly having adopted “diversity and inclusion” as the single most important focus of their operations, have only moved the ratios of black “tech” workers and executives by about a percentage point or two over eight years of reporting data. At Apple, the percentage of black “tech” workers has actually gone down by 2% since 2016. In my own field of major law firms, some fifty years of affirmative action have only brought the percentage of black partners overall to about 2-3%.

Perhaps there is a problem that the pipeline is just not producing a sufficient pool of potential candidates for all major institutions to hire 13% blacks into all high-ranking positions at the same time. The pipeline I’m talking about is the nation’s K-12 schools. Among all of our societal institutions, those K-12 schools are the ones most firmly in the control of the progressive left. Whether it be the administrators, the teachers unions, or the teachers themselves, these are the people who most constantly vociferously accuse the rest of us of being “racists” and “white supremacists.” (Note that the term “white supremacist,” as used by the progressive left, is by no means limited to people of white ethnicity, as California gubernatorial candidate Larry Elder has recently learned.). Surely then, of all institutions, the the very holy and pious K-12 schools have fixed racism by now.

To get an idea how the K-12 schools are doing in fixing racism, let’s look at some data from what’s called the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Since many readers may be unfamiliar with NAEP, let me give some background. NAEP is a Congressionally-sponsored project, administered by the federal Department of Education. The NAEP people call themselves the “nation’s report card.” Supposedly, the goal is to get an idea whether schools in a city or state, or in the nation as a whole, are performing better or worse over time. These are national tests given every two years to a sample of kids in the fourth and eighth grades. The sample is relatively small (e.g., only about 3000 in New York State). The test is not “high-stakes”: no results are reported to individual students, and no life consequences, such as admission to selective schools, depend on the outcome.

NAEP has a level they call “proficient,” which they define as “demonstrat[ing] solid academic performance and competency over challenging subject matter.” If that definition seems unspecific, it may help to learn that when you look at their data nationwide, roughly half the test takers on any given test score at or above the “proficient” level. In other words, although they don’t call it that, it is roughly the mean. For each test administration, results are reported in two categories, math and reading.

Most of the NAEP data is reported only on a state level. However, beginning in 2001 they started specifically testing certain large urban districts in a program called the “Trial Urban District Assessment” or TUDA. The TUDA program started with only 6 districts, but gradually has expanded until it reached 27 in the 2017 and 2019 administrations of the NAEP tests. (The 2021 results have not yet been released.). The cities that are now part of the TUDA include many to most of the large and troubled urban school districts in the country. Among the cities included are New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, Baltimore, Washington DC, Atlanta, Memphis and Houston.

It turns out that if you dig deep enough through the NAEP website, you can find data for what percentage of the black students scored at or above the “proficient” level in each of these districts and for each of math and reading. So let’s collect some of those data. Remember that overall approximately 50% of the test takers score at or above the “proficient” level. The following data are for eighth grade students designated by NAEP itself as “black,” in the most recent (2019) administration of the test:

• New York City: 14% proficient in math (compared to 46% for whites); 14% proficient in reading (again compared to 46% for whites).

• Los Angeles: 8% proficient in math (compared to 37% for whites); 9% proficient in reading (compared to 41% for whites).

• Chicago: 15% proficient in math (compared to 56% for whites); 16% proficient in reading (compared to 55% for whites).

• Detroit: 4% proficient in math (no figure given for whites, presumably because there aren’t enough whites in the school system to get a meaningful result); 5% proficient in reading (again, no figure given for whites)

• Cleveland: 4% proficient in math (compared to 25% for whites); 10% proficient in reading (compared to 23% for whites).

• Baltimore: 6% proficient in math (compared to 32% for whites); 10% proficient in reading (compared to 48% for whites).

You get the picture. Note that these are not the results of IQ or “intelligence” tests, but rather are tests of actual learning or achievement. Really, the scores are as much a measure of the success (or failure) of the schools in teaching the kids as they are a measure of the kids themselves.

These are the young people who supposedly will be ready to go to college in 2023, and to come out into starter tech jobs and corporate training programs and law schools in 2027. How many of the 85-96% of them who scored below “proficient” in reading and math in 8th grade are really going turn it around sufficiently to be able to move into these high-end jobs by their early 20s?

The simple truth is that without an education system that produces young black people at an equivalent educational level to young people of other ethnicities, it is never going to be possible for corporate America to get to universal 13% representation of blacks among executives, tech workers, lawyers, doctors, and so forth. As I said in Friday’s post, I would have some sympathy for them if they just had some humility and stopped accusing the rest of us of being racists and white supremacists. For the so-called “educators” in these big-city schools, who run failure factories year after year with no accountability, while fighting any and all potential competition, I have no sympathy at all.

 

 

Confronting yet another indoctrinating school year

Critical race theory, mask and vaccine mandates, and more increase the need for stress relief 

Paul Driessen 

Labor Day is over, and millions of American children are back in school for their first in-person classes since March 2020. They and their parents are dealing with anxiety and mixed emotions that promise to make this academic year far more stressful than most. 

Students and families are being thrown into a maelstrom of uncertainty and unrest, amid Covid variants, mask and vaccine mandates, and programs to address the “pandemic” of “racial inequity.” Some classes are even being segregated by race, 67 years after the Supreme Court ruled against segregation, and 57 years after Congress passed the Civil Rights Act outlawing discrimination by race. 

Judging children based on their immutable genetic characteristics and dividing them into “oppressors” or “oppressed” appears to be the “new normal” in many schools. Civics, history, literature and even math are focused on “social justice,” “critical race theory” and ever-expanding “victimhood.” 

In the name of “fairness” and “racial equity,” Advanced Placement classes that allow high-schoolers to earn college credit are being eliminated, access to charter schools restricted, and merit-based admission for science-technology magnet schools replaced with color-focused standards. 

Non-academic, activist cultural issues and new racial and sexual sensitivities loom large, requiring careful navigating, and consuming time, energy and anxiety that were once devoted to education and homework. Schools are hiring consultants to teach anti-racism, and explain why hard work, objectivity, nuclear families and respect for authority are examples of “acting white.” 

Children too young to understand the questions are polled on their gender and pronoun preferences. Gender dysphoria is affirmed with or without parental consent, and “sex reassignment” is presented to minors as a solution to teen anxiety, often behind their parents’ backs. 

Programs like “Woke Kindergarten” demonstrate that even the youngest children, who once were learning to tie their shoes, are not exempt from what increasingly resembles indoctrination far more than education – on race, sexuality, Marxism, the “climate crisis” and more. Picture books like Woke Baby and The Antiracist Baby for readers 0-3 years-old offer lessons in “social justice” for infants and toddlers. 

Teachers actually brag about how much they enjoy indoctrinating and radicalizing our young people, leading to greater divisiveness in the future. Students are taught how and what to protest. Many even get extra credit for doing so – and demerits for having the “wrong” views on issues. 

Sacramento-area high school teacher Gabriel Gipe unwittingly told Project Veritas how thrilled he is to “have 180 days” every year “to turn [students] into revolutionaries.” His classroom has an Antifa flag, a gay pride flag and a photo of mass-murderer Mao Zedong. He wants to “attack” the United States on cultural and economic fronts, to “root out this culture that keeps perpetuating hyper-individualism, hyper-competitiveness, capitalist exploitation and consolidation of wealth.” 

He’s hardly alone. Within his own department three other radical teachers are “definitely on the same page” as Gipe – and liberal-progressive-leftist-Marxist instructors and ideologies now dominate K-12 and college through graduate school. What is said and done in California rarely stays in California. 

The Anti-Defamation League has produced a “self-directed” No Place for Hate program for educators, families and students as young as pre-K, to prevent “hateful” or “discriminatory“ conduct based on race, gender or sexual orientation, and encourage students to report “hateful” behavior to the “proper school authorities.” 

This ADL program is a sad reflection on how well-organized activists and “educators” have turned America’s tremendous (though difficult and still unfinished) racial and ethnic progress on its head.

Equally alarming, questioning and conservative political views and speech are not protected, indeed are vilified and cancelled, while “progressive” viewpoints are extolled and imposed. 

This “social justice warrior” agenda could be profoundly negative, even destructive, for children and families, the competence of our future workers, and a United States of America.  

Teachers have long been highly protective of their asserted privacy of interactions with students. However, virtual instruction during the pandemic effectively put cameras in every classroom, giving parents a chance to watch on Zoom how – and what – their children are being taught. Many parents were shocked and appalled, and are now demanding reform. 

Many teachers don’t appreciate this parental involvement, and some school boards and parent-teacher associations have tried to prevent parents from speaking up. Some teachers and school boards are even using private social media to single out, attack and even arrest “troublemakers” who speak “out-of-turn” during school board meetings. 

Sports teams predominate with black athletes deservedly raise no questions. But magnet schools and academic programs with majority Asian participation raise progressive cries of racism and inequity – and demands that populations be “rebalanced” and PTAs be purged of Asians or disbanded altogether. 

No wonder parents have increasingly responded by abandoning public and even independent schools, in favor of parish, charter, pod or home schooling. Earlier this past summer, National Center for Education Statistics reported unprecedented decreases in public school enrollment across all grades, regions and U.S. territories, with the steepest declines (by as much as 22%) among the youngest students. 

Caught in the middle, children of all ages are anxious and confused, alone on the frontlines of a cultural conflict not of their making. What can be done to alleviate at least some of the stress? 

Parents must remember that schools are not assembly lines, and students need support. They must be vigilant; review course materials, reading lists and assignments; talk to their children and stand up for them; and push back against political activism that detracts from essential education, imposes ideologies instead of teaching how to think and reason, and fosters racial, gender and political division. Children should know they are not alone.

The road is long, the stakes high. But parents are more effective when they organize or join groups like Independent Women’s Forum, Parents Defending Education or Fight for Schools, which are challenging these prevailing trends. A few might even consider running for the local school board. 

Some children will need additional help managing stress. Even before the pandemic and today’s polarization, one in six American schoolchildren was found to have a “mental health disorder.” The use of prescription anxiety medication in the United States is widespread, often unnecessary and even harmful. Simple exercise and spending time outdoors can help reduce stress naturally. 

Chewing gum can also help. Like singing, chewing helps calm heartbeats, breathing and “butterflies” in the stomach. It lessens anxiety by stimulating the vagus nerve that runs to the heart, lungs and abdomen. 

The notion that students should chew gum in school is certainly contrarian. But who could tell whether they are doing so behind their compulsory masks? And as long as they dispose of their chewed morsels properly, should anyone care? Surely, natural stress reduction is preferable to drugs. 

So far, this back-to-school season doesn’t look back-to-normal. Considering all the harm they have been causing, teachers and administrators at least need to help parents make it less stressful for kids who have no say and never asked for any of this. 

Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of books and articles on energy, environment, health and human rights issues.

Diversity, Equity, Inclusion: The Holy Trinity of Leftism!

Diversity without accomplishment is philosophy without form and incompetence without consequence!

By Rich Kozlovich 

Before we go on let's dispense with that the idea the Holy Trinity of Leftism, diversity, equity and inclusion is about fairness. It's been my experience what's defined by so many as to what's fair is based on who's ox is being gored.  Who exactly wrote the Book of Fair? There is no Book of Fair, furthermore "fairness" can't be codified without being unfair to someone, anyone, or most for that matter. So who decides what's fair?

For the most part we get out of life what we put in it - at least in America. In so many parts of the world the corruption is so massive the wealth can only go to an elite ruling class, all leftists.  is a perfect example of that, but take any communist or socialist nation and you will find the same pattern.

But this is America, and anyone who wants to have a good life can have that life, and this irrational demand for fairness is nothing more than a false leftist quilt trip on those they wish to rob. If those who go to school, have a job, start a business, work long hard hours, don't do drugs, deprive themselves of a great many things in the beginning to make it big later in life in order to have luxuries, then we should ask:  Why isn't that outcome "fair"?  Shouldn't we in fact expect that outcome?

If someone takes a diametrically opposing view of life,  refusing to get educated, refusing to get and hold a job, live on welfare, become drunkards or are drug addicted, live irresponsible lives and end up in poverty and misery, then we should also ask:  Why isn't that "fair". Isn't that the outcome we should expect from such behavior?

So then, why is it fair the rest of us have to support lazy or irresponsible people with food stamps, welfare and other social programs that's created a permanent underclass who now refuse to work and live responsible lives? Why is that "fair"?   This unending march by the left to redefine words to attain their goals requires unending vigilance.  Instead of "fair" they now tout their Holy Trinity.  Diversity, equity and inclusion. 

On September 10, 2021 Sheldon Bart published this article, The Case for Merit, Character, and Capacity saying:

The politically correct write the three-word mantra “diversity, equity and inclusion” with capital letters and refer to it in acronym form as DEI. This is a distinction never accorded to such familiar triads as “duty, honor, country,” “faith, hope and charity,” or “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” You’ve never seen any of the latter set forth as DHC, FHC, etc. Despite having elevated its linguistic status, the acolytes of this political religion haven’t been thinking deeply about their Holy Trinity’s components.

He goes on to explain that "inclusion" and "exclusion" are parts and parcels of the same package.  In our lives we will include and exclude things daily, and that simply can't be avoided.  Would you include a poor athlete on a sports team?  Would you include vinegar in a sweet desert?  We include and exclude things as they fit the circumstances, so demanding "inclusion" based on race, gender or anything else is irrational, and impossible, and as he notes:

And contrary to the howls of the hypersensitive, no one need apologize for that.

We have to recognize equity and equality are two different things.  Equality means being treated the same under the law, and allowed to compete with anyone, win or lose.  Equity means everyone has nothing more than anyone else, irrespective of their abilities or character.  He goes on to define equity saying:

Equity goes a step beyond inclusion.........it really means allocating rewards to favored groups while withholding considerations from other people who earned them on the merits........ equity, which sounds fair and square, actually displaces fairness, it can also get in the way of achieving one of the social justice advocates’ legitimate goals, which is helping truly needy people...............

As for this claim that "diversity is our strength", Thomas Sowell has called this a "fact free dogma".  He cites the Balkans, and being Serbian I completely understand and agree with his assessment when he asks:

Have the Balkans been blessed by their heterogeneity — or does the very word "Balkanization" remind us of centuries of strife, bloodshed and unspeakable atrocities, extending into our own times?

He goes on to ask:

Has Europe become a safer place after importing vast numbers of people from the Middle East, with cultures hostile to the fundamental values of Western civilization?

The author goes on to note:

Diversity has not historically been associated with peace and stability. Rather, increasing diversity is tearing our country apart. Diversity can be handled safely, but only by practicing inclusion and exclusion based on merit, character, and capacity, and emphasizing equality of opportunity rather than equity.

This is just common sense. What should also be clear is that those extolling the creed of diversity, equity, and inclusion have, in this regard, set common sense aside along with the history books. Instead, they exercise emotionalism and airy intellectuality. Unless common sense eventually prevails, we can look back to Colonel Greene for a projection of our future.

Understand one thing above all else. Everywhere and through all time the left has demanded perfection and promised utopia.  History has shown the left only delivers dystopia: Tyranny, misery, suffering, starvation, disease and early death.  That's history, and that history is incontestable.   

What are the alleged “compelling” benefits of “diversity“? They are as invisible as the proverbial emperor’s new clothes. Yet everyone has to pretend to believe in those benefits, as they pretended to admire the naked emperor’s wardrobe. - Thomas Sowell