Opening Doors
By Gary Aldrich (07/02/03)
Whenever Affirmative Action is debated, it’s framed as a public policy that opens doors for people who need a “leg up.” This policy portrays women as powerless victims, and seeks to expand into the realm of sexuality, as well.
For some time now, colleges and universities have given preferences to women in our law schools and medical schools, to the degree that men have become the minority. Are the drivers of diversity looking for a “leg up,” or are they looking to place a boot on the throats of white males whom they perceive as the fountain of all their troubles?
Advocates of affirmative action have hidden their desire for reverse discrimination under the guise of “diversity”. They never want to talk about what happens after a lesser-qualified beneficiary walks through that door and goes on to lead an adult life and career.
It’s a fact that institutions cannot properly apply diversity policies, and any attempt to do so undermines their own ethical standards of excellence. Affirmative Action has suffered “mission creep”, and its advocates take great pains to achieve quotas that are patently illogical. In some cases, male-hating feminists have inspired blatantly unfair entry policies.
Diversity mission creep is not just happening in our graduate schools. This same problem is poisoning some of our most important federal agencies.
During my time at the FBI, I observed many instances in which priority promotions were given to minorities and women, often regardless of their competency. Undoubtedly, we should aim to promote our best and brightest, whether they are male or female, white or black.
Still, we should be cognizant of one cultural reality; namely, that for most citizens in the world, males have traditionally been the majority of workers who begin careers in their early twenties and end careers with retirement in their mid-sixties. During this time, they get married, have children, raise and support those children, and send them off to obtain higher educations to ensure their success.
For most men, work is not an option. Yes, we have heard of a few “stay-at-home” dads, but they are rare, and their numbers are not growing as some progressive feminists would have us believe. When women have babies, they either send them to day care or take the option to raise them at home. Indeed, more women are choosing to stay home with their children, as we’ve seen a 13% increase in the past decade alone.
Why, then, should the federal government craft workplace discrimination to benefit women, if many of these same women will leave their jobs to care for children?
The FBI was under pressure from the White House, the Department of Justice and Congress to open the doors of this formerly exclusive men’s club, beyond the few token black agents. By the 1990’s, the pendulum had swung, and when the first female and minority FBI graduates were sent out to the field offices, managers were directed to ensure the success of the diversity hires.
Some believed the FBI needed to be punished for its history of discrimination. Never mind that other law enforcement, including federal, state, and local agencies, had few minorities and no women officers. Never mind that the pool of qualified and interested applicants was small because of cultural affinities and corporate competition.
These were seen as mere excuses, annoying realities to be ignored by those who demanded that their social agenda of diversity must be implemented at all costs!
So written and unwritten polices were put into place to give preferences in hiring, transfers, assignments, and promotions. There was even a double standard for discipline. Managers were hesitant to root out poor performing agents if they were members of the favored groups. Those who did try to hold FBI agents to high standards were roundly criticized and saw their careers come under microscopic scrutiny.
Soon, FBI managers learned to look the other way. When a tenacious FBI agent manager insisted that poor performance be addressed – and the agent was in the favored group – a lawsuit was the expected outcome.
FBI agent managers do not sign on to the management program so that they can be sued, battered, or damaged by unhappy superiors looking to impress congressional committees. Ultimately, all that was achieved from a hypersensitivity to diversity personnel policies was nothing less than the wholesale destruction of employee morale. FBI Agents understandably became cynical, as some favored agents were promoted while all other qualified agents were passed over because of their Anglo-Saxon status.
The Supreme Court examined the issue of diversity in the narrowest possible light, without considering the intended and unintended consequences of such a policy. While qualified minorities and women wince at the unfair suspicion about their real qualifications for education, employment, and promotion, the rest of the population is expected to “suck it up” and try to explain to their children why living in America today means that some people are more equal than others.
The Supreme Court should have considered what our society will be like in 25 years, after generations of poisonous government-sanctioned discrimination. Are the dubious benefits of “diversity” worth these high societal costs? What will our society be like after 50 years of reverse discrimination?
Those of us who would like to see healing between the races and an end to the gender wars in our lifetime have reason to be dismayed by the recent Supreme Court ruling.
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