Our Internet provider here in the Florida Free State is AT&T. I was trying to contact them about changing my name on the bill to “Greenspun” from “Greenstun” and somehow landed on about.att.com. Here’s what’s at the top:
If they stand for equality, should we infer that they don’t stand for equity?
As a child of the 1960s, of course I am all in favor of equality, e.g., Equality Feminism. Nonetheless, this is not why I am an AT&T customer. If I scroll down a little, I find out that the company gives equal weight to “Internet & Fiber” and “Diversity & Inclusion”.
I’m assuming that this is a profit-maximizing behavior, but I wonder why. Are American consumers equally interested in diversity and inclusion from an Internet provider as they are in the Internet service itself? Is it that regulators might stumble on this page and a lot of regulators are themselves affirmative action quota-fillers?
Folks in Maskachusetts tend to be scornful of Florida, dismissing it as a “Red state” with “stupid” residents. But you won’t see a big difference at our local public library (the Jupiter branch of the Palm Beach County system).
Government workers won’t have their pay cut or jobs eliminated no matter how unpleasant they make the customer experience. Thus, in a generally mask-optional state, the librarians don’t have a problem demanding that customers wear the hijab (so both librarians and patrons can catch coronavirus 15 minutes after leaving when they walk into a mostly-unmasked store or restaurant?):
How about the featured books in the children’s section?
What if a child wants to read about a white heterosexual cisgender male? He/she/ze/they will have to dig into the stacks! (Keith Haring, above, may have identified as “white,” but was a member of the LGBTQIA+ community until HIV killed him at age 31.)
Children can learn about the female roots of aeronautical engineering:
(Maybe a book about Kitty Hawk could be featured if titled “The Wright Brothers, Sisters, and Binary-resisters”?)
A featured book in the adult section:
(Another way that Maskachusetts residents insult the idea of Florida is by talking about how old everyone in Florida is. (If the Northern Righteous have such contempt for the elderly, why do they put masks on 7-year-olds in hopes of reducing plague deaths among the 82-year-olds?) In fact, our new neighborhood is about 30 years younger than our old neighborhood. Still, it is tough not to love the fact that the librarians expect their elderly customers to still be running Windows 7 (released in 2009). There were no corresponding books about Windows 10 or 11 available. Speaking of Windows 11, will the main reason to upgrade be the ability to point to our PC and say “this one goes to 11”?)
Define irony – a bunch of idiots dancing around on a plane to a song made famous by a band that died in a plane crash.
I would like to propose an update to this philosopher’s work. #DefineIrony: We were invited to an exclusive (and expensive) private school’s diversity, equity, and inclusion event… at a country club.
Julian Bond: Well, this is the major problem with these studies. The measurements of I.Q. which form the basis of comparison come from tests composed by whites for whites. The tests are culturally biased; it’s not surprising that whites would score better than blacks.
Garrett Morris: Could you give us an example of what you’re talking about?
Julian Bond: Certainly. Here are some questions that have appeared on recent I.Q. tests. Number one: “You have been invited over for cocktails by the officer of your trust fund. Cocktails begin at 4:30, but you must make an appearance at a 6:00 formal dinner at the Yacht Club. What do you do about dress? A. Wear your blue-striped seersucker suit to cocktails and change into your tuxedo in the bathroom, apologizing to your host for the inconvenience. B. Wear your tuxedo to cocktails, apologizing to your host for wearing a dinner jacket before 6:00 PM. C. Walk to the subway at Columbus Circle and take the “A” Train uptown.”
After five and a half hours of emotional discussion on Wednesday night, the Boston School Committee voted unanimously to overhaul admissions to the city’s three selective exam schools, opening the way for far greater representation of Black and Latino students.
The new admissions system will still weigh test results and grades, but, following a model pioneered in Chicago, it will also introduce ways to select applicants who come from poor and disadvantaged neighborhoods.
Under the new system, the applicant pool will be divided into eight groups based on the socioeconomic conditions of their neighborhoods. The admissions team will consider applicants within each group, admitting the top students in each tier in roughly equal numbers.
The Groupthink aspect is interesting. The high quality schools had been operating for 100+ years in a particular way. Not a single committee member thought that continuing with the proven system made sense!
What kind of high-scoring young learner is this new policy designed to exclude?
Asian American students were 29.3 percent of Boston Latin School’s enrollment in 2020, despite making up 9 percent of students in the school’s district.
On the one hand, this might seem odd. Leaders who bravely place #StopAsianHate signs on their lawns and/or bravely tweet using the #StopAsianHate tag are trying to exclude Asians from elite schools. But perhaps there is no inconsistency. Suppose that the sign-gooder believes that the reason Asians are hated is because Asians are more successful than comparatively stupid and lazy white people. In that case, it would make sense for him/her/zir/them to place obstacles in Asians’ paths so that they can’t succeed as much. If Asians can’t get into the elite schools they won’t provoke as much envy and therefore the mission of #StopAsianHate will have been accomplished.
Here’s a form recently received as part of getting set up to be paid by a private corporation.
Some highlights…
We embrace the minority, women, small business and LGBT businesses we partner with in the mutual goal of delivering superior quality and service to our customers while assuring future growth for both parties. We are required by a number of our customers to report our Diversity spend dollars.
The next page:
This is the part that caught my eye.
Suppliers must submit current and renewal MBE/WBE/LGBT/DOBE certificates
The victimhood certification enterprises must be engaged regularly (annually?) to renew victimhood certificates. This is an annuity!
Separately, I wonder how the National Gay & Lesbian Chamber of Commerce (NGLCC) determines that a business owner or shareholder is truly LGBTQIA+ and how their process is superior to self-certification as LGBTQIA+. Will there be a Barbra Streisand (2016: “I’ll move to Australia or Canada if Trump is president”) quiz for the would-be LGBTQIA+ person, as in the movie In & Out?
Peter: What was Barbra Streisand’s eighth album?
Howard: Color Me Barbra.
Peter: Stud!
Howard: Everybody knows that!
Peter: Everybody where? The little gay bar on the prairie?
A friend is the One Black Guy at a Maskachusetts tech company. The white say-gooders in management describe their heartfelt yearning for more diversity at the company. Business is great now that so many non-online things have been rendered illegal by state governors. Thus, it is time to hire some entry-level programmers. Management described plans to recruit from elite schools such as Harvard and Yale. One Black Guy: “If we’re serious about making this company more diverse, why not hire someone from Bunker Hill [Community College] who might turn out to be great? It’s only an entry-level job and we can’t know whether someone from Harvard is actually going to do well.” This suggestion turned out not to be helpful…
A form from a university vendor portal, in which one is asked to enter one’s “Diversity Classification”. Here are the federally recognized victimhood categories for a business (including individual proprietors operating on a Schedule C basis):
Wouldn’t almost anyone qualify as “physically challenged”? Compare yourself to these four individuals who were chosen at random:
Wouldn’t you be at least 80 percent disabled compared to any of the above? (in the sense that you wouldn’t be able to do more than 20 percent of what they can do)
Togetherness and love for the chocolate and vanilla. Rainbow sprinkles to celebrate all of the varieties of love among humans (including poly!) that we valorize during Pride Month.
Provenance: We invited over an immigrant (from Switzerland) to celebrate National Immigrant Heritage Month (for those who seek to minimize the number of immigrants with whom they interact, Joe Biden says “America is, always has been, and always will be a Nation of immigrants.” (perhaps an unwelcome message for Native Americans!)) and she arrived with this cake in a box.
For contestants, it’s a pageant, yes, but also a place to celebrate Black sisterhood and promote a deeper understanding of a complex holiday.
In the month of June, as celebrations to commemorate the Juneteenth holiday begin, dozens of Black girls and women across the country will be competing for a singular title: Miss Juneteenth.
Yet for young Black women who earn the title, the honor is connected to a holiday that marks the emancipation of their ancestors. More than simply a crown, Miss Juneteenth holds deep meaning to these women, their families and their communities.
“It’s a reminder that I’m proudly Black and I’m happy about it and I’m strong,” she said. “A reminder that Black is beautiful. To be ourselves with the hate or without the hate that we experience. A reminder that we’re free. We’re here with a purpose.”
The rise of Miss Juneteenth pageants has come at a moment when Black contestants have met with remarkable success in more high-profile pageants. In 2019, the winners of the five most prominent pageants — Miss World, Miss Teen USA, Miss America, Miss USA and Miss Universe — were all Black.
The pageants, Ms. Sledge explained, focus on all facets of Black womanhood, from style to cultural contributions in music and dance. “Our young ladies are taught that in any room that they walk in, they belong there, regardless of who else is there.”
Ms. Glosson, who won the pageant in 1982, said she valued having a space designated for celebrating Black women.
The same newspaper informs us that gender ID is fluid and that there are more than 50 gender IDs. Why would they write favorably about an event based on gender binarism and the idea that gender ID is persistent? (We could ask the same question regarding beauty contests open to humans of all skin colors, such as Miss America. Why does it make sense to limit contestants to those with a single gender ID, e.g., those who can be addressed as “Miss”?)
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
Perhaps this contest meets the literal terms of MLK, Jr.’s dream? Since there is a pre-filter based on skin color the remaining contestants “will not be judged by the color of their skin”?
Separately, the Miss America folks proved to be prescient. On December 19, 2019, only three months before most of the world went into coronapanic, they awarded the title to Camille Schrier, who could be Dr. Fauci’s vastly better looking doppelgänger:
“Miss America can be a scientist and a scientist can be Miss America.”
In 2018, Camille graduated with honors from Virginia Tech with dual Bachelor of Science degrees in Biochemistry and Systems Biology, and is currently pursuing a Doctor of Pharmacy at Virginia Commonwealth University.
A certified Naloxone trainer in the city of Richmond, Schrier will use the Miss America national recognition to promote her own social impact initiative, Mind Your Meds: Drug Safety and Abuse Prevention from Pediatrics to Geriatrics.
Related… “Victoria’s Secret Swaps Angels for ‘What Women Want.’ Will They Buy It?” (NYT, June 16): “The Victoria’s Secret Angels, those avatars of Barbie bodies and playboy reverie, are gone. … In their place are seven women famous for their achievements and not their proportions. They include Megan Rapinoe, the 35-year-old pink-haired soccer star and gender equity campaigner … the 29-year-old biracial model and inclusivity advocate Paloma Elsesser, who was the rare size 14 woman on the cover of Vogue…”
A local 18-year-old, raised on a steady diet of social justice messages delivered by unionized employees at the public school he has attended, asked his mom for help in choosing a primary care physician now that he has aged out of pediatrics.
Perhaps he didn’t absorb what the school was trying to teach. He told his mother that he didn’t want a female physician or a doctor of color because “they get into medical school easier.”
