Judith Browning wrote:One of my specific concerns has to do with diversity, the importance of diversity in my garden, among my friends, in my community, folks we meet while traveling and internationally on line.
To what positive end have those particular areas been cut or removed from government protection?
I fear the word 'diversity' is going the way of ' liberal'?
I am very glad that the DEI programs have been removed, because I believe they took a good idea to the wrong place. Diversity is good, but diversity for the sake of diversity is not advisable. I would never plant an apple tree, a banana tree, some crab grass, a cocoa tree, some marigolds, a cedar tree, cattails, and multiflora rose in the same garden. That would be very diverse, but those plants can't all survive in the same conditions. They would be competing rather than complimenting. We create diverse gardens with a purpose, to fill each role in the ecosystem, not simply to have as many species as we can.
Every DEI program I have ever dealt with or read about cares too much about the color of your skin and what gender you want to call yourself, without paying attention to skills, ability, and character. These programs assume that a board made up of light skinned males is NOT diverse and also assumes that a board made up of half women and half men with a variety of shades of skin IS diverse. That kind of diversity shouldn't matter. What we should care about is things like how honest you are and how good you are at the job and having different ways of looking at the world... regardless of your physical characteristics
When an airline says they are going to pay attention to the color of someone's skin and the gender they claim to be, more than skills to fly an airplane, that is scary. By saying we must hire this color skin... you are being just as racist as saying we won't hire this color skin. Their focus is on skin color instead of the skills to fly an airplane.
When a university says we are going to lower the standards if you are of a certain color skin... that sounds like an insult to me. This is the university saying those people were not smart enough to get in on their own, so they must be helped. There are plenty of people of all colors of skin who can make it in on the same standards. And there are plenty of people of all skin colors who can't. Some people are smarter than others... it has nothing to do with color of their skin.
To take this to an extreme to try to make a point... If diversity, simply for diversity's sake, is good, why don't we ever see 100lb, 5ft women on a security detail? Why don't we see a 400lb person chosen for the olympic pole vault? Why aren't there any asians in the NFL? Why do we never see a motorcyclist in the tour de france? The answer is because all of those things are based on skills and being fit for that specific task. I think just about everything should be this way. Are you good at that job or not? Who cares what you look like.
