Living diversity, 24/7, applies to all aspects of corporate operations.Recruitment, retention, promotion and even choice of suppliers all noware based on preferences for “people of color,” women and other personsdeemed disadvantaged.
It is hardly front-page news that for the last couple decades America’s corporations have promoted racial, ethnic and sexual proportional representation, now rechristened “diversity,” with brisk efficiency. From orientation training onward, an individual employee in many companies can expect to be barraged with the message: Diversity must be lived. A lengthy feature story in the May 25 Weekly Standard, “Where Everybody Is Disadvantaged,” reveals, often to comic effect, how oppressively ingrained this mindset has become. Intrepid reporter Matt Labash provides a first-hand account of this corporate mischief, effectively amplifying observations contained in a 2007 NLPC Special Report prepared by the author of this blog.
Whether out of principle or out of fear of boycotts, lawsuits and other unwanted publicity, corporate officials these days are pulling out the stops to Celebrate Diversity. Labash, a guest at the Ninth Annual National Multicultural Business Conference at the Disney Contemporary Resort in Orlando, Florida, recognizes this all too well. Conference organizers no doubt regret the decision to allow him in.
The author takes note of the prevailing atmosphere:
(T)here is a throwback sort of peppiness as I hit the conferenceregistration desk of Diversity/Business.com, the sponsor of the event.They seem to hark back to more carefree times – let’s call them ‘theNineties’ – when we were fatter and richer and could afford the luxuryof worrying about whether the guys in accounting were at least 0.8percent Indigenous People of the Americas, reflecting the population ofthe United States.
At check-in, we’re given name tags, expensive-looking leatherlegal-pad carriers, and an official program, the cover of which isfestooned with smiley children in rainbow-colored T-shirts, gleefullyholding their hands up as if they are passengers on a thrill ride. Theyare so wholesome looking, that if they were cookies, they’d be oatmealwith no trans fats.