From your Facebook Diversity Bullies over at Big Navy and CPF.
You cannot make this stuff up. What a bunch of race obsessed twits.
Oh, and if you want to get your USDA equivalent of patronizing FOD from Annapolis - they have a little bit of the product they bought for a few million dollars that we covered earlier this year.
Should I say it? Sure, I should.
Guess who is invited NOT to fulfill their destiny.
How transparent and pathetic.
Sal, I'm going to disagree on this post. It's marketing. Now, I fully agree that diversity of thought (of the all inclusive variety to include the diversity of opinion shown by the white kid from appalacia or staten island) DOES make for a stronger fleet as it gives a wider idea pool for problem solving. We can all agree big navy oversimplifies this to diversity = melanin, but lets move off that for a second and not leap to malice here.
ReplyDeleteRight now, the dominant applicant pool at Annapolis is from a pretty homogenous group. Which means to round out the student body you need to do one of two things...use quotas (which we hate) or do more reach out to attract the best and brightest applicants. Notice the focus was on something highly academic: brain surgery. What I focused on in this commercial was not so much the race, but the accent of his parents. I saw this as a push to recruit applicants from immigrant backgrounds with strong academics...applicants who are not seeking out the academy, as it's not something they have been steered towards by their families, which makes a huge difference in a kids college decision making process, but who would succeed on merit if admitted.
I don't see a problem here, especially if it works and the end result is an applicant pool of equally qualified people regardless of background. Once the applicant pool is competitive and diverse it becomes a lot harder to justify quota systems.
I thought that Gene Wilder performed the first brain transplant....
ReplyDeleteSame s*** different day.
ReplyDeleteIt is not going away, and any criticism will still be shouted down as "RAAAACISSSTT!!"
What a waste of resources they throw at this imaginary problem.
Better they spent the time and money on small arms training, which actually is a deficiency and needed, but I won't hold my breath.
There is nothing wrong with outreach - but it has to do with the entire nation. I do not see their specific expenditure of funds to bring young men and women from southern Ohio, eastern Kentucky or the mountains of VA. I also do not see and effort to recruit from Minnesota or Wisconsin. Those cultures are as distinct and unique as any in the USA - and those young men and women are just as deserving to be actively recruited from than any other. That is why we should do our best to have our recruiting efforts as general and non-sectarian as possible. Other nations such as Belgium and the former Yugoslovia do/did recruit along sectarian lines. This is not a nation whose strength lies in promoting preferential treatmentn along sectarian lines. It is just the opposite.
ReplyDeleteI would meet them half-way here if in "Fulfilling..." series of adverts I saw "the face of America" - but I don't. I only see preferential and desired faces. That is sectarian, that is divisive. That is a cancer that has destroyed every nation that has followed it.
Well meaning can also be wrong. Theories can be incorrect.
It may be that there is no outreach because those applicants are already applying. I'd want to see the data. I could be wrong though.
ReplyDeleteMaybe someday this can all backfire as the media again laments the fact that we are sending our minorities to die in battle in disproportionate numbers. Turn them all back into "victims" and what not.
ReplyDeleteI am still scratching my head about how "diversity" produces different ways to solve problems. Does melanin affect how one repairs a boiler in an engine room? Does melanin or cultural background determine how one tackles ASW strategy? While the conversation could go down that rabbit hole to potentially comedic effect, the fact is, this is all BS. People who WANT to be in the Navy know where the water is in this country. It's on the map. We know young people are computer savvy. They can Google US Navy and find a recruiter if they want. Your most motivated pool of recruits are the people who look for YOU to join YOU. It's patently unfair to tell someone who sought YOU out "No thanks, we're going to fill your slot with someone we have to go dig out of the inner city who might not be sure they want this for a career. We'll work to convince him/her to join. Buh-bye."
DB, you can't really expect these kids to ...like actually... fight.
ReplyDeleteThey are going to be that "Global Force For Good" on those "cushy rides."
Its no longer:
"I have not yet begun to fight!"
All that "In Harm's Way" stuff is some old fashioned hooey.
“It keeps the fight far from the ship. It keeps sailors out of harm’s way,”
Yep, the modern USN...
We ARE TOO GOOD TO FIGHT!
I can call you Aye-Gor, but you must call me Dr. Franken-steeeeen
ReplyDeleteHere is the modern America I know....
ReplyDeleteWe need this extraneous -RACIST- social engineering...Why?
A nation that has to market it's military in such a way is doomed...
ReplyDeleteHow many millions of dollars - and as we have documented USNA in the last two years has spent millions by itself for sectarian specific advertising - are you willing to spend to move the needles to a self-described quota point? Call it a soft-quota where you don't recruit from some DNA pools and dedicated massive target funds to other DNA groups - the goal and results are the same.
ReplyDeleteWhen you roll in significant - and again documented here - racial self-identification misrepresentation - how good is your data anyway?
Should the NBA and medical schools do the same? Are we looking for DNA percentages, or are we looking for the most qualified?
I first saw this video on the jumbotron at Monday's Maryland-Navy game. As I sat there with my son, a Midshipman 3/c who is fourth generation Navy and 2nd generation USNA, we both shook our heads in disgust that "white males need not apply" in today's Navy. I could tell he was visibly bothered by the in-your-face push for diversity -- so much so that there isn't a single white male featured in this video. That's too bad because there are at least one or two white males left in America who might want to fulfill their destiny through the USNA and a follow-on career in the Navy. Now, before someone says "of course white males are desired" and "of course they will keep applying," that's not the point. The point is that we have gone so overboard with this nutty push for diversity that we don't even make an attempt to balance things out anymore. I remember when guidance for inserting photos and such into Navy products was "make sure we include some shots of minorities and women." Now it's "make sure there are absolutely zero white males anywhere because we are ashamed of white males." I have never been more glad to be retired, and should my son tell me he's going to "5 and out," I'm probably going to breath a sigh of relief. Call me fed up and disgusted...
ReplyDeleteHaving grown up in the HISD system, I can tell you that the racial composition of those top students coincides with the racial composition of Houston public schools.
ReplyDeleteAll the white kids go to private schools.
Just elaborating on your post.
At what point might someone expect to hear: "Thank you for breaking free of your old teaching and allowing us to get to the point where there is no limit to our achievement in the US Armed Forces."
ReplyDeleteWhile there will always be someone to try to hold good people back for other than perfomance reasons, I believe most all of them were gone during the mid-later part of my time.
Gratitude is a fine thing. Good for everyone involved. Hate? Not so much, in fact, it seems to engender more, but...as God managed to make the mind an associatve computing network, you do have a choice of how you view the world around you.
All the white kids go to private schools.
ReplyDeleteYou are wrong about that...most white kids are in the outlying school districts....but you miss the point.
First off, is the stark indicatior of how rapidly "brown" this country is becoming.
And, out of those several score valeictorians, how many are headed to Annapolis.
Instead of the cheesy "race after (meaningless) race"
Why not appeal to these kids' intellect if you want to recruit them?
AOr -since you know the inside skinny- how come none of them is heading to USNA?
You are wrong about that...most white kids are in the outlying school districts....but you miss the point
ReplyDeleteAnd the color of those demographics are rapidly "browning" as well I might add.
Another vignette.
The other day, was downstairs in the lobby of my building as a batch of 9-5'rs were leaving.
These were the engineering types mostly, and I was the "whitest" person in the room...
And I ain't "white"!!
Oh, this ad brings back memories. I, too, saw it for the first time on the jumbotron...and I remember this kind of amazed silence settling over the Brigade as we all slowly realized that there wasn't a single "white" kid in the video. After it was over, I turned to my companymate and said, "Are you kidding me? They always say we're the best and brightest...and they think that we won't notice any of this?!"
ReplyDeleteBring back the color-blind, gender-blind meritocracy. Look at the Candidate Fitness Tests as percentages rather than raw scores to remove the male/female identifiers. At least for the admissions process at the Academy, I don't see any problem with this. Perhaps I wouldn't have gotten in to the Academy, but I would have liked to know for sure that I wasn't admitted just because I lack a Y chromosome. It would also take pressure off the minority students as well...the diversity initiative affects them negatively too.
As I've said before, the diversity initiative seems to imply that a female Asian enlisted will not respect/obey orders from a white male officer. (But interestingly, it gives ALL minorities a boost up...so they're essentially saying that a female enlisted Asian could relate to a male black officer better than a female white officer? Interesting...) I'd like to think that all of us who have chosen to serve our nation in uniform have enough common ground to respect each other regardless of skin color.
Bottom line: a fellow sailor earns my respect through competence, not melanin levels.
Actus rhesus, the diversity candidates are not as qualified. Same goes for Varsity athletes. And it rubs a lot of us the wrong way.
ReplyDeleteI have seen the data confirming this, though obviously I am not able to post it here. I can assure you that Sal is spot on in his analysis, though you might not agree with it. The data DOES back it up, even if you can't lay eyes on it yourself.
I'd like to say I'm sorry for obviously having stolen someone's destiny. I am a white male, served as a Naval Officer, and now work for the DoN. So maybe I've stolen two people's destinies?
ReplyDeleteWell, Salty, you'll never make that mistake again!
ReplyDeleteI have talked to many midshipmen currently enrolled at USNA and regardless of race and/or gender, they find the Diversity Directorate and its programs demeaning, degrading, and a stain on the Navy. Nobody wants to be there just because of their race or gender. This program is the soft bigotry of low expectations. Basically, "You're not good enough, but we'll let you in anyway. Never mind academics; we can fix that. PRT; no problem, we can fix that, too. Any questions?" The mids I know just want somebody competent, period. They don't care about skin color, plumbing, or any of that garbage. They just want somebody they can count on when the shi*t hits the fan.
ReplyDeletebest qualified, and that's my point...I don't mind advertising outreach if the end goal is to plus up the number of best qualified minority applicants so that there aren't quotas in admissions (of course I recognize I'm being an optimist here) As I said, the way I see it, you have two options if your goal is to have a student body that is not completely white male. Either use quotas which seems to be the process now, and is a terrible method, or reach out via advertising and other tailored approaches to increase the number of applicants from other groups in the hopes that among those applicants there are those who can compete on merit alone.
ReplyDeletebut reasonable minds can differ.
right. So I see ads like this as an attempt to reach out and recruit applicants who ARE qualified. If all of a sudden you have a wide applicant pool of people who are all qualified, you don't need to lessen your standards to let in those who aren't.
ReplyDeleteAnd you don't waste ad money marketing to people who have already drank the kool aid.