Diversity Thursday

I guess I need to bring out the obvious: "With all due respect .... but ...."

Good googly moogly; sadly this was not written by TheDuffleBlog.

Just when I think we are making progress towards a more just, color blind military - we had a Flag Officer come out with a gobsmackingly retrograde racialist article that beggars the imagination. Did he actually author this in a clear conscience?

You hope beyond hope that he didn't; that it was just something ghost written for him by a member of the Diversity Industry's nomenclature that infest the Navy's branch of the Grievance Industry's commissariat. He either didn't read it critically, or he had to put it out to keep the wolves at bay. 

Out of respect for his self respect, you hope that like the photos, letters, and confessions by our POWs held in Asian communist rat-holes, that this is all being done under duress.

Well, that is what I hope. Heck, some of the things I was forced to do to protect and support my boss in the face or roaming gangs of the (D)iversity SA breaking shop windows, I am not proud of either.

Heck, who knows - but I do know this - the below will not stand without a thorough quasi-Fisking.  It begs for it; it demands it.

Out of respect for the author, one must.

BEHOLD!

Official racialism in action - red in tooth and claw.

Let's go.

The following blog written by  VADM Kevin McCoy, Commander of Naval Sea Systems Command, talks about diversity and the role it plays in the Navy.

I still say that authorship is subject to debate, but I'm an optimist.

Every leader understands the importance of diversity and having a diverse workforce.

Yes, we all have that block on our FITREP. Nice standard issue article opening gentuflection ... almost too much, I almost see the finger. Almost.

But what is diversity and how do you achieve that vision? The Navy definition of diversity is “all the different characteristics and attributes of individual Sailors and civilians that enhance the mission readiness of the Navy.” As the NAVSEA commander, I lead a workforce of more than 58,000 talented civilians in career fields ranging from engineers, scientists, acquisition professionals, financial managers to shipyard workers. In order for us to meet our mission requirements of developing, delivering and maintaining America’s Navy, we need a to attract, develop, and retain a high-quality, diverse workforce that values a culture of inclusiveness, and harnesses the teamwork and experience of our workforce to produce ideas and products to keep America’s Navy #1 in the world.

Please note the official definition of (D)iversity. Very clever to put that there when in just a very short amount of reading time the operational definition of (D)iversity is given, putting the lie to the official "different view, opinions, and points of view" whitewash that comes out now and then.

When I became the NAVSEA Commander in 2008, one of my key people goals was for NAVSEA to become the Federal Employer of Choice. Part of that goal was to ensure that we fostered a welcoming environment and that assignments and promotions were transparent and merit-based. Workplace diversity needed to simply be part of the way we do business every day.

Yawn. Really? Cut-n-paste from some random Flag Officer speech generator ... but hey, as writers, some times you have to meet the minimum word count some how. Background noise, don't like it.

To achieve this goal, I conducted a top-down review of the organizational demographics and the path to hiring and promoting personnel into key leadership positions. The results showed that while the command understood and embraced diversity, that in practice we were missing the mark with respect to recruiting women and minorities and advancing them to leadership positions.

Of course. As Dear Leader Gary taught us, get the specific race and gender self-reported numbers, hire ADSW USNR O6s to produce XLS and PPT so you can count your beans and put them in to little piles. Once you do that, show where you need to move the beans you have based simply on the type of bean they are - throwing away and moving aside the beans you don't like. Actively discriminate by direct action based on race, creed, color, and if needed, national origin. After all ... that is what we mean by "practice."

Hey, did you see what we just did in the above quote? That is right, we just defined what we actually mean.  You get what you inspect, and what are we inspecting?

... missing the mark with respect to recruiting women and minorities ...

 ... and how are we going to actively discriminate against those races and genders we don't like(in the zero sum game, that is what you are doing when you don't promote on the basis of merit). (again, like high school physics's "mass-less friction-less pulley," let us just ignore racial self-identification fraud for a moment)?

... recruiting women and minorities and advancing them to leadership positions.

At least we are being honest about what we are doing.  Out and in the open - active discrimination. 

That is all they are really talking about? 

Diversity of opinion, background, experience, education? Child please!

To understand and develop a path to change this trend, Executive Director Brian Persons and I implemented annual Diversity Accountability Reviews patterned after those conducted by the CNO with his enterprise leads. In the first assessment, I asked my field activity commanders for an honest appraisal of the state of diversity in their organizations. They looked at:

• Identifying key leadership positions and grade levels;

• Identifying the “pathway” an employee would take to get those positions;

• Defining how the organization makes employees aware of these career pathways; and

• Identifying any systemic barriers or cultural norms that prevented the command from integrating diversity into their organization.

Ah, yes. The Diversity Accountability Review show trials. Rarely in the last hundred years has our Navy been involved in a more disgusting activity. No unity, no Sailor ... but breaking things down in to the most base and meaningless definition of a person; their race and ethnicity (and gender). Promoting already rampant racial self-identification fraud, and forcing multi-racial or post-racial people us regress back to a Jim Crow world view.

Look at the bullet points above.  Get beyond the incredibly patronizing 2nd and 3rd bullets and look at the 4th. If there is a barrier or cultural norm that is throwing up a wall due to ethnicity or race ... where is the NJP? Where is the Courts Martial?  Oh, wait ... we are building systemic barriers and creating new cultural norms. We haven't had race and ethnic barriers and cultural issues in decades ... I guess going beyond that endangers the (D)iveristy Industry jobs; then we must build new ones. Afterall, we all know that to oppose racism in to be a racist; at least that is what the race-trolls say in their emails to me.

These initial assessments allowed NAVSEA/PEO Headquarters and Field Activities to self identify barriers to improving the diversity of the workforce and to lay out a set of actions to work. The results of these reviews revealed, that despite command rhetoric about practicing diversity, we were not moving the needle in hiring and promoting diverse personnel largely because our eligible pool of candidates lacked diversity. We discovered that senior leadership was not directly involved in the recruiting and hiring processes; managers lacked an understanding of the importance of hiring a diverse workforce; and hiring officials were hiring and promoting people who looked just like themselves. 

Stop right there. That is an incredible accusation of discrimination and racism. Where are the names? Who has been fired ... what is your proof? If that really happened and no one has been fired, then why are those people still working for you?

We aren't just making those statements on 1-dementional numbers, i.e. piles of beans, are we? Please tell me someone is doing regression analysis before they make such statement.

But, wait --- let's read that closer. Are we asking senior leadership in interject themselves to make hiring decision to "make the needle move" strictly on the basis of race, ethnicity, or gender? Again, if so, thank you. You just outed yourself and your organization ... again ... as an organization that engages or desires to engage in a discriminatory basis with regard to race, creed, color, or national origin.  OK. Thank you again for proving my point.

Additionally, we uncovered instances where diverse personnel were migrating off of traditional technical leadership paths and self selecting other career paths (e.g., business and finance) for better promotion opportunities. This was a result of perceived reduced promotion opportunity in their technical career path. The next step was to determine the factors that led to this situation and implement measures to change the culture within our organization.

Wow again. Could not be more patronizing. Great White Father knows best? I thought we left that racial theory behind over half a century ago too.

The factors hindering NAVSEA in increasing minorities and women in key leadership positions fell into these areas.

• Minorities and women were not in gateway positions that would lead them to be considered for key leadership positions.

• Women had migrated out of a technical career path to business operations positions, thereby eliminating them from consideration.

• Women and minorities had limited access to high visibility assignments in order to continue to progress in their careers.

• There was a general lack of succession planning to identify positions that would lead to senior/executive level positions and an absence of cross-cultural mentoring in order to discover talent and bring it along the career track.

• Senior level vacancies were advertised within the local activity only with no expanded search for persons outside of the activity.

• In our shipyard blue collar positions, we found that females were being selected for the apprenticeship programs at significantly lower rates than males; and

• Recruiting and promotion processes (interviews, exams, selection board makeup) had not been vigorously reviewed and influenced by senior leadership to ensure that no demographic was disadvantaged. In essence, we were hiring and promoting personnel the way we always had, despite the fact that our diversity metrics were not reflective of the broader population surrounding our activities and were not improving.

Thank you again for reiterating the operational definition of "Diversity" in the Navy. You want senior leaders to actively discriminate. You imply that something is taking place, with no "proof" that will survive a Sophomore level statistics student's analysis. I'll just reference that quote next time another Flag Writer cut-n-pastes this from our (D)iversity Bullies' homepage;

Diversity is all the different characteristics and attributes of individual Sailors and civilians that enhance the mission readiness of the Navy.

We should be so lucky to actually follow the little lies we tell each other. Sad.

Bottom Line: Our rhetoric concerning fairness to all in hiring and promotions was at odds with our behavior. At face value, these items all seem fairly straightforward and easy to change. We found that it really was not!

What behavior? Again, if there are bigots in the workplace, where are the firings? If there are no bigots, then what are you asking for? From the outside, it is clear - you are asking for people to discriminate in order to "move the needle."

Someone get me the JAG.

During our second year assessment, we met with the leaders of all NAVSEA/PEO Headquarters and Field Activities 12-18 months after the first assessments to determine progress and the effectiveness of their actions. Several of these reviews did not go well and, in fact, some activities were directed to stop hiring or stop promoting personnel until they took actions to increase their pool of qualified candidates. What was at stake was cultural change and without direct senior leader involvement, the status quo would not change. This resulted in two problems: the pool of qualified candidates for hiring and promotion was restricted which resulted in a real loss of opportunity to bring better talent to the team and we were not improving the diversity makeup of our workforce to better reflect that of the surrounding communities.

We have Sailors being blown up and burned to death by the enemy in AFG. We have Sailors who are deploying 11-months straight. We have ships whose material condition is well below standards. ... and NAVSEA stops hiring support staff meant to support the Fleet because ... your PPT numbers did not meet a racialist world view PPT?

The major action we took as a result of our assessments was to develop a talent-focused perspective to managing civilian careers, where we identified and eliminated barriers that impeded hiring and career progression in mid-, senior- and executive-level positions; laid out clear career paths and positions leading to senior/executive positions; created opportunities for career enhancement; increased wounded warrior/individuals with targeted disabilities hiring; and launched a enterprise-wide retention initiative. We discovered that the key is that diversity isn’t about quotas, but rather it is about fostering a welcoming environment and having a process where assignments and promotions are transparent and merit-based and built into the culture.

You cannot do that and also do everything else you are talking about.  You cannot have a merit based system when you are inspecting, rewarding, and punishing based on race, ethnicity, and gender.

As a team, we are now in our third year of Diversity Accountability Review process – where we require Headquarters and Field Activities to conduct an annual self assessment of their diversity improvement actions. It is a frank discussion about what is working and what is not and the activities unique challenges in terms of talent required and local demographics. Long term, the NAVSEA Diversity reviews are about sustaining our progress; changing our culture about how we view diversity; and how we attract, develop, and mentor talent. This is a continuous journey and NAVSEA fully recognizes that sustained focus and energy must be maintained to continue our progress and that we must view diversity as a “marathon vice a sprint” with everyone on the same starting line.

Where did that dog's breakfast of a last line come from? It makes no sense.

1. In theory, every marathon has the same starting line. Not everyone can stand on that starting line, that is impossible in the time-space construct of our universe.

2. If someone demands that you run a marathon where everyone is standing on the starting line, then you can never run a marathon, as that is impossible. You either have to lie, or limit the marathon to just a few people so once everyone who can stand on that line are there - no one else will be able to run.

Maybe that is the point .... or maybe like so much else in this article, it does not fall in alignment with the real world.

Many times over the years we have been doing this on Thursday, I have said one of the tragic things about the our Navy joining the socio-political movement that is the modern (D)iversity industry, is that it forces otherwise logical, honorable, hard working, patriotic, and refined professionals say the most illogical, integrity distorting, and at times bizarre things.

But, authoritarian socio-political philosophies throughout history have had that effect on good people. Sadly, it is true here as well.


Authoritarians who can only exist in a web of lies wrapped around hate, as the (D)iveristy Industry is rife with, all respond in similar manners to truth.