Diversity Thursday

Sometimes it becomes so banal and commonplace that you almost don't notice it. 

Kind of like the water fountains my parents remember growing up around - but there it is.

Buried in a standard issue Plan of the Week - can you spot the modern day paternalistic Jim Crow mindset? The soft bigotry of segregated expectations? You know, like the Negro baseball league of the last century that prevented truly great athletes from competing with everyone and showing their greatness?

Can you see it?

Marcel Leake was one of NAVAIR’s three 2015 Black Engineer of the Year Award winners for the Modern Day Technology Leadership Awards. These awards were presented Feb. 6 at the Black Engineer of the Year Awards Conference in Washington, D.C.

Let me put this out there right away; this isn't about Marcel Leake either, and none of this commentary is directed at him in any way. He is caught up in it like everyone else.

The implication is all rather simple by those that run, support, and recommend people for these awards; keep people thinking, acting and evaluating themselves as part of a sectarian group, not as an individual. Groups are easier to control and manipulate. 

The sad thing is, here we are in 2015, and we have organizations looking at groups the same as the KKK and the other racialist world view types out there. Not an attractive group to throw yourself in with, but our Navy is doing just that.

That is one side of the coin, the other is - as is often this century with diversity issues - about money. It doesn't take long in pulling the string on the BEOY to see this is just an arm of Career Communications Group, Inc. Who is CCGI?

We are a socially conscious diversity media company ... Our products are the vehicles to reach a diverse audience drawn from African-American and Hispanic associations and organizations. Our partnerships with Historically Black Colleges and Universities establish our products as the authority for unbiased information and career development for exceptional students working toward professional degrees.

Yep, a business founded in 1985 to make money off of sectarianism. Just check out their publications.

I would love to see their accounts receivable, as I doubt any significant amount of their income is derived from anything other than government sources or companies such as defense contractors who make their living from taxpayer money.

In addition to making a living out of sectarianism for those employed in this company, this is also a racket for organizations and others to get a check in the block in the most crass way appear to "do the right thing" when all they are doing is buying protection. 

This company and mindset does nothing to promote unity, a color blind society, unit cohesion, or in any way develop a culture of evaluating people by the content of their character vice the color of their skin. Why would it, there's no money in that.

All this does is to send a message that our black shipmates have to have their own special recognition separately, as opposed to competing with everyone else. At best that is Old South paternalism, most likely just inertial guided mindless feel-goodism, at worst it is outright racism. In cold analysis, tell me what else it is?

The Navy should be ashamed to be part of such an company and mindset as openly sectarian and divisive as this, stuck in the middle of the last century. We are better than this - and unquestionably all our Sailors regardless of DNA are better than this.