Diversity Thursday

A few quick items this Thursday that have been making the rounds this week that I wanted to pull together to give you something to ponder the next time you have to deal with one of the commissars from a branch of the socio-political, sectarian, hate filled, and bigoted world of the diversity industry.

Good news, really. Subjects and examples we've discussed here for years are breaking above the background noise in the larger culture - if not taking our position, at least opening the discussion space.

First; racial self-identification fraud.  It is simple economics and human behavior that if you create a perverse incentive, the perverse will be incentivized. 

Through the years, we have chronicled here those in our Navy who have clearly taken advantage of the racial spoils system in place for their own gain; from the German "Hispanics" from Puerto Rico, to the "my grandmother grew up in SW Texas, and I grew up in the DC suburbs, so that makes me pretty much a leading "Hispanic" Flag Officer." 

Yes, we can go on for hours, and we all have our own examples of those that are gaming the system.

This, however, is simply sublime;

Shaun King, a prominent leader in the Black Lives Matter movement, has been claiming to be biracial when he is actually a white man ... King, who won a full scholarship from Oprah Winfrey to the historically black Morehouse College, has been a leading activist against police brutality. He has said he is the son of a white woman and a black man in various accounts online, including in a philanthropic feature Rebel magazine published in 2012. ...

There is so much more there, but one thing is clear - he has made a living playing off racial strife he helped create. Strife invented in his own life, and strife he has created for others. You know, just like the diversity cadre we have in the Navy. Got to earn that paycheck, dontchaknow.

There is advantage in lying and fudging as Ben Shapiro outlines;

With Milo Yiannopoulos’ shocking report that Black Lives Matter activist Shaun King is in fact white – according to Yiannopoulos, quoting blogger Vicki Page, “King is white and has been lying about his ethnicity for years” – taboo questions now arise about the nature of race in America.

King, of course, isn’t the first leading black activist with no black biological background: Rachel Dolezal, former head of the Spokane, Washington NAACP and adjunct professor of African-American studies at Eastern Washington, turned out to be a white woman.
...
All of this demonstrates one undeniable fact: being black in America in 2015 is perceived as a status symbol and an advantage. This does not deny the horrific and evil history of racism against black people in America. It also does not deny the fact that a disproportionate number of black people live in poverty and suffer as victims of crime (primarily from other black people, just as white people suffer crime primarily from other white people).

But Dolezal and King make it clear that America’s attempts to repair the effects of that horrific history have now made black skin advantageous for a certain subset of activists, which is why people like Dolezal and now allegedly King have masqueraded as black for personal advantage.In areas across American culture, blackness is beneficial. That’s why people like King and Dolezal seek its imprimatur, even under allegedly false pretenses.
....
For example, King allegedly received a scholarship to Morehouse College from Oprah Winfrey on the basis of his allegedly fake race. He apparently took a scholarship from a black person in order to attend Morehouse. But the fact that scholarships based on race are available from many foundations – and only to racial minorities – means that it is definitionally advantageous to be a member of a minority for purposes of obtaining one.

That’s true in terms of admission to universities as well: standards are lower for blacks generally at top universities. A Princeton University study showed that blacks receive a “bonus” of 230 points on SAT scores versus their competitors; by contrast, Asians are penalized 50 points. The same holds true for finding a position in academia. Rachel Dolezal began as a white artist at Howard University but quickly found herself marginalized. Then she became black, and her art found a place at the United Nations, and she received an adjunct professorship at Eastern Washington University.

Next, the false canard of evil, institutionally racist USA. The Economist brings up a topic that, how did former Attorney General Holder put it, makes cowards of us all. Well, not here - not for DivThu. Call us all the nasty name you want, stick your fingers in year ears, and hold your breath until you turn blue. I don't care - I prefer a fact based discussion.

As we have documented here before, if you use objective criteria and give equal opportunity to all, you will not have a military, an officer corps especially, that "looks like America." Specifically and dramatically for native-born African-Americans, the educational and cultural metrics from birth to age 18 are at such variance with the population in general that you simply cannot make the numbers work unless you put your thumb on the scale.

The common refrain from the Diversity Bullies is to point to the institutional discrimination and general nasty and unworthiness of the United States in order to guilt trip everyone in to forcing compliance. Classic power play and really rather ballsy. Different topic for a different day - let's refocus.

To make the numbers work, first of all one needs to fix the subculture that is creating sub-par performance. It isn't race, it is culture. That is hard work of generations. Ahem.

If it were as simple as skin color, hair, and bone structure ...

African migrants stand out from American-born blacks. Indeed, on most measures, they have little in common but their colour. With the exception of some refugees, who are often resettled in areas with cheap housing, they live mostly in the suburbs, rather than in inner cities. In Washington Ethiopians and Eritreans cluster in Silver Spring, a part of Maryland at the edge of the District of Columbia. They are older—the average African-born black in America is 37, against 29 for American-born blacks. And they are far more likely to be married: 52% are, against a figure of just 28% for American-born blacks.

They also tend to be well educated, according to Pew’s data. In 2013 35% had a bachelor’s degree or better, against a figure of 30% for all Americans and just 19% of American-born blacks (see chart). But despite these qualifications, they earn slightly less than most Americans. In 2013 the average household income for black Africans was $43,000. That is sharply higher than the $33,500 American-born blacks earn, but lower than the amounts earned by other immigrants and by white Americans. In Washington, Ethiopian and Eritrean men disproportionately work as taxi drivers, or in the city’s many East African restaurants.
...
What does this mean for America as a whole? Africans are just one group of black immigrants in America—Caribbeans and people from Latin America bring the total of people who identify as black and were born overseas to around 3.8m. One possibility is that their growth in numbers may help soften the historical racialised division of America’s population between those whose descendants moved willingly and those whose descendants were enslaved.

Many who profess to be leaders of the "African-American Community" - which seem to include quite a few white people with significant emotional and psychological problems, who continue to scrape away at scabs like it is still 1971, are only interested in promoting their own race-hate, their own power, paycheck, and for some - their own sad emotional need for attention.

America - still a work in progress - is not as an institutional level the problem. People and culture are. Now, if only our Navy would start looking to the future instead of joining the forces of strife and division stuck in the Nixon Administration, we could all get along better.

But still, there are metrics, and an inability to accept that we are a diverse nation. Wait, what? Yes, I said that. We are a gloriously diverse nation, and that is fine. As such, you have certain subcultures with a population as large as ours. Each sub-culture has its predilections and habits. The subcultures are slowly coming together as never before, but there are still distinctions. 

There are reasons most of the NBA is African-American; there are reasons that most of the USA Women's soccer team is mostly of European extraction. There are reasons that my N1 shop was once 80% black. There is a reason that towards the end of the last decade, the Commander of US and NATO forces in AFG were back-to-back McNeil, McKiernan, and McChrystal. If no one is being prevented institutionally from doing one thing or another on the basis of race, creed, color, or national origin - who cares?

If all our nuclear engineers were of east-Asian extraction and got there by merit, who cares? If 8 of your 10 MAs have last names that end in a vowel or a "z," who cares? If all the SEALs jumping out the back of a C-130 look like a bunch of Vikings coming off a skeid, who cares? Additionally, in an all volunteer force where the first step to joining Special Forces is to ... volunteer, what are you to do? Go around and voluntold people based on self-identified race and ethnicity? Make them not DOR?

Is there something related to race that makes the Russian, Chinese, or even Iranian SOF less useful? Well, it seems the scab pickers think there is.

Black officers and enlisted troops are scarce in some special operations units in highest demand, according to data provided by the Pentagon to USA TODAY. For instance, eight of 753 SEAL officers are black, or 1%.

An expert at the Pentagon on the diversity of commando forces said the lack of minorities robs the military of skills it needs to win.

"We don't know where we will find ourselves in the future," said Army Col. Michael Copenhaver, who has published a paper on diversity in special operating forces. "One thing is for sure: We will find ourselves around the globe. And around the globe you have different cultural backgrounds everywhere. Having that kind of a diverse force can only increase your operational capability."

Read the full article to read the whole series of tired old cliches that Copenhave trots out. What a tool of division.

Copenhaver's paper, written for the U.S. Army's War College, makes a practical argument for greater diversity among special operations forces: "U.S. special operators have long acknowledged they face challenges mixing in with foreign populations because they look so American."

Define "look American." Anyone who lives in Europe long enough knows that "look American" has more to do with how you dress, walk, and carry yourself - and you can tell from across the square when everyone is dressed for deepest winter. If you are white in Africa, everyone does not assume you are an American unless you dress, walk, and act like one - ditto the Middle East and Asia. I've pulled off a fairly good South African national more than once.

For the SEALs, the problem extends beyond the officer corps into the enlisted ranks. Of its enlisted men, 45 SEALs are black, or about 2% of the 2,242 members of its elite force. There are more SEALs — 99, or 4% of the enlisted force — who are Native Americans or Alaska natives.

Among Army Green Berets, 85% of its 1,494 officers are white and 4.5% are black. Its 5,947 enlisted Green Berets are 86% white and 5.4% black.

For the Air Force's para-rescue jumpers, highly trained airmen who search for missing troops, only one of 166 is black, or .6% of that force.

Oh, and like I said;

Some of the same forces that steer young African Americans from Army's combat specialties such as infantry and artillery — the breeding ground for the service's top leadership — appear to be in play among special operators, the senior Defense official said.

To address the problem, the Army urges young black officers to consider combat specialties, the official said. Promotion boards for officers give greater weight to diversity, and mentoring of minority officers is emphasized.

Well, lookee there. Look at what slipped out from under the skirt. Let's put that out there again.

Promotion boards for officers give greater weight to diversity ...

I'll just leave that there for you.

Stir conflict to keep the issue. Keeping the issue keeps the paid billets, appointments to boards, and contracts. Millions of dollars. Do it all the time while pushing patronizing and openly racist smears like, "People need leaders who look like they do. If they don't, the force suffers."

Ummmm, yea. Tell that to the Gurkhas and the French Foreign Legion.

Sad part is the great body of our fellow Americans who are of one degree or another a glorious mixed-up gaggle of DNA. We don't like to recognize that and worse, we force them to pick what part of the DNA they want to claim as their own - and to do it based on what is most beneficial. That is how you shame them in to being part of your sham.

What can you do? Passive civil disobedience. Have those billets in your command? Gap them when you can. Do not have your Sailors waste their time filling out awards packets that define anything by race, creed, color, national origin ... or sex for that matter. Just don't do it. Sectarian conferences hosted by affinity groups? Not a penny of TDY money. Not a cent. Not a lost work day. Base visit by one of the traveling trainers. Don't promote. Don't encourage attendance. Do the minimum to keep yourself out of trouble. Like this;

The diversity of special operating forces is closely held information. U.S. Special Operations Command, which oversees all the services' commandos, declined to provide data on the racial makeup of its forces. USA TODAY had to obtain that data from each service individually, a process that took months. The Marines did not produce the actual numbers of their special operations forces, only percentages.

SOCOM, based in Tampa, does not track that information on its nearly 70,000 civilian and military personnel, said Kenneth McGraw, a spokesman. Gen. Joseph Votel, SOCOM's commander, declined to speak to USA TODAY for this story, said Col. Thomas Davis, another SOCOM spokesman.

Bravo zulu. The underground is still active ... and growing.