Diversity Thursday

As you will recall, one of the Master Messages of DivThu is that all the tens of millions of dollars DOD is spending to support its branch of the Diversity Industry and the Diversity Bullies that infest it, are just going to be used to promote division, strife, and to break people in to conflicting groups.

It is not in the financial, philosophical, or political interest for the Diversity and Inclusion Commissariate to promote unity and good order and discipline. That does not support their job security.

Along those lines, Jonathan Haidt and Lee Jussim over at WSJ outline exactly what is going on in this cancerous self-licking ice cream cone in the academic world. That does matter, because as we have seen, those people are hired and bring their bad ideas to DOD;

We are social psychologists who study the psychology of morality (Haidt) and the causes and consequences of prejudice and stereotypes (Jussim). As far as we can tell, the existing research literature suggests that such reforms will fail to achieve their stated aims of reducing discrimination and inequality. In fact, we think that they are likely to damage race relations and to make campus life more uncomfortable for everyone, particularly black students.

A basic principle of psychology is that people pay more attention to information that predicts important outcomes in their lives. A key social factor that we human beings track is who is “us” and who is “them.” In classic studies, researchers divided people into groups based on arbitrary factors such as a coin toss. They found that, even with such trivial distinctions, people discriminated in favor of their in-group members.

None of this means that we are doomed to discriminate by race. A 2001 study by Robert Kurzban of the University of Pennsylvania and colleagues in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that race was much less prominent in how people categorized each other when individuals also shared some other prominent social characteristic, like membership on a team. If you set things up so that race conveys less important information than some other salient factor, then people pay less attention to race.

A second principle of psychology is the power of cooperation. When groups face a common threat or challenge, it tends to dissolve enmity and create a mind-set of “one for all, all for one.” Conversely, when groups are put into competition with each other, people readily shift into zero-sum thinking and hostility.

With these principles in mind, it is hard to see how the programs now being adopted by many universities will serve to create campuses where students of color feel more welcome and less marginalized.
...
Interracial contact can yield many benefits. In a review of more than 500 studies, published in 2006 in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Thomas Pettigrew and Linda Tropp concluded that when people of different races and ethnicities mix together and get to know each other, the effect is generally to reduce prejudice on all sides. This is a good justification for increasing diversity.

But the researchers also found that these benefits depend in large measure on certain conditions, like having common goals, a sense of cooperation and equal status. The benefits disappear when there is anxiety about cross-group interactions.

The Navy and DOD's Diversity Industry does just the opposite. It promotes division of recognition and celebration. It constantly wants metrics and statistics. It is constantly forcing mixed race servicemembers to choose which part of their DNA they want to be used to put them in a box. We are doing just the opposite of what needs to be done in order to create a culture where everyone regardless of race, creed, color or national origin it treated the same and considers themselves the same as everyone else. 

This promotion of division is being done by people stuck in an early 1970s mindset that they long ago realized is a tool for their own economic well being and access to power. 

The US military used to be ahead of the curve on equality and the promotion of unity and color blindness. We have, sadly, become regressive and have adopted many of the worst parts of the problem outlined in the article that is found in academia. You really need to read it all.

I also want to remind everyone; the push to fussbucket over microaggressions and safe spaces is already rooted at USNA and in some UIC in the Fleet.

Push back. Push hard. Call out the bigotry and division being pushed by the Diversity Commissariate. When you don't have the cover to act in the open, then slow roll, ignore, appoint the worst people to the jobs and starve them of funds. It is worth the fight.