Diversity Thursday

I know there are jobs at stake here ... grievances to nurture ... self-righteous victim pimp'n to do ... but perhaps we should hoist the following from Harvard Business Review onboard.

There are two reasons to do diversity training. One is to prevent lawsuits. The other is to create an inclusive environment in which each member of the community is valued, respected, and can fully contribute their talents. That includes reducing bias and increasing the diversity of the employee and management population.

Lana made it clear to me that Bedia was interested in the second reason, not just the first, and I agreed to investigate.

But after speaking with a number of people in the organization, it confirmed a feeling that had been pestering me for years:

Diversity training doesn’t extinguish prejudice. It promotes it.
...
A study of 829 companies over 31 years showed that diversity training had “no positive effects in the average workplace.” Millions of dollars a year were spent on the training resulting in, well, nothing. Attitudes — and the diversity of the organizations — remained the same.

It gets worse. The researchers — Frank Dobbin of Harvard, Alexandra Kalev of Berkeley, and Erin Kelly of the University of Minnesota — concluded that “In firms where training is mandatory or emphasizes the threat of lawsuits, training actually has negative effects on management diversity.”

Which shouldn’t come as a surprise, actually. Anybody who has ever been scolded is familiar with the tendency to rebel against the scolding.

But it’s deeper than that. When people divide into categories to illustrate the idea of diversity, it reinforces the idea of the categories.

Which, if you think about it, is the essential problem of prejudice in the first place. People aren’t prejudiced against real people; they’re prejudiced against categories. “Sure, John is gay,” they’ll say, “but he’s not like other gays.” Their problem isn’t with John, but with gay people in general.

Categories are dehumanizing. They simplify the complexity of a human being. So focusing people on the categories increases their prejudice.

It's not like this is new - this was first published almost three years ago - but - hard to get traction when you are going against the narrative.

How many times have you read this on DivThu?

The solution? Instead of seeing people as categories, we need to see people as people. Stop training people to be more accepting of diversity. It’s too conceptual, and it doesn’t work.

Instead, train them to do their work with a diverse set of individuals. Not categories of people. People.

Teach them how to have difficult conversations with a range of individuals. Teach them how to manage the variety of employees who report to them. Teach them how to develop the skills of their various employees.

And, while teaching them that, help them resist the urge to think about someone as a gay person, a white man, a black woman, or an Indian. Also help them to resist the urge to think about someone as “just like me” — that’s a mistake too.

Move beyond similarity and diversity to individuality. Help them see John, not as a gay white man, but as John. Yes, John may be gay and white and a man. But he’s so much more than that.

Don’t reinforce his labels, which only serve to stereotype him. Reveal his singularity. Don’t ask: What are the dreams of a gay white man. Ask: What are John’s dreams? What does he hate? What are his passions?

The antidote to the ineffectiveness of diversity training is the opposite of diversity training. If you want diversity, think about an individual, then another, then another.

Read it all - and feel free to bring this up the next time you are forced to sit through some of this FOD.

Congrats Brian, your daughter is doing pr0n

Standard Kristen Warning for the below.

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Perhaps it is just me.

The late Patrick Swayze said once in an interview I saw a long time ago, something to the effect, "If you let it, this town will turn you in to a whore." If you have HBO, you may have seen a perfect example of that last night.

I don't watch, "Girls" on a regular basis (I know, shocking) though I have sat through a couple of episodes in the last few years just to see what was going on. Meh.

Anyway, I'm going upstairs to change after a long walk with the dogs and turn the TV on, and it comes to the last channel that was watched, HBO. I'm too lazy to change the channel, so let it run. About 30-seconds in, after a short while seeing Lena Dunham's stupid arm tattoo filling up half the screen, the scene shifts.

There is it - Brian Williams 26-yr old daughter doing soft pr0n. Call it what you want, but that is exactly what it was. It was totally unnecessary to the story line, I guess, but that is not the point. It was put in there for one reason - so people would talk about it, raise ratings, and try to keep a show's relevancy as we all tire of it all.

Well, Allison - you just let a peddler of highly questionable rape accusations make a whore out of you.

I'll let Kat Rosenfield of MTV (of course) outline it for you.

By now, you’ve probably heard about the infamous “Girls” season opener scene in which Marnie’s (Allison Williams) butt gets vigorously motorboated by Desi (Ebon Moss-Bachrach.)

Moss-Bachrach already confirmed to MTV News that the scene was 100% legitimate face-to-butt contact

It is all rather sad. Allison could have said no - but I guess peer pressure is what it is. Even more sad, if she looked to her parents to help, she got the opposite:

...how Allison’s father, news anchor Brian Williams, handled seeing it onscreen.
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“She’s always been an actress,” Williams said. “For us, watching her is the family occupation and everybody has to remember it’s acting, no animals were harmed during the filming, and ideally nobody gets hurt.”

Ummm ... Brian. That wasn't acting. That was pr0n. 

How's mom?

Allison Williams mentions that not only were her parents proud supporters of her big butt-eating moment, but that her mom was a chief strategist when it came to rigging a bit of costumery between the actress’s cheeks, so that her co-star’s time in there would be as comfortable as possible.

“I’d get a call from my mom and she’d be like, ‘Maybe if you took a thong and cut it away from the sides but you stuck it on in the front and the back it could work,’” Williams said. “I was like, ‘Mom, I like your thinking.’ Just your regular dinner conversation! We’re changing as a family; it’s lovely.”

Of course, Allison is not a whore. She is simply a young lady who is trying to make her way in a tough business, surrounded by people who have no real care for her, but only what they can make off of her.

She allowed herself to be used by sociopaths;

Ebon Moss-Bachrach
I hope this is okay to say, but honestly I think this scene comes about by Lena saying, “How can I put Allison through the ringer?" "How can I tighten the screws on Allison?” I think Lena gets a kick out of that, Lena does.
...
Lena Dunham and Jenni Konner
JK: When we were shooting that, I said I thought we had done all of the funny, crazy sex we could do, but … Part of that was improv on Ebon’s part, and we died laughing.
LD: Allison was a good sport.
JK: She was game — a down girl. She’s a serious actress and she takes it all seriously. She was brilliant.
LD: Let me tell you this, when someone puts their face in your butt, whether there’s a barrier or not, their face is still in your butt. And she handled that with aplomb.
JK: Even when someone you love puts their face in your butt, it might be weird!
...
Alex Karpovsky
Yeah! Let’s do it! Let’s go there! Let’s explore all the cavities. Yeah, 2015 is the Butt Year. There is some type of sexual revolution happening, and maybe that’s one of the cliffs or peaks that we need to begin to incorporate into our societal representation of this revolution, specifically in television. This could be the year of the anus.

Like I said; pr0n.

As we do often in life, she found herself at a professional pivot point. I would offer that she did not choose well.

She's an adult, her call - but I don't think it is anything someone should see and say, "Hey, I wish my daughter was a quasi-famous actress to a small segment of the population."

If that is what an Ivy League education and a career in show business gets you before you even reach the age Morrison and Hendrix assumed room temperature - then no thank you. I will continue to keep my family out of it.

Maybe it is just me. I don't think so. Below is just about top right 1/4 of what you saw. It is far enough down that you don't have to scroll.

You've been warned, but I can't/won't show her naked from the waist down, and the fully naked guy behind her. 

Just be happy I don't show a gif of when he wiped his face before he ... well ... like I said; its pr0n.

Sad, but again - maybe I'm' the problem here.

Wait ... those who know me well know I am no prude. If the below gif is not enough to make my point - click here to see the full thing.

If you want to see the mindset that thinks this is just dandy - then read this. 

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Wait. This is just way too depressing. I can't do this to my readers. Let me see what I have here .... something to leave you dragging for the rest of the day ... something from the Salamander mix tape ... oh, here we go.

A job description only a Sailor understands

From a recent SPAWAR email forwarded from one of my spies; you almost need to diagram it. 

Executive Assistant to the Principal Military Deputy to the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Navy (Research, Development, and Acquisition). 

An epic failure of strategic stewardship

A few cliche's exist that apply not just to personal life, but to business and even international relations. 

- "If you want a friend, be a friend."
- "Half of life is just showing up."

One of the characteristics of our form of government is that the person who holds the Presidency is only a caretaker. Indeed, every person elected and appointed is only a place holder for the next person who takes the job. People come and go, but the nation endures.

The hard work of others is preserved and built on. When opportunities come up to add to the nation's wealth, power, security or prestige, you take it, secure it, and turn it over to posterity.

Likewise, if mistakes were made - you correct them. If previous office holders made errors or requirements change, then you fix and change as needed. You avoid, at all possible costs, huge errors that will take years to decades to fix.

Errors will be made, but there is no reason to make unforced errors - and we observed a big one this Sunday.

I was on travel most of Sunday, and in that time tried the best I can to understand what was going through the White House decision tree to bring us to where we wound up pulling a big zero on a historic march in Paris in support of one of the fundamental fruits of The Enlightenment, free speech.

There is so much here. If it were not for France, we would not have won our revolution. They are an occasionally difficult ally, but historically, the one after the UK that is the most important to us.

The lack of a significant presence in Paris is simply gobsmacking. The White House sent more people of more significance to a thief who was shot after attacking the police than they did for this?

I've spent a lot of time in France, and the French people are very much like Americans, they like Americans, and if you walk around their capital - there is pro-American paintings, statues, etc all over the place from the metro to their parks.

They are a proud, sovereign nation - so they will take their own path now and then, and that is OK. On balance though - for good manners if nothing else - we should have done better.

In the march, we had British Prime Minister David Cameron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, Jordan's King Abdullah II and Queen Rania were there. Heck, even President Bongo of Gabon showed up - not to any small bit of irony.

The USA? We have lame duck Attorney General Eric Holder there, but not in the march. On the streets, we only had our ambassador.

There is no other way to spin this. The United States has shown an exceptional amount of disrespect towards one of our closest and most important allies. This just feeds in to a growing feeling in the world that we can be relied on to always frustrate our friends and encourage our enemies.

This will not be forgotten, and will long outlast Obama's presidency.

Why did we do this? There are really only two reasons - both disturbing in their own way.

1. This was a case of nationalizing a point of personal pique. For some reason, perhaps related to this episode, Obama just does not care to expose his ego to possible injury in groups of other national leaders. He also does not like Europeans.

2. We have another example of the horrible national security brain trust he as around him. President Obama has never had good instincts concerning the care and feeding of our traditional allies. If they are giving him awards and praise from Oslo to the Tiergarten, he is fine. But showing support to them? No, there is some kind of blocking diode there. If he has good advisers who can help him work around his own biases and pre-conceived notions, he is movable. That is the function of a good staff. However, look who he has around him now. Instead of Hillary Clinton, Leon Panetta, Robert Gates, and James Jones - we have John F'n Kerry, Susan Rice, and Joe Biden who, along with the slum lord Valerie Jarrett, drown out any other advisers out there.

What can be done? Nothing really. We have Obama as President for another two years. We just need to catalog where he's made a mess and hope the next person will help repair the relationships.

It is what it is. President Obama and his rump national security advisers are what they are.

The bad part, what they do has the "Made in USA" stamp on it, and they have yet to fully take on board the concept of stewardship, unless ... well ... let's not go there.

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UPDATE: Jake Tapper goes Salamander;

It is no small thing for the king of Jordan, a direct descendent of the Prophet Mohammed, to march in a rally prompted by the murders of people who mocked Islam as well as of innocent Jews -- all of whom were killed by Islamic extremists.

The United States, which considers itself to be the most important nation in the world, was not represented in this march -- arguably one of the most important public demonstrations in Europe in the last generation -- except by U.S. Ambassador Jane Hartley, who may have been a few rows back. I didn't see her. Even Russia sent Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

I say this as an American -- not as a journalist, not as a representative of CNN -- but as an American: I was ashamed.

I certainly understand the security concerns when it comes to sending President Barack Obama, though I can't imagine they're necessarily any greater than sending the lineup of other world leaders, especially in aggregate.

But I find it hard to believe that collectively President Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State John Kerry, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew and Attorney General Eric Holder -- who was actually in France that day for a conference on counterterrorism -- just had no time in their schedules on Sunday. Holder had time to do the Sunday shows via satellite but not to show the world that he stood with the people of France?

There was higher-level Obama administration representation on this season's episodes of "The Good Wife" on CBS.

Photo credit to Brad Thor.

The war against Malaria ... on Midrats

Recently, when one hears of disease and Africa, if you only listened to the media, then what would come to mind would be Ebola.

That is not the real challenge in Africa. There is a disease that not only kills, it impedes economic growth, interferes with good governance, and as a result is just another catalyst to conflict there and in South Asia.

To give a better understanding of the ongoing impact of malaria and the fight against it, our guest the Sunday from 5-6pm Eastern will be Rear Admiral Tim Ziemer, USN (Ret.)

Rear Admiral Tim Ziemer was appointed in June 2006 to lead the President's Malaria Initiative (PMI). The PMI strategy is targeted to achieve Africa-wide impact by halving the burden of malaria in 70 percent of at-risk populations in sub-Saharan Africa, approximately 450 million people, thereby removing malaria as a major public health problem and promoting economic growth and development throughout the region.

PMI is a collaborative U.S. Government effort, led by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) in conjunction with the Department of Health and Human Services (Center for Disease Control and Prevention), the Department of State, the White House, and others. As coordinator, Rear Admiral Ziemer reports to the USAID administrator and has direct authority over both PMI and USAID malaria programs.

Join us live if you can with the usual suspects in the chat room and offer up your questions for our guest, but if you miss the show you can always listen to the archive at blogtalkradio. 

If you use iTunes, you can add Midrats to your podcast list simply by clicking the iTunes button at the main showpage - or you can just click here.

Listen to internet radio with Midrats on Blog Talk Radio

Fullbore Friday

You may have missed one of the most import speeches given in the Arab world in a long time.

From Jonah Goldberg;

The slaughter in Paris Wednesday shocks the conscience but hardly shocks the intellect. In other words, no one is surprised that Muslim extremists are capable of doing this sort of thing. And nearly everyone expected in the early moments of this story that the culprits would be revealed to be Islamic extremists.

It is a sad commentary that the more shocking and, arguably more significant, event came a week earlier in Cairo. Egyptian President (and strongman) Abdel Fattah al-Sisi delivered a possibly epochal speech at Al-Azhar University on New Year's Day. More than a thousand years old, Al-Azhar is considered by many to be the epicenter of scholarly Islam.

Addressing the assemblage of imams in the room, al-Sisi called for a "religious revolution" in which Muslim clerics take the lead in rethinking the direction Islam has taken recently.

Raymond Ibrahim provides and excerpt;

I am referring here to the religious clerics. We have to think hard about what we are facing—and I have, in fact, addressed this topic a couple of times before. It’s inconceivable that the thinking that we hold most sacred should cause the entire umma [Islamic world] to be a source of anxiety, danger, killing and destruction for the rest of the world. Impossible!

That thinking—I am not saying “religion” but “thinking”—that corpus of texts and ideas that we have sacralized over the centuries, to the point that departing from them has become almost impossible, is antagonizing the entire world. It’s antagonizing the entire world!

Is it possible that 1.6 billion people [Muslims] should want to kill the rest of the world’s inhabitants—that is 7 billion—so that they themselves may live? Impossible!

I am saying these words here at Al Azhar, before this assembly of scholars and ulema—Allah Almighty be witness to your truth on Judgment Day concerning that which I’m talking about now.

All this that I am telling you, you cannot feel it if you remain trapped within this mindset. You need to step outside of yourselves to be able to observe it and reflect on it from a more enlightened perspective.

I say and repeat again that we are in need of a religious revolution. You, imams, are responsible before Allah. The entire world, I say it again, the entire world is waiting for your next move… because this umma is being torn, it is being destroyed, it is being lost—and it is being lost by our own hands.

President al-Sisi, Fullbore.

Islam must be fixed from within. We should all pray for al-Sisi and other modernizers like him.

The Carrier Debate

This Friday is an event everyone in the front porch should find of interest, regardless of where you stand on the question.

As cross-posted in other areas, the below is a guest post by a friend to all here, outlining what is happening Friday night.

Claude, over to you;

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“Why is the Naval Academy Museum hosting a debate on the future of aircraft carriers?”

It’s a question I was asked earlier this week about the debate between Jerry Hendrix and Bryan McGrath at USNA’s historic Mahan Auditorium. So let’s break down that question and answer it.

First, why is the Museum hosting this? Part of the Naval Academy Museum’s mission is to educate Midshipmen and the general public on the history of the Navy. While this debate is about the future of aircraft carriers, both debaters and the moderator are extremely well versed in the utility of carriers for much of the past century. In addition, the event was promulgated with additional information about the historical debate on aircraft carriers from the pages of Naval Institute Proceedings since 1922. In conjunction with the debate, the museum also has a special exhibit during January on the history of aircraft carriers. We’ve also produced through LTjg Christopher O’Keefe, the History of the Navy in 100 Objects which includes many videos on aircraft carriers. Our mission also includes demonstrating to the public the contributions of Academy graduates. It would be difficult to imagine today’s utility of aircraft carriers without the contributions of graduates such as Admirals Halsey, Mitscher, and others during World War II or nuclear propulsion guided by Admiral Rickover. This debate is open to the public.

Second, why a debate format? That’s simple. We are very fortunate at the Naval Academy to host a number of informed and recognized guest speakers and lecturers. The Museum, for examples, has a regular lecture series throughout the academic year. Although it may have happened in my ten years teaching at the Academy, I don’t recall a debate about a national security issue. It’s a great format to get to issues a single presenter might not. And, historically, there’s a real periodic tradition of debating naval issues among officers and civilians at least as far back as the Naval Lyceum and Naval Magazine in the 1830s http://www.usni.org/magazines/navalhistory/2014-08/crucible-naval-enlightenment. Both Jerry Hendrix and Bryan McGrath are well-versed in our naval history, articulate, and serious informed navalists whose voices are important in our greater concepts about national security. I, for one, look forward to learning from each side.

Third, why is the Museum involved in a debate on the future? That’s simple. We’re a teaching museum. Ideas about the future, whether they’re about operations, platforms, or strategies, simply don’t occur out of a vacuum. As they say, you can’t know where you’re going until you know where you’ve been. At the museum we’re trying to bridge the gap between our naval heritage and the future. For example, we try to integrate our artifacts in applied history projects with the midshipmen such as with the recently-acquired Mount Suribachi field glasses. In addition, our moderator is Captain CC Felker, USN, Chair of the History Department at the Naval Academy. He’s the author of Testing American Sea Power and holds a doctorate in history.

Finally, I owe mention to our partnership with the United States Naval Institute on this event. For those interested and unable to attend, the United States Naval Institute is livestreaming the event here.

The Museum and the Institute have a long history going back to when Preble Hall was built in 1939 and housed both the Museum and USNI. USNI left the building in 1999 for Beach Hall at Hospital Point but we have an excellent working relationship. We rely heavily on their photographic archives for some of our exhibits and they take photos of some of our collection for their book catalogs and Naval History Magazine.

Members of the Naval Institute will be familiar with the phrase for "To provide an independent forum for those who dare to read, think, speak, and write.” Now it’s time to debate. We hope you’ll listen and join in on the discussion in the pages of Proceedings, elsewhere, or on Twitter (#CarrierDebate).



Claude Berube is Director of the Naval Academy Museum and teaches in the History Department. He is the immediate past chair of Naval Institute Proceedings. The views expressed are his alone and not those of the Naval Academy or the Navy.