VROOM! Harley Davidson Back Peddling On DEI
Most motorcycles don't have a "reverse" gear, but that hasn't stopped America's biggest bike brand from backpedaling on its DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) initiatives. A mental image of a rider backing up a bike is a good analogy for the awkwardness of Harley Davidson and other household names such as Tractor Supply and John Deere backpedaling their PR (if not HR) policies on DEI.
Over the last few years, national brands have been revving up their DEI engines under the counsel of so-called PR "experts" who convinced corporate boardrooms that steering marketing and HR policies to cater more to the LGBT community would fuel sales growth.
DEI initiatives and ideas, in theory, are touted as harmless as the Civil Rights Act of 1964. But in fact, they're quite the opposite. Where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and company campaigned for all people to not be treated differently because of the color of their skin, religion, nationality, etc. (we should note that sexual orientation was not included in the Civil Rights Act), DEI policies go in the opposite direction.
Some of these policies call on organizations and individuals to label potential employees and customers based on their gender, race, and even sexual orientation and divide those into groups based on the labels, then rank those groups based on which group has been "historically marginalized" the most, and then those in that group get preferred treatment at the expense of the less marginalized groups.
Of course, a DEI proponent would not describe it this way, but this is what is happening.
What happened to the "blind" application process where even the name of the applicant was kept from the HR manager reviewing applications to avoid the manager assigning a gender or race to the applicant before making a selection of the ones for an interview? This was a feature popular enough to be built into most hiring software programs.
Now, the manager isn't just supposed to know the name, race, gender, etc. of the applicants, but is often expected to base a hiring decision on it.
FAA officials were recorded in February brainstorming ways to make flight less "white male-dominated."
Does this lead to safer skies? If there is anywhere where we should be more concerned about someone's professional competence than their race or skin color, it's 37,000 feet in the air.
I've only mentioned equal treatment for those of different races or genders, or other distinctions covered in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (race, color, religion, sex, or national origin). But the same concept applies to those of different sexual orientations or other differences. The DEI community has so many labels to divide people into that I can't even try to list them here.
All the labeling and pronouning (don't you dare mislabel anyone) drive everything in the opposite direction from what Dr. King and many other champions of civil rights have preached. People are people. There is no need to put a stack of labels on a person. There is no need to fill quotas at an organization or hire someone because you need another Hispanic woman, or white woman, or gay man, or white straight man (just kidding... no one is trying to hire more of those).
People should be considered for employment or any other selective process based on their qualifications for the job and their character, neither of which are apparent from their skin color or gender.
Hopefully, more businesses and organizations will soon wake up to the DEI delusion and go back to treating people like people.ß
