What Hath Diversity Wrought?

On his first day in office Joe Biden told America, “It is the policy of my administration that the Federal Government will pursue a comprehensive approach to advancing equity for all… the Federal Government should have a workforce that reflects the diversity of the American people.  A growing body of evidence demonstrates that diverse, equitable, inclusive, workplaces yield higher-performing organizations.” 

And with those words the Biden administration proceeded to insert diversity, equity, and inclusion, i.e., DEI policies into every aspect of the federal government.  But did anyone in the administration think to ask, “Does diversity expand society’s well-being, or does it just increase its balkanization?”

The president spoke of “higher-performing organizations,” but there’s no scientific evidence that either racial or gender diversity increases performance or profits in the commercial world.  The results of numerous studies on the matter have hardly been dispositive and contain little evidence to support the assertion.  The fact is, research on the matter is split fairly evenly telling us that on balance, the results of diversity are more or less neutral, i.e., diversity neither helps nor harms outcomes.

So, when democrats talk of diversity what they’re really talking about are quotas and race-based promotions.  Meanwhile, most of the push for diversity that we see today is usually based on past violations of some group’s rights.  That being so, one would expect policy makers to be somewhat circumspect before implementing new policies, but they’re not, it’s diversity, diversity, diversity regardless of historical outcomes.

Recently during a commemoration ceremony honoring the desegregation of the military and the federal workforce Joe Biden said, “America’s greatest strength has always been our diversity, and there is no greater testament to this than the success of our military.” But was that an accurate statement?  As Douglas Andrews noted in his recent Patriot Post article: how diverse were American forces at Lexington and Concord, or at Saratoga and Yorktown?  And what about Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, Belleau Wood, Midway,  Guadalcanal, Normandy, Bastogne, Iwo Jima, Okinawa, and the Chosin Reservoir?

These battles, and dozens of others equally successful though not as well known, represent our nation’s finest hours in combat.  And none of these victorious units were “diverse.”  Nor were the Tuskegee Airmen diverse, yet their bravery, valor and victories over the enemy were equally celebrated.  Nor was the legendary 442nd Infantry Regiment diverse, a World War II unit made up almost entirely of Japanese Americans that became the most decorated Army regiment in American military history.

~ When it began ~

Andrews intoned that the president’s statement was either a purposeful lie or an ignorant falsehood.  And to make matters worse, in one ill-thought-out sentence he managed to dimmish the gains in racial equality the military has made over the last three quarters of a century by conflating racism with sexism and gender identity.  Meanwhile the reality of the matter is that the seeds of diversity were planted in the U.S. military during the first Obama-Biden administration.  And those seeds haven’t just taken root, they are now bearing fruit.  I’ll offer just two examples to illustrate.

First, in the summer of 2021 under woke leadership, the United States military sustained what was perhaps its greatest humiliation in its history—the disgraceful withdrawal from Afghanistan that left our NATO allies shaking their heads in collective disbelief.  The entire exercise wasn’t just an abomination, it was an embarrassment and a tragedy on the world stage.  And what was most disturbing about the Afghanistan debacle wasn’t just the shameful flight and the abandonment of a $4,000,000,000 arsenal to terrorists, but as Victor David Hanson wrote, “there was a lack of any repercussions for the culpable officers in charge in theater and in Washington.”

Secondly and perhaps even more damaging, was the ignominy of breaking faith with our NATO allies by suddenly abandoning 40 million Afghans, as millions, including hundreds of thousands of young people watched the news reports of how 12 Marines & a Navy Corpsman – young Americans who were not much older than they were, and in Afghanistan less than 48 hours – were blown to pieces by a suicide bomber due to the incompetence of the military’s woke leadership.

It’s not unrealistic to conclude that a major consequence of the fiasco is how it has affected recruiting – and in case you missed it, the United States Army missed its FY 2022 recruiting goal by a staggering 25%!   And if the military’s, woke and diverse leadership doesn’t come to grips with that reality, I fear the results of our next adversarial engagement will be even more catastrophic.

The simple fact of the matter is that there is neither a scientific nor a historical basis for Biden’s assertions about diversity in the military, yet his words are seldom challenged.  Is it any wonder why then that the administration’s troubled relationship with reality continues?

Quote of the day: “Woke ideology undermines military readiness and undermines cohesiveness by emphasizing differences based on race, ethnicity, and sex.” – Thomas Spoehr, Director, Center for National Defense