Some universities and companies have been retreating from their obnoxious DEI policies. We can now add Jack Daniel’s to the list.
One of the lamentable ideological fads of recent years, DEI (“Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion”) programs are a vicious form of race-based and sex-based affirmative action.
All such policies subordinate merit to irrelevant but politically preferred physical characteristics.
So far as I know, old-style affirmative action at least was not normally accompanied by mandatory indoctrination and mandatory testimony by applicants about how they would cherish and uphold the ideology of compensatory racial and sexual discrimination. But such indoctrination and litmus tests are standard features of many contemporary DEI regimes.
Which are now minus one, thankfully, as Jack Daniel’s announces that it will be ending DEI initiatives, such as a social credit system and “quantitative workforce and supplier diversity ambitions.”
The Dallas Express says that the whiskey distiller is decoupling from DEI because it is “facing backlash.” Specifically, thanks to the impending attention of Robby Starbuck, “an activist known for successfully putting a spotlight on companies like Harley-Davidson and John Deere” for their DEI policies.
Starbuck said on Twitter that he had been “set to expose” Jack Daniel’s, which perhaps was tipped off by his visiting of employee LinkedIn pages. “We are winning and one by one we will bring sanity back to corporate America.”
He adds that if you want your own workplace’s DEI policies exposed, you can email “tips and evidence” to him at EliminateDEI@protonmail.com.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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4 replies on “Sobering Up After DEI”
In the ’70s, managerial employees at AT&T Bell Laboratories were put through indoctrination sessions for an Affirmative Action programme. The one person whom I observed before and after this conditioning was very much persuaded by it.
(His conditioning unravelled when he subsequently had to supervise a pair of people who were hired under affirmative action. One was unable to meet his responsibilities; the other might perhaps have been unable, but was plainly unwilling.)
I don’t know whether indoctrination sessions were held for non-managerial employees, but certainly propaganda was directed at them by their managers, at least into the late ’80s.
The reason that we are drawn to refer to Affirmative Action when discussing DEI is that DEI is Affirmative Action, suped-up and rebranded. Many people had an expectation that Affirmative Action was on its way out, if not dead; but it came roaring back. Don’t think that DEI is dead now either.
The left doesn’t attended to reasoned argument, and certainly doesn’t accept the political defeats of to-day or of yester-year as permanent. In my lifetime, I’ve seen Marxism, Keynesianism, economic planning, and anti-trust theory crushed intellectually and supposedly interred.
Daniel,
As a new employee at AT&T in 1993 (where I had previously worked as a contractor for a consulting company), my first class was a week of ‘diversity training’. I never had to use it, since I was low-level management. I worked on computer projects, but I never supervised or hired others. The ‘diversity’ curriculum went against everything fought for by civil rights supporters. I did my best to forget all of it. I used to support the Smithsonian and the Nature Conservancy, but stopped all donations to both once I learned what their DEI projects led to.
Thank you for the datum. About 1990, I lost track of what was happening at AT&T with respect to affirmative action programmes.
Like you, I am a former member of the Smithsonian and of the Nature Conservancy.
DEI is an excuse for further and insidious discrimination. The initial error was “affirmative action” compounded by ever expanded victim groups.
Merit is the only sustainable answer!