Other than the Federal Government, the last bastion of Marxism, higher education, took a hit this week with the U.S. Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision stating that it is unconstitutional to consider race in college admissions. No longer can you just send in your minority picture with no SAT scores to Harvard and be admitted the same day.
A picture paints a thousand words. Unlike Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who when asked what her LSAT scores were, she couldn’t answer, either because she never had to take the test or likely that the scores were embarrassingly low, actual aptitude will be required of future degree candidates.
One can only hope that the end of this unconstitutional academic injustice will quickly transfer to and re-transform corporate America. The bold faced lie of systemic racism and the division that the left has brought to America because of it has seen its pinnacle moment.
The dummying down of academia began in the liberal arts and soft sciences, where other than ideological damage, little harm could physically be done on the populous. Fast forward several decades to the present and you see the bar being lowered in medicine and the physical sciences, where the dream was the “barefoot doctor” of Pol Pot’s Cambodia.
Authoritarian history repeats itself again because you did not recognize it the first time. The mere thought of this taking place in the first world is so preposterous that it hardly seemed worth mentioning.
However, remember that ideology trumps reason or sanity, and if it means unqualified minority doctors, dentists, lawyers, and air traffic controllers, well, that is what you’ll get. Again, because the overriding factor and most important aspect of the position is the image or picture.
The litmus test for you is simple. When you no longer believe what you see, but believe what you are told, you have become indoctrinated in a totalitarian way. A simple example. The University of Pennsylvania swimmer Lea Thomas. A man. Don’t take my word for it, ask the female swimmers who saw him undress in the woman’s room prior to swim meets. Yes, all the male parts present.
However, even after seeing that he is a man, some have been told that, in fact, he is a woman, and should be able to compete against women. The word, or the ideology of the group has thus carried more weight than the individual’s view. Stunning.
While the Supreme Court decision will not directly affect corporate America, the ripple effects are still likely to follow. The myriad of woke companies, from Google to Disney, will almost certainly come under fire in the form of litigation arising from their general workforce hiring of those of underrepresented backgrounds.
Boardrooms across the country have been preparing for this decision and the likely fallout, and have already begun discussing changes to diversity programs. You have to remember that corporate America didn’t really care about the culture wars before they were thrust upon them.
Capitalism churned out products and profits, albeit sometimes at the expense of workers of all backgrounds.
Companies were pressured into getting on board by the legalities of wokeness, and will surely react the same to a litigious environment from the other direction.
The door is now open for a conservative backlash against progressive programs infused into businesses like LGBTQ rights, abortion and racial equity. According to Andrew Turnbull, a labor and employment partner at law firm Morrison & Foerster, “We may see an increase in challenges to those programs because some employees may incorrectly assume this means that their employers can no longer have workplace affirmative action or DEI programs.”
Lawsuits will escalate on both sides as the cultural battle for the soul of corporate America continues. According to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, in the decade from 2011 to 2021, the number of reverse discrimination claims filed with the EEOC dropped from about 4,000 to 2,000 a year, even though two-thirds of the workforce are white people. However, Turnbull says lawyers are seeing an increase in reverse discrimination claims.
One example, earlier this month, a federal jury in New Jersey ordered Starbucks to pay $25.6 million to a former regional manager after determining that the company fired her because she was white.
The boondoggle of ESG, environmental, social, and governance principles has also seen its halcyon.
According to Scott Shepard, director of the National Center for Public Policy Research’s Free Enterprise Project, “If there is any sense in these C-suites, companies will take this as the catalyst, the catapult, the warning they need to get back to not discriminating.” One can only imagine the headaches that corporate human resource folks have to wake up to each day.
The fact is that for most companies there really isn’t a business case to be made for DEI. In a recent survey of 1,500 C-suite executives, board members and department heads by staffing company Kelly found diversity efforts slowing or hitting a plateau.
At a time when workers in general, are being asked to do more with less, the notion of spending additional time on diversity training workshops and courses is a hard sell.
Another recent study by Alex Edmans, Caroline Flammer, and Simon Glossner, noted that “Hiring minorities to tick a box, but failing to ensure that they can thrive and be themselves at work, will achieve neither the financial benefits of cognitive diversity nor the social outcomes of meaningful employment.”
The tide appears to be turning.
