The idea of diversity for its own sake makes
no sense to me. It is unethical, and the premises and assumptions behind affirmative
action and enforced quotas etc. seem all wrong.
Appointing someone just
because they tick the right boxes often leads to injustice and inefficiency; I
have seen many examples of this for myself.
Some people are fighting for common sense, fairness,
effectiveness and productivity. I have found an inspiring example from the US.
Cypress Semiconductor
This case goes back to 1996, but
it is still relevant – and inspiring. I found online a letter written
by a Mr T. J. Rodgers, the then CEO of US company Cypress Semiconductor, to a
group of nuns, shareholders in the company, in response to their complaint that
the Directors were all white males.
Summary of the complaint
"...Sister
Doris, speaking for the Sisters of St. Francis of Philadelphia as a Cypress
shareholder, expressed the view that a company ‘is best represented by a Board
of qualified Directors reflecting the equality of the sexes, races, and ethnic
groups.’...she closed her letter with the exhortation, ‘We urge you to enrich
the Board by seeking qualified women and members of racial minorities as
nominees.'"
Selections from the response
Mr Rodgers' reply is very well
expressed. It deserves worldwide publicity. It is much too long to reproduce
here, but can be found, together with the full background story, on the Cypress website.
In his position, I might have
been tempted to reply, “Go to hell you stupid old fools”, but the shareholders
must be humoured I suppose. He does tell Sister Doris to
get down from her high horse though!
He points out to her that there
are no qualified people among the groups she mentions, and that appointing people
who do not meet the criteria just for diversity's sake would be immoral because
the result would be a drop in profits, which would mean less money for the nuns
to spend on charitable activities and less income for their retirement. This
was very clever of him!
I particularly like this:
"So,
that's my reply. Choosing a Board of Directors based on race and gender is a
lousy way to run a company. Cypress will never do it. Furthermore, we will
never be pressured into it, because bowing to well-meaning, special-interest
groups is an immoral way to run a company, given all the people it would hurt.
We simply cannot allow arbitrary rules to be forced on us by organizations that
lack business expertise. I would rather be labeled as a person who is unkind to
religious groups than as a coward who harms his employees and investors by
mindlessly following high-sounding, but false, standards of right and wrong.“
Good for him. Choosing
unqualified people because of their race, religion etc. is a lousy and immoral way
to run anything, never mind a technology company. He may be putting profit
first, but that is what he is supposed to do.
Is affirmative action an insult?
T. J. Rodgers said something that
I am not so sure about though:
“A final point with which you
will undoubtedly disagree: electing people to corporate boards based on racial
preferences is demeaning to the very board members placed under such
conditions, and unfair to people who are qualified.“
Positive discrimination and
preferential treatment are certainly unfair to qualified people, but not
everyone who gets a position in this way will feel demeaned or insulted. His
assumption seems like projection to me.
Some people don't realise, some
know very well but don't care, that they only got the job, educational funding,
part in the play or whatever because they are women/black/Muslims or whatever.
Some don't care about progressing on merit and deserving their
position: they just want the publicity, the job title, the salary, the status
or the power. They may think that the name is necessarily the thing.
Is our society being deliberately
sabotaged?
People who push for equality of outcome
rather than equality of opportunity may be well-meaning. They may be genuinely
trying to help what they see as under-privileged people by fighting what they
see as discrimination, oppression and exclusion. But are they unconsciously
following some hidden agenda? Are they being used to sabotage society? They may
not think about the long-term consequences of the changes that they are enforcing,
but they may be controlled by something that knows exactly what it is doing.
Are people like T. J. Rogers fighting a
losing battle not only against what he calls coercive
utopians – I love that expression - but also against invisible enemies?
An ironic ending to the affair
Mr T. J. Rodgers retired in 2016.
The name of the current CEO is Hassane
El-Khoury.
