American Businesses can be Woke, or they can be the Best, but they can’t be Both

A cancer that results in organizational atrophy for corporate America, not strength or progress.

“DE&I” (shorthand for “diversity, equity, and inclusion,”) is a handy acronym that has become commonplace in corporate America. As recently as last May some of the hucksters peddling it were lamenting that the COVID-19 pandemic had “stalled” corporate DE&I initiatives; their fortunes reversed when the death of George Floyd and the ensuing riots drove DE&I to the top of American corporations’ list of priorities.

DE&I initiatives are being pitched as “the efforts an institution takes to create a more welcoming environment for people of less privileged identities.” But everyone knows what it really means: the company will be hiring fewer white men, more women and minorities.

Consider what it would do to the NBA as a simple example. Black men account for more than 80-percent of the league’s talent. That’s problematic, of course, because only 27-percent of the NBA’s fans share those players’ skin color. Shouldn’t the product on the court look more like the fans buying the tickets and watching at home, as many corporations now insist should be their basis for hiring talent?

To ostensibly make the product better for fans, imagine that the league decided that only 50-percent of the players entering the league over the coming decade would be Black men. The other 50-percent would, in an effort to achieve diversity, equity, and inclusion, be comprised of other identities that are underrepresented in the NBA, such as whites, Hispanics, and women, the latter of whom currently represent a shocking zero percent among the NBA’s players.

How about “DIE” (Diversity, inclusion, equity)?

This nonsense is all the justification anyone needs to move work out of this country; eventually they’ll have no choice because there will be no educated Americans under 30.

I remember when having “discriminating taste” was a virtue.

All radios and TVs have a discriminator circuit. Without it, all stations would play simultaneously.

We discriminate every day, from what we’ll eat for breakfast, to whether we’ll Cc someone in an email, to what we’ll watch on the boob tube after supper.

If you ever worked for large businesses, then you know they share some common characteristics. Besides being large, they are cumbersome, inefficient, lack focus, have communication problems and are poorly managed in more than one area. I like to say, "they survive despite themselves." This has been the case for decades. The politically correct stuff in 90's made the work environment worse and large businesses even less effective. I can only imagine how all this woke crap is impacting large businesses. They are ripe for major competition, except large businesses do everything possible to stifle competition. They lobby for regulations and tax laws the benefit them and make it difficult for smaller competitors. They collude. They use their wealth to buy and eliminate small competitors.

It seems to me that over the last 30 or so years that large businesses have moved away from the core mission. That is "increase shareholder wealth." Do they even teach that in B school any longer. Large businesses are dominated by all sorts of expenses dedicated not to profit, but to some nebulous social end. It is to the point that they are chasing customers away.

Why? What is so wrong about delivering an excellent product and a decent price in the most efficient and effective manner? Can't large businesses just leave it at that?

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