Civil Candor

political cynicism for turbulent times

Copyright © 2023 CivilCandor.com

Home » American Ideals and Values » Domestic Abuse and Diversity: Too Easy to Exploit?

Domestic Abuse and Diversity: Too Easy to Exploit?

Last update September 20, 2014Leave a Comment

We choose some unfortunate role models. While doctors risk their lives trying to stop a very scary epidemic on the other side of the globe, we are trying to figure out what to make of some scary domestic abuse from sport figures someone decided should be our heroes.

Quick to seek a little attention from the domestic abuse bandwagon, Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee sent a letter to the NFL that reinforced America’s insistence that being involved in big money professional sports qualifies you to be a role model:

We believe that these high-profile professional leagues are, in many ways, in a position of public trust and should be at the forefront of handling such incidents appropriately.1

Congress is also in a position of public trust. That hasn’t worked out so well, either.

Domestic abuse and diversity have one thing in common

We know now that domestic abuse is not so offensive that it can’t be made worse by exploiting it with the same kind of spin we see in corporate diversity promotional pieces.

Dealing with diversity is a lot like dealing with football’s new domestic violence problem. Everyone likes to believe in diversity, just like everyone likes to believe domestic abuse is wrong. How do we show it? Corporate websites and brochures feature multi-ethnic, gender equal pictures employees must silently snicker at while sitting through meetings about the importance of diversity to business culture. Diversity is thrust at us, but for liberal America corporate diversity has to be a lie. Otherwise, women and minorities would be making piles of money, white males would be vanishing from the face of the earth, and Democrats would have nothing to whine about.

Here’s the truth. Diversity as corporate America understands it is an ugly joke, phony and damaging. It paints a false picture, like only hiring female consultants to deal with football’s PR problem tricks us into seeing domestic abuse in a different light. Is a woman’s perspective essential to understanding that large, overly strong professional athletes shouldn’t hit people, and that we have a legal system to deal with domestic abuse?

Pushing diversity doesn’t make us color or gender blind any more than making a show of hiring experts who are women makes us more sensitive to black eyes. It only exploits the situation with a PR joke that isn’t very funny.

Diversity at work in the White House

We’ve gone the presidential order route for gender and LGBT equality, minor league gestures for federal contractors that make for major league press releases (see: Is Politicizing Sexual Preference Demeaning?). Barack Obama has been a huge proponent of advancing women:

We need more businesses to make gender diversity a priority when they hire and when they promote. Fewer than five percent of Fortune 500 companies have women at the helm.2

Despite his gender-empowering words, our president has shown a tendency to replace departing female Cabinet heads with men: Jeh Johnson swapped for Janet Napolitano, Thomas Perez for Hilda Solis, and John Kerry for Hillary Clinton. A group picture of the Obama Cabinet would still work for most corporate brochures, though. He’s got the ethnic mix about right and his administration has never been shy about making sure we know it. Consider this press release from the director of the White House Domestic Policy Council:

This morning, Katherine Archuleta was sworn-in as the 10th Director of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and will serve as the Federal government’s personnel chief. She will be the first Latina to hold this position. Katherine shares President Obama’s vision for diversity and inclusion in the federal workforce, …3

Ask yourself: how many new employee announcements have you heard at work that include a remark about the person’s race?

If we are supposed to be blind to differences, why are color and gender continually being thrust in our faces in a manner that ensures they won’t be ignored? Government endorses, even enforces diversity. Corporate America embraces it, but then government does an about face, points fingers, and tells the country women and minorities are getting the shaft. If they are really getting great jobs in the numbers we see in stock photos and shareholder reports, does that mean Democrats are lying?

As far as professional sports figures are concerned, why do we bother to suspend players for domestic abuse, drug use, or any other bad behavior? Sanitizing football’s image to convince the public that sports heroes are worthy of our money makes us all look like fools, the same kind of fools that would swallow phony stabs at diversity that show us how the country’s liberal social agenda really works.

Sources

Filed Under: American Ideals and Values Tagged With: ethics

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Apotheosis of Washington. Architect of the Capitol.

Apotheosis of Washington
Architect of the Capitol

BROWSE

This website uses cookies to improve your experience. We'll assume you're ok with this, but you can opt-out if you wish. Read More

In case of sale of your personal information, you may opt out by using the link Do Not Sell My Personal Information

Accept Decline Cookie Settings
I consent to the use of following cookies:
Cookie Declaration About Cookies
Necessary (1) Marketing (0) Analytics (1) Preferences (0) Unclassified (1)
Necessary cookies help make a website usable by enabling basic functions like page navigation and access to secure areas of the website. The website cannot function properly without these cookies.
NameDomainPurposeExpiryType
wpl_user_preference civilcandor.com WP GDPR Cookie Consent Preferences 1 year HTTP
Marketing cookies are used to track visitors across websites. The intention is to display ads that are relevant and engaging for the individual user and thereby more valuable for publishers and third party advertisers.
We do not use cookies of this type.
Analytics cookies help website owners to understand how visitors interact with websites by collecting and reporting information anonymously.
NameDomainPurposeExpiryType
_ga civilcandor.com Google Universal Analytics long-time unique user tracking identifier. 2 years HTTP
Preference cookies enable a website to remember information that changes the way the website behaves or looks, like your preferred language or the region that you are in.
We do not use cookies of this type.
Unclassified cookies are cookies that we are in the process of classifying, together with the providers of individual cookies.
NameDomainPurposeExpiryType
_ga_R6V41C7WZK civilcandor.com --- 2 years ---
Cookies are small text files that can be used by websites to make a user's experience more efficient. The law states that we can store cookies on your device if they are strictly necessary for the operation of this site. For all other types of cookies we need your permission. This site uses different types of cookies. Some cookies are placed by third party services that appear on our pages.
Cookie Settings

Do you really wish to opt-out?