Diversity hires may get people killed!
Airlines are under fire for prioritizing diversity instead of safety after two airplanes made emergency landings due to equipment failure last week.
This doesn’t mean diversity is bad. This means prioritizing diversity over skill is stupid. And unsafe.
The companies and organizations facing scrutiny are United Airlines, Alaska Airlines, the FAA, Cigna Insurance, and Johns Hopkins University.
And don’t forget the Titan Sub that imploded last year was all in on diversity hires too. Before he imploded, CEO Stockton Rush admitting that he excluded “50 year-old white guys” from his company because they weren’t “inspirational” and instead hired for youth and diversity. Could an experienced 50 year-old white guy have saved his life with some better engineering?
The FAA is being called out for a diversity push that includes hiring people with “severe intellectual” disabilities, psychiatric problems and other mental and physical conditions. United Airlines’ CEO says that he aims for 50% diversity for every crew and Spirit Airlines has spent a lot of energy on Pride events but less on safety clearly.
This comes after Johns Hopkins University had to apologize for an email telling everyone they are privileged if they are white, speak English, able bodied, middle aged and more.
Many of these companies say they are doing this for “stakeholder capitalism.” That is the idea that a company shouldn’t answer to the shareholders but instead to society at large. They’re trying to say that diversity hires is for the social good of us all. It’s not if we die because they’ve hired the least qualified candidates! It’s in the interest of the social good to have safe transportation systems where people survive.
