Meanwhile, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory has some great projects lined up for 2025, which will likely be more successful without DEI interference.
Posted by Leslie Eastman
Legal Insurrection readers may remember my recent post on Neela Rajendra.
Rajendra once held the Chief Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Officer role at NASA’s famous Jet Propulsion Laboratory. She is steeped in the DEI movement, having co-founded the Science of Diversity & Inclusion Initiative (SODI) and advised various organizations on DEI strategies.
The organization retained Rajendra after rebranding her position in an apparent effort to evade President Donald Trump’s executive orders regarding the ending of DEI. She managed to cling to her job, even after 900 others at JPL were terminated.
Less than a week after this evasion came to light courtesy of the Washington Free Beacon, NASA jettisoned Rajendra.
NASA’s jet propulsion laboratory has parted ways with its top diversity officer, Neela Rajendra, after the Washington Free Beacon reported that the lab had changed her title in an effort to keep her.
“Neela Rajendra is no longer working at [the Jet Propulsion Laboratory],” lab director Laurie Leshin said in an all-staff email on Thursday. “We are incredibly grateful for the lasting impact she made to our organization. We wish her the very best.”
Leshin added that the newly formed Office of Team Excellence and Employee Success—intended to replace the DEI team Rajendra had led—would be moved to the Office of Human Resources.
A quick review of Rajendra’s vision for her rebranded role demonstrates that it was clearly DEI by another name.
On Mar. 10, NASA brass sent an email stating Rajendra would now be the “Chief of the Office of Team Excellence and Employee Success” — an office that would be responsible for lab “affinity groups” including the “Black Excellence Strategic Team,” the outlet said.
In a LinkedIn job description, Rajendra stated her job as chief of the newly formed office was focused on “unlocking our potential to Dare Mighty things TOGETHER.”
“I believe this change is essential for [Jet Propulsion Lab’s] future success and aligns well with Neela’s strengths and focus over the last year,” director Leshin wrote to staff at the time in an email obtained by the Beacon.
Rajendra led efforts to diversify NASA, including promoting the “Space Workforce 2030” pledge, which focused on hiring women and minorities.
Thanks to X.com and the rest of the new and revitalized media, “business as usual” will not continue under Trump 2.0. Rajendra was not the first one to be identified as a bitter clinger to the woke ways, nor is she likely to be the last.
However, the swift termination shows that bureaucrats who try to evade the orders of the nation’s Chief Executive are not likely to last long…even under another name.
I would like to point out that JPL has a roster of interesting missions planned, including NISAR (NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar). This is a joint mission between NASA and the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) to monitor Earth’s surface changes, including phenomena like earthquakes, volcanoes, and ice sheet dynamics.
JPL is also involved with the Moon Rover Trio called CADRE (Cooperative Autonomous Distributed Robotic Exploration) project, which consists of three suitcase-sized, autonomous lunar rovers designed to work collaboratively without direct human control. These rovers are part of a technology demonstration aimed at showcasing the potential for cooperative robotic exploration on the Moon and is set to launch sometime later this year.
The Cooperative Autonomous Distributed Robotic Exploration, or CADRE, rovers are a trio of suitcase-sized robotic wheeled explorers for which cooperation is the name of the game. They will fly to the moon’s Reiner Gamma region on the second mission by Houston company Intuitive Machines, where they will act as a proof of concept to showcase how robots can work together on another world without the explicit interference of humans.
“We have been in overdrive getting this tech demo ready for its lunar adventure,” Subha Comandur, the CADRE project manager at JPL, said in a press statement. “It’s been nearly round-the-clock testing and sometimes re-testing, but the team’s hard work is paying off. Now we know that these rovers are ready to show what a team of little space robots can accomplish together.”
All of these great projects will likely be more successful without DEI interference.
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Yes, the focus is back on the science and its planned missions to gather it that is a winning combination that doesn’t care about color or sex but on education and competence.
So NASA as a diverse institution was not educated or competent? Why would that have been?
Any organization which places immutable characteristics like skin colour above competence or education will decline.
This person consumed JPL resources and contributed absolutely nothing. Good riddance.
Why do you believe NASA placed skin color over competence? Do you think NASA was hiring incompetent people? Where is your evidence of that?
You need to read up on DEI. Nothing about competence – all about skin color, sexual orientation, etc.
Right, DEI doesn’t preclude hiring based on competence, so why is that being alleged? The implication seems to be that if you have a diverse workforce, it can’t be a competent one. Is that what you are all meaning to imply?
If they’re competent they don’t need to be hired by their skin color and there’s absolutely no need for a DEI office in the first place.
DEI isn’t a process for race-based hiring (an illegal practice, as so many have kindly pointed out). That isn’t what NASA’s DEI initiative did.
Stop the stupid lies, no one here are being fooled by the foot in the mouth statements YOU are making as DEI is clearly discriminatory as the internal e-mail made very clear when they tried to hide her under a new title.
And once again, AlanJ demonstrates that he can’t or won’t see anything the party doesn’t want him to see. DEI is nothing but racism, it’s putting race ahead of all other factors when hiring. As you say, it is illegal, but the left pushes it anyway.
I know nothing about NASA’s DEI initiative.
What was it supposed to achieve? Hopefully, it had nothing to do with the fairytale that all people are “created equal”, or that “disadvantaged” people should be treated differently.
Maybe you could explain.
If race based hiring is illegal, why is DEI needed?
Meritocratic employment standards are inherently non-discriminatory.
Your point is correct, but there is a bit of context needed.
Discrimination, like segregation are neutral words that have been weaponized. People discriminate all the time. If I choose a hamburger over chicken I am discriminating. If I put my socks in one drawer and my tee shirts in a different drawer, I am segregating.
What makes either fall into the bad category is the context and purpose. The civil rights and equal opportunity employment laws define what is allowed and not allowed.
Hence, meritocratic standards are inherently discriminatory. The discriminator is competence. They favor capable hires over less qualified. Even employment segregates. Management is in a different classification than workers.
So your question of why is DEI needed is quite valid indeed.
And there is never any racism or discrimination in current hiring decisions whatsoever. Nobody has ever been refused a job because of their sex or ethnicity. DEI practices are needed precisely because of historical and ongoing discrimination in hiring practices.
Meritocracy is inherently non-discriminatory.
Not if the systems in which the “meritocracy” operates are inherently discriminatory.
Inherently discriminatory on what basis?
Please be precise.
But the current system is not a meritocracy. Take Boris Johnson for example — there is no way he became prime minister on merit. Having parents rich enough to send you to Eton and Oxford is not evidence of merit.
His was a democratic vote. Nothing to do with meritocracy, other than people believed him to be the best man for the job.
I don’t know if you really are this stupid, or if you are merely being paid to beclown yourself.
If your first focus is race, then it can’t be competence. It’s really pretty simple, once you are willing to take off the ideological blinders.
It could be competent but not AS competent as an organization which focuses on finding the TOP talent irrespective of race, religion, color, gender.
If your hiring practices are discriminatory or exclusionary, you definitively are not finding the TOP talent irrespective of those things.
“If your hiring practices are discriminatory or exclusionary, you definitively are not finding the TOP talent irrespective of those things”
So you are totally against DEI hiring principles..
Why not just say so !
As you pointed out earlier, discrimination is illegal.
Meritocracy is by nature non-discriminatory.
Just cut to the chase and call people racist. Idiot.
I’d prefer to get them to just admit it themselves, then I’m not making any assumptions.
Typical leftist garbage. You people are shameless.
Yeah, DEI amounts to racial discrimination. Some races are deliberately excluded, and some are included.
A crime has been committed against those who have been deliberately excluded because of their race.
DEI is not just about race.
I can’t speak knowledgeably about JPL, but I could give you numerous instances where similar circumstances led to a woman being hired that was not the most qualified applicant. I see no reason why JPL would be immune to similar outcomes.
They would have to in USA. Today’s graduating classes are diverse, but please find a chart of whatever factors you think define diversity from top science schools from 30 years ago.
It right there in the link you clearly didn’t read,
“Hiring women and minorities” does not mean “finding unqualified candidates and hiring them on the basis of the sex or ethnicity.” It means recruiting more qualified candidates from these pools and ensuring that NASA’s hiring practices do not inadvertently (or explicitly, though less likely) exclude them.
You left out two key words: “Focused on…”.
Hiring women and minorities should not be the focus of any organization. Hiring competent people, regardless of sex or ethnicity, should.
It’s the focus of a pledge, not the focus of NASA as an organization. But regardless, the pledge did not say “hiring women and minorities at the expense of qualified candidates.” This point is moot.
That is utter stupidity
It is not moot.
Simply because you do not accept it doesn’t mean it is pushed it to the periphery where it doesn’t carry weight.
Diversity for the sake of diversity is not helpful. It is harmful to those that see the primary goal (or focus, for those that don’t really work) as a job well done.
If the candidates from those pools are better qualified for a job, they’ll get it anyway.
As you pointed out earlier, discrimination is illegal.
And there you go again.
First question, NASA, like most organizations run by the left, put racism above competence, it’s what they have done for the last 70 years. As to why, it’s because most leftists are racist. They believe that minorities can’t succeed unless they are being guided by white liberals.
Nobody said anything about hiring incompetent people, that’s your lie.
What they have been doing is selecting race first, and competence second. That will always result in a less competent work force.
>What they have been doing is selecting race first, and competence second.
This is what you keep insisting, but no one in this thread has been able to demonstrate that NASA was breaking the law in this way.
You just accepted that they were hiring based on race..
That is racist and is now against the law.
Not hiring based on race, trying to adjust their hiring practices so that they are more diverse and include more people from marginalized groups. Hiring someone based on their race has been illegal since the passage of the civil rights act, Trump’s EO did nothing whatsoever to change.
“ trying to adjust their hiring practices so that they are more diverse and include more people from marginalized groups”
So they ARE based on race, gender etc……
Thanks.. that is exactly what we have been telling you.
All your comments show you are totally against DEI processes.
Just talk to the people involved, they will tell you that is exactly what they are doing.
Merit based employment (not NASA).
Really?
I sincerely wish I could unsee those photos.
“Do you think NASA was hiring incompetent people? ”
Yes
“Where is your evidence of that?”
They gave a job to Neela Rajendra
Neela Rajendra has over a decade of experience working in diversity and inclusion, leadership development, and organizational strategy across several sectors. On what basis are you claiming she is incompetent? (Bonus points if you can navigate this conversation without exposing yourself as a misogynist or virulent racist).
Your notion of misogyny is anything resisting your misandry in Education nowadays to bring up the next generation of Greta fruitcakes that can help take over and continue the company line-
Alexa has been grappling with ‘climate anxiety’ since she was a teenager
Be very afraid give us your money and do as we say.
Sorry WTF has a “decade of experience working in diversity and inclusion, leadership development” got to do with skills needed by NASA. What you need those skills to design or launch a rocket?
The ex Nazis recruited after WW2 weren’t good on DEI but they knew how to build a rocket.
Her role at NASA was “Chief Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Officer.” I’d say 10+ years of experience working in this space is directly relevant to her role. You might be shocked to learn that NASA has more than just rocket engineers on staff.
She was not able to reasonably justify her continued employ.
… One sign of a lack of competence as associated with her position.
“Neela Rajendra has over a decade of experience working in diversity and inclusion, leadership development,”
I rest my case, Your Honour
The range of abilities encompassed by the word “competent” is huge. I am a competent chess player. I know all the rules and have many years playing chess as an amateur. My rating is 1250. Same with basketball. I am quite competent in basketball. Put me in charge of the Lakers!
Do you want a competent engineer or a great engineer? Do you want somebody who works 9-5 and has a life, or some guy with a genius IQ who is obsessed with engineering projects and dreams about them?
What is wrong with wanting to work 9-5 and having a life? It seems like a much better option that having to sleep on the factory floor just so that Elon Musk or some other billionaire can make some more money.
And the trouble with “some guy with a a genius IQ” is that (a) there are very very few of them and also they are unlikely to work well in a team and will actually be counter-productive to the project overall. And they certainly will not make good managers which will result in the best people leaving to find jobs that allow them to have a life.
My understanding is it was Musk who slept on the factory floor, not his employees (unless they wanted to).
Musk is considered a genius and has built a team manufacturing EV’s.
I am totally insulted. I have a genius IQ. I work very well in teams. I have been very successful as a manager when I did my turn at that. I preferred technical so I reverted back to being a Rocket Scientist/Engineer.
It’s all about the priorities, dude. If the organizational imperative is to defy the civil rights law which forbids discrimination on age, gender, race, national origin, etc etc. and make DEI the priority, the organization’s performance (besides being illegal) inevitably suffers as compared to hiring and promoting solely on the basis of merit and past job performance.
Any evidence, like any whatsoever, that NASA was engaged in race-based hiring? As you say, discriminatory hiring is illegal under the civil rights act.
Part of DEI is by its very definition and actual application racist and incompetent, and therefore illegal…would you,prefer a DEI medical grad. to work on a brain tumor in your head, or an actual truely trained surgeon?
Is that part of the definition of DEI? Could you articulate precisely what you think DEI is? What is a “DEI medical grad?” Why are “DEI medical grads” not trained?
Alan, the ‘E’ in DEI stands for ‘equity’, which in modern parlance is shorthand for ‘equality of outcome’, which ultimately requires quotas or some other form of coercion to achieve.
You are free to disagree, of course, but you’re not going to succeed in gaslighting those of us who have spent hours in what amounts to the Left’s current version of a ‘struggle session’.
That’s a good question. I experienced, teaching pre-meds, the oxymoron Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity in academia decades ago and have read that it was preceded for federal employees much earlier. We were already desegregated. Somehow the whole culture appeared to change, a form of bigotry discriminating against all sorts with the difficult to define race not included or even preferential. In some cases it put degrees (and other such) and professions therein above experience and competence. Texas and others made DEI illegal which is unfortunate as another example of dealing with a structural problem with centralization which is where it may have come from. Where is there available a reasonable overall brief as possible tracing, already predicted in many forms, of this overall development which includes the shallow changing of definitions, like gender instead of sex?
Someone who became (and remained) a student as a part of patronage scheme, rather than someone who qualifies.
It follows that if they could enter the competitive way, they would not need a patronage scheme to be there, now would they? Once there, they know they don’t need to put quite as much effort into their training… unless too stupid to realize this.
Then there’s the whole part where both those who receive and provide said training put up with the quality being treated as strictly less important than the patronage scheme. Which tend to attract moochers and embezzlers while repulsing higher-quality people. This reduces amount of the grads in this subset being on par with those who entered by competition by sheer coincidence.
Thus expecting students who entered via patronage scheme to be as good as those who entered the competitive way does not make sense.
And expecting that specifically you will happen to get the rare one who happens to have just the right combination of high talent and low self-esteem and would have been there anyway… it’s laughable level of wishful thinking.
If someone graduates medical school, it should stand to reason that they have adequate training, right?
No, why? It’s not some sort of voodoo that makes people qualified via blessed touch.
If a medical school is not allowed to maintain its own standards for enlisting students, assumption that it somehow has uncontested power to retain its own standards for not flunking the same students at any point later is not reasonable at all.
For one, it could be circumvented by simply enlist more students and kick the excess out via competitive exams very soon later. Then all that would be achieved by the patronage scheme is embarrassment (plus expenses for the schools… mitigated by not using really expensive teachers until the real entry exams).
Once upon a time.
Look at Harvard.
DEI is indefinable. That’s the problem!
All the evidence you need is that there was a Chief Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Officer.
Yes, discriminatory hiring is illegal under the civil rights legislation. But it has been done regardless first under the banner of Affirmative Action, and then under that of DEI.
Its not just hiring and promotion in business, either, its proliferated in education in the US. The phenomenon of Kamala Harris is only explicable by its prevalence in politics.
And you should be able to see how, judged from your own point of view, this leads to catastrophic results. The Democratic Party picked a candidate who ticked all the DEI boxes, but who was also probably the only senior Democrat politician in the nation who couldn’t beat Trump.
Eating their own dog food…
The Supreme Court, back in the 70’s, ruled that it was OK to discriminate against whites and men, if that was the only way to compensate for past discrimination.
They left it up to the racists on the left to decide as to whether continued racism was the only possible solution to past racism, and how long this new racism could be permitted to continue.
Then why was DEI necessary if the laws against discrimination were already in place which no one here objects to at all.
LOL, you really need to slow down as you just gained a hole in your foot!
Anti-discrimination legislation only addresses overt bias in hiring, it doesn’t address systemic barriers which produce unequal outcomes. If you think addressing those barriers is necessary, then some framework for addressing them (DEI) is necessary.
HAW HAW HAW HAW HAW…..,
NO! the law covered it adequately DEI was never necessary from legal standpoint since it was already addressed by Congress with legal force.
Here is the law in sections which covers EVERYTHING:
I. What Are the Federal Laws Prohibiting Job Discrimination?
The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) enforces all of these laws. EEOC also provides oversight and coordination of all federal equal employment opportunity regulations, practices, and policies.
Other federal laws, not enforced by EEOC, also prohibit discrimination and reprisal against federal employees and applicants. The Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 (CSRA) contains a number of prohibitions, known as prohibited personnel practices, which are designed to promote overall fairness in federal personnel actions. 5 U.S.C. 2302. The CSRA prohibits any employee who has authority to take certain personnel actions from discriminating for or against employees or applicants for employment on the bases of race, color, national origin, religion, sex, age or disability. It also provides that certain personnel actions can not be based on attributes or conduct that do not adversely affect employee performance, such as marital status and political affiliation. The CSRA also prohibits reprisal against federal employees or applicants for whistle-blowing, or for exercising an appeal, complaint, or grievance right. The CSRA is enforced by both the Office of Special Counsel (OSC) and the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB).
LINK
This was so easy to expose your profound ignorance of the laws already on the books that covers race, sex, age, religion, national origin, Pay equitability, age, disability.
You are looking foolish now.
Yes, thank you for detailing how the laws prohibit discriminatory hiring practices. As I said, they do not address systemic barriers to inclusion, diversity, and equity. DEI programs can certainly be as simple as ensuring compliance with civil rights legislation, but they often are (and ought to be) more comprehensive.
AlanJ writes this dead end statement:
You are clearly taken in by this stupid propaganda since the law already addresses the “barriers” you drone on with.
Race, sex, age, religion, national origin, Pay equitability, age, disability.
No one here is going to respect your stupidity on this one.
I remember when kids in school, who did their homework and tried to pay attention in class, were ostracized for trying to act white.
Will you name some “systemic barriers” to inclusion, diversity, and equity?
Define “systemic barriers to inclusion” please.
Thinking that the human condition will ever be able to be engineered to be “equal” is batshit batty.
There are waaaay too many variables to life as we know it.
Even “the poor” (who apparently will always be with us) have so many degrees of variations in their conditions that engineering an outcome described as “equal” is a fools’ errand.
“Equal” between themselves, or “equal” to say the Pope or Elon?
You don’t have to believe that we can achieve perfect equality of outcome to believe that we should address systemic bias. Organizations like NASA can participate in this effort by administering DEI initiatives.
Your position seems to be “we can’t make it perfect so why even bother trying to make it better.”
The idea that more racism is going to make things better, is the kind of nonsense that only a leftist is capable of believing.
“Equity” means reducing everyone to the lowest common denominator, instead of letting the cream rise to the top.
You continue to talk about “systemic bias”. Please provide concrete examples over and above “[r]ace, sex [gender], age, religion, national origin, Pay equitability, age, disability” etc.
Sure. Take SAT scores. There is a strong correlation between socioeconomic status and SAT scores. Poor students are not competing in a fair competition: they have less support at home, they are less likely to get tutoring or test prep, they are less likely to have a parent that took the SAT or went to college, they are more likely to have an after school job that prevents them from studying, etc.
This admissions process is not deliberately excluding poor students, and is arguably “fair” because we do not even know the income of the students applying. But surely you can see that this systemic bias in favor of wealthy children will be perpetuated if we run admissions this way.
This is just an example among many. Consider how job postings are circulated: if a company only posts to networks where certain demographics dominate, they will disproportionately attract applicants from that group, even if all applicants are treated equally once they arrive.
When the systems themselves are biased, neutral policies (no-DEI) don’t create fairness, they preserve a status quo.
So you’d be in full agreement that Trump’s move to do away with the US Education Dept is the right move to eradicate such dysfunctional systems?
Hey, Alan – glad we can agree on such a key point. 🙂
That’s one explanation. Another is that poor parents don’t place the emphasis on education that wealthy parents do.
The fact remains that SAT scores almost perfectly reflect performance in college. If poor kids are doing poorly on the SAT, the solution is to give them better educational opportunities in high school. The solution is not to just ignore the SATs. During the 80’s, many schools did what you advocate and invented excuses that they used to ignore the SATs. The only result was that huge numbers of minority students flunked out of colleges that they weren’t academically prepared for.
Rather than deal with that problem, colleges decided to paper it over. They instructed professors that they had to grading had to be racially balanced, regardless of actual performance. They also guided minority students into “easier” majors.
So instead of flunking out non-performing students, the colleges found some way to graduate them.
Now we have these cadres of poorly prepared graduates hitting the job markets. A few years later we find that minorities aren’t advancing up the career ladders as fast as other students.
Instead of blaming the fact that so many of them had been passed along, ill-prepared, the left invented “structural racism” to explain the failure of their previous programs.
I detect some pretty strong prejudice lurking beneath the surface of your missive.
Of course, I’m not advocating that we should ignore standardized testing, I’m arguing that we need to consider a student holistically rather than simply relying on standardized testing as a singular measure of merit. Universities shouldn’t value only the student who performed the best when conditions were ideal. They should value the students who have showed the most resilience, the most growth, the most character, and the most determination to overcome obstacles. These students bring important, unique, and valuable perspectives to the campus community, and will bring those perspectives to the world when they graduate.
As for your sweeping, outlandish claims about minority students, grading conspiracies, and “unprepared graduates,” you’ve offered no sources, no evidence, and no credibility. Come back when you’ve done your homework.
“They should value the students who have showed the most resilience, the most growth, the most character, and the most determination to overcome obstacles.”
In which case they would probably have achieved enough to be judged on their academic merit.
You have provided no evidence for your claims.
MIT tried your holistic approach. It lasted 2 years before they reverted back to SATs and grades. Why? Those were the best indicators that the enrolled students would succeed in college.
MIT suspended their standardized test requirements during the COVID pandemic due to the inability of students to take standardized tests, not as part of a DEI initiative. MIT’s research has shown that standardized tests are an important component of assessing students from diverse backgrounds because, in their words, “the standardized exams are most helpful for assisting the admissions office in identifying socioeconomically disadvantaged students who are well-prepared for MIT’s challenging education, but who don’t have the opportunity to take advanced coursework, participate in expensive enrichment programs, or otherwise enhance their college applications.”
That is to say, MIT requires standardized test scores precisely for DEI admissions initiatives, and they certainly don’t consider them in a vacuum.
Excellent. Nothing wrong with stability. If you prefer anarchy or dictatorship, first you have to generate instability.
Go your hardest – I wish you luck. Don’t come crying if you don’t succeed.
There is also an extremely strong, almost certainly causal correlation between fatherlessness and poor academic and social outcome. Thomas Sowell has written extensively on this. Perhaps you should read one or two of his books. You will probably find it extremely uncomfortable as it will demolish your entire world view.
I’m familiar with Sowell. I’ve also read scholars who base their arguments on broader empirical evidence, not just ideology. I’d recommend reading Raj Chetty, William Julius Wilson, or even the Pew Research Center’s deep-dive on family structure and race. But if you’re only comfortable citing authors who confirm your worldview, then maybe you’re the one who should do some uncomfortable reading.
I have only read the Wikipedia entry on Chetty, but it is clear he is in agreement with Sowell that family structure is an important factor in determining outcomes.
I’ll look up the other authors you mention, but many thanks for confirming my point so far.
That was addressed a long time ago and the tests were appropriately revamped.
Now talking about poor means that we have to lower the outcome standards for everyone in order to get your definition of equity.
FYI, equity means being fair, not guarantying success.
Systemic barriers are good.
Bleat all you like, see if I care.
People should be free to employ whomever they like, for any reason they choose. Why are you opposed to freedom? Scared?
Kudos to you for having the stones to say the quiet part out loud and admit that you’re in favor of racial discrimination. It’s vile, but I appreciate the candor.
I’m in favour of all forms of discrimination. Racial, ethnic, religious, and all the rest – just like you, apparently. Your opinion is that my opinion is “vile”. Good for you. Maybe you could tell me why I should value your opinion more than my own, but I doubt it.
Are you one of those people who is biased against people like myself, because I believe in absolute freedom of speech?
You might even believe that you have the right to dictate whom I should like, and whom I should avoid. If so, you are sadly mistaken.
As Winston Churchill said –
You sound a bit like “everyone” – why not let people decide for themselves? You might think your opinions have some value, but it would take every opinion you have ever expressed in your life (plus $5 cash) to buy a $5 cup of coffee.
Feel free to carry on like an impotent dimwit, I don’t mind.
The point is it isn’t NASA role or function to worry about equity outcomes that is for social services departments.
Define “systemic bias” please.
It’s the term applied when you can’t find any evidence of actual bias but nevertheless want to want to claim that bias exists.
Sure. Systemic bias refers to the way that institutions, like schools, courts, housing markets, or the job market. can produce unequal outcomes for different groups, even without any explicitly biased individuals involved. It’s about patterns of disadvantage that emerge from the way systems are built or operate. For example, if schools in predominantly Black neighborhoods consistently receive less funding because of how we tie school budgets to local property taxes, that’s a form of systemic bias. No single person caused it, but the system produces inequality all the same.
That’s assuming schools in predominantly black areas receive less funding, which isn’t true in all (probably few) cases.
In any event, campaign for the funding dilemma to be changed, it’s not an excuse to impose DEI across the board when those conditions aren’t across the board.
And if local property tax in black areas are low doesn’t that suggest the undesirability of the area thanks to elevated crime levels, lack of care, social dysfunction etc?
It’s a community issue which, again, shouldn’t be applied to every other area of society, including employment.
There are plenty of exceptional people who have emerged from deprived black areas, just as there are plenty of exceptional people who have emerged from deprived white areas.
We can attack the problem from multiple angles as a society. Increased funding to address disparity in historically black neighborhoods is good, but doesn’t preclude DEI efforts. And DEI efforts are not and never have been “imposed across the board.” Organizations chose to implement these frameworks willingly.
So Biden mandating DEI on NASA was NASA imposing the framework willingly?
You start with the false assumption that NASA has systemic bias, which is not proven and untrue.
I never said NASA has a “systemic bias.” I said that NASA, like all other organizations, exists within a social context where systemic barriers are present.
If you can’t find it and measure it, it doesn’t exist.
Like most racists on the left, you assume that the only possible reason why 70 years of racism in favor of minorities, hasn’t fixed the problem, is because racism still exists.
Your small and petty minds can’t grasp the idea that racism wasn’t the only problem.
What was the problem? Be specific and direct.
What a simple mind you have. You actually believe that there can be only one explanation? There are as many explanations as there are workers at these companies.
There’s differing motivations.
There’s differing training.
There’s differing abilities.
There’s differing home conditions.
and so on.
So what, besides systemic barriers, specifically affects these things in such a way that it produces disparate outcomes for members of these minority groups? Why wouldn’t these factors produce roughly the same outcomes for members of all racial and ethnic groups?
See my remark above concerning the negative effects of fatherlessness in Black families.
You seem remarkably obtuse.
What drives the higher rates of fatherlessness in Black communities? You’re just kicking the can down the road by naming it without explaining it. My explanation is that these patterns stem from policies and historical forces, like redlining, mass incarceration, disinvestment in public schools, and job loss in urban centers. In other words, they’re not just random cultural failings, they’re the product of over a century of institutional racism and structural inequality.
Good, at least you now acknowledge fatherlessness as a factor in the disparities between Blacks and other communities. We’re making progress!
Thomas Sowell explicitly addresses the causes of the disintegration of the Black family. None of the factors you list have anything to do with it as they are consequences, not causes. Instead, he traces it to LBJ’s Great Society project, which encouraged Black women to rely on the State rather than on their husbands or boyfriends to pay for child-raising.
Look at any photos of Black America prior to the 1960’s and compare with today. The contrast is shocking.
We acknowledge that the trend exists. Buy you haven’t been able to articulate why you think the trend exists, beyond airy references to Sowell. And Sowell’s explanation is not compelling. Why don’t we see the same patterns in fatherlessness across all groups, given that welfare programs expanded for all Americans?
Fatherlessness is far more than a “trend”, it’s central to the problem. The intact nuclear family is the best environment for producing successful, well-balanced offspring, and this statement holds for all cultures and ethnicities. Yet Leftist clowns like you continue to do your best to destroy the institution of marriage.
Why don’t we see the same patterns in fatherlessness across all groups, given that welfare programs expanded for all Americans?
How do you know that we don’t? The problem is worst among Black people, but is now gaining among other ethnicities, even East Asians.
Why is it worst among black people? Come on, say it with your chest.
Urban Black culture aided and abetted by creepy, pandering “anti-racist” leftists like you. Not difficult.
Another kick of the can down the road. What influences and drives urban black culture? Is it perhaps the very structural forces of society I’ve cited? Or do you believe maybe it’s something inherent to black people specifically? Say what you mean.
What influences and drives urban Black culture? Err, perhaps Black people?
This may come as a shock to you, but Black people have agency and autonomy. They are NOT the little robots devoid of an inner life, dependent on the good will of patronising White saviours like you.
Recall what the late Malcolm X said about White Liberals. He called them the worst enemies of Black people. Every time you post you merely confirm the truth of this.
So your argument is that black people, not history or policy or economics, just chose negative aspects of their culture, freely inventing dysfunction absent any external forces? And that the resulting disparities are entirely their fault?
Be honest here. Are you saying there’s something about Black people themselves, something cultural, psychological, or maybe even biological, that just produces worse outcomes? Because if not, then you have to account for the conditions under which that “urban culture” emerged. And if you are saying that, then just say it clearly so everyone can see what you’re arguing.
This isn’t about denying agency. It’s about acknowledging the context in which people exercise it. Black people don’t lack agency, but they also don’t make choices in a vacuum. No one does.
Because the dema have targeted them as a group, taken advantage of them, and abused them.
Interesting take. Why were they targeted? What made them so susceptible to the abuse and manipulation? You guys will say anything but what you actually think, won’t you?
The take is reality.
Why does Hillary, at times, speak as if she is trying to sound more black?
Why does AOC change her speech patterns with different audiences?
Why, after 60 years of dem & minority rule are the large urban areas worse off for minorities today?
Is it because I am racist? The answer is ‘no’. (I don’t go to the cities or have anything to do with their governance; Hillary doesn’t know me & doesn’t alter what she does based on my potential racist bent; AOC doesn’t know me & doesn’t alter what she says/does based on my biases.)
If you want to talk about racism just say so. First thing you have to do though is define it so we can have an honest conversation. Get your own thoughts out there … take a look at yourself (are you a dem, and have you supported their racist practices for the last 50 years?).
You still didn’t answer the question. Why black people specifically? You say Democrats “targeted” and “abused” them, but what made black communities uniquely vulnerable to that abuse, compared to other groups that were also exposed to poverty, political manipulation, or welfare policy?
You say “this is reality” but you’re skipping the hard part of explaining why that reality exists. If you think black communities just happen to be worse off after 60 years of voting Democrat, then you’re still left explaining why those voters had fewer opportunities and worse outcomes to begin with.
You brought up race, Hillary’s speech patterns, AOC’s code-switching, and “minority rule,” and now you want me to define racism for you? Okay: racism is the belief that a person’s race explains or determines their value, behavior, or potential. If you’re not saying that black people are inherently more prone to dysfunction… then what are you saying? And if you are saying that… then just say it.
I am saying that people take advantage of identy politics and/or that they truly are (friendly type) racist but won’t admit it (Hillary, AOC, Sharpton, Jessie Jackson, you, etc) are responsible.
I will recommend a more detailed explanation for you, to come from Thomas Sowell, who is more knowledgable, experienced, and smarter than me.
I don’t personally know anyone that believes an individuals’ race determines their value, behavior, or potential.
I believe they are out there. I have spent time with working class Japanese … I saw the racism there … not directed at me, but other Orientals. (That last bit is a trolling joke just for d-bags among us)
I’m well familiar with Sowell’s views, and I don’t care about them. I want to understand your views, specifically.
Do you believe black people are inherently prone to disfunction? That is the natural conclusion of the stance you have presented. And if so, why do you believe they are inherently prone to disfunction?
As I said above, I don’t personally know anyone that believes an individuals’ race determines their value, behavior, or potential. That includes me.
Groups coalesce, create a certain culture, and thrive in a certain way based on that culture. Other groups (or those within the same group) can take advantage of certain cultural inadequacies.
Your natural conclusion, based on your personal logic and obvious biases, leads you to believe incorrectly. You need to stop judging people based on your own outlook. Other people aren’t as nasty as you.
AlanJ was a simple, single, one size fits all answer.
I am willing to bet AlanJ has an unshakeable belief that CO2 is the control knob for the climate, too.
Who cares? Steven Hawkings seems a bit non-average to me, but he seemed to do alright.
Systemic discrimination is like the Loch Ness Monster – everybody talks about, but no one has ever seen it.
Competency is one of those barriers that produce unequal outcomes.
The fact that they had an office of DEI, is pretty damning evidence. Any scientist or engineer good enough to work at JPL, is going to rise to the top and not need DEI.
Surely you jest! JPL apparently employed incompetent people, who have now been fired. Or are you implying that JPL management is incompetent, and should be sacked?
JPL is just another Government sheltered workshop, giving employment to people who either can’t or won’t get another job.
Go on, tell me how the human race has benefited from anything that JPL has done. “Reaching for the stars” doesn’t count for much, does it?
Erm, JPL has fueled technological advances that have ultimately benefitted everyone.
Any scientist or engineer good enough to work at JPL, is going to rise to the top and not need DEI.
So why is an office of DEI and so forth needed at JPL.
You just defined merit based.
I don’t think you’re being serious with your comments. Either that, or you have a poor grasp of the English language. No one can be that dense.
hey, he believes in climate change.
Case closed
When your paycheck requires one to believe stupid things, you will be amazed what people are willing to believe.
“no one can be that dense” – Nothing is foolproof to the expert fool! 😉
Quote from the effing article:
“an office that would be responsible for lab “affinity groups” including the “Black Excellence Strategic Team,”
How clear do you want it?
If they are employing DEI, that’s all the evidence you need.
DEI is prima facie evidence of favored interest group hiring. The Supreme Court has declared it so.
DEI Rule #1….. NO STRAIGHT WHITE MEN !!
DEI Rule #1….. NO STRAIGHT WHITE MEN !!
Copy that.
Also, if you are white, especially if you are a white male, you are racist.
Talk about racial profiling!
The existence of DEA?Never mind those herd photos
https://web.archive.org/web/20160215020246/www.jpl.nasa.gov/edu/news/2016/2/11/celebrating-women-in-science
https://web.archive.org/web/20180923210629/mars.nasa.gov/resources/7705/women-in-science/
Yup. The initial purpose of which, obviously, was to create power for the state bureaucrats to explicitly control all jobs both in state and private sectors.
But once the foot is in the door, its demonstratively selective enforcement seems to mainly exist as a way to show the plebes where the power is.
Now the real powers that be figured letting their cheeky lackeys whizz on the crowd from a balcony is not their main priority, so the show’s closing. Funny how this rolls.
“Any evidence, like any whatsoever, that NASA was engaged in race-based hiring?”
It’s literally in the definition of DEI.
You’re a troll. There is no way you believe any of this.
Keep going, the best disinfectant is sunlight
Race isn’t the only objective of DEI.
By definition, ‘Diversity Equity and Inclusion’ indicates that the objective is to diversify employment away from meritocratic standards; Equity indicates that it will be based on outcomes not equal rights; Inclusion indicates quotas which do not, by its nature, tolerate meritocracy.
You know as well as the rest of us that allowing men to compete in women’s sport is unethical, but demanded by DEI.
Employing men just because they are dressed as women is equally unethical. They have already demonstrated they have psychological issues, in that, they refuse to accept they are biological men. If they can’t accept the reality of their biological sex, what other realities are they unable to accept?
Insisting that ethnic groups from deprived backgrounds are all thick is as implausible and insulting as assuming all kids from a privileged background are all geniuses.
How does DEI work when a white, disabled, transgender job applicant from a deprived background competes against a straight black, able-bodied male from a privileged background?
This is a pretty tangled, emotionally charged comment. DEI isn’t just about employment, but DEI hiring is not about removing merit from the equation, it’s about trying to remove systemic bias from the equation. And it doesn’t prescribe hiring quotas – I agree that race-based hiring quotas are a misapplication of the principle. The reality is that we don’t have a meritocracy and have never had one.
There are almost too many layers of absurdity to unpack here. Transgender women are not suffering under a delusion. They fully recognize that they have male sex organs. They accept the reality of their biological sex, and find that it conflicts with their internal gender identity. Sometimes this misalignment produces feelings of distress.
But it is simply false on its face to suggest that mean are being employed just “because they are dressed as women.” Under DEI or any other framework. Here it’s rather obvious that if you were a hiring manager interviewing a transgender applicant, they would face immense prejudice and undue bias during the hiring process. So good job highlighting the need for inclusive hiring practices.
How does “not DEI” work in this instance? What implicit biases or systemic barriers are in place that might present unfair disadvantage to one or the other applicant? Your hypothetical simply highlights the need for DEI initiatives.
Apart from a tiny number of individuals who have intersex conditions, there is literally no such thing as Transgenderism. The word you can’t bring yourself to say is Transvestism.
Because that isn’t the word. There are transgender people in the world. Full stop. Denying their existence is simply dehumanizing.
Biological men in women’s clothes are TRANSVESTITES. It’s not my thing but I have absolutely no objection to the practice.
Why are you denying the existence of a group of people who do no harm to anyone? This is viciously dehumanizing, and you should be ashamed of yourself.
There are people who wear women’s clothes who do not consider themselves to be transgender, but there are also transgender individuals who wear women’s clothing. Simply insisting that transgender people do not exist is fundamentally dehumanizing.
What is the difference between Transvestism and transgenderism? I am excluding genuinely intersection people from this.
I notice you still have not given any evidence for the existence of systemic barriers.
Transvestism (now more respectfully referred to as cross-dressing) refers to clothing choice, often without connection to gender identity. Transgender people, on the other hand, have a gender identity different from the sex they were assigned at birth. And if you meant ‘intersex’ rather than ‘intersection people,’ that’s a separate issue entirely, it’s about biological sex characteristics. Lumping these together confuses three very different things.
If you believe that systemic barriers do not exist, and you acknowledge a disparity of outcomes also exist, then the only remaining explanations are overt discrimination (which you deny), or a belief that people in these marginalized groups are inherently inferior. Which is it for you?
We’re still waiting to provide evidence for the reality of systemic barriers. All you have done is assert they exist.
Pray what is wrong with disparity of outcome? It is absolutely inevitable if you have equality of opportunity. Marxist loser that you are, you cannot come to terms with the fact that human beings vary enormously in intelligence, motivation, physical strength, capacity for delayed gratification etc. THIS is why there will always be disparity of outcome.
There is nothing wrong with disparity of outcome, there is something wrong with disparity of outcome arising from systems that unilaterally favor one group at the explicit detriment of others.
Disparity of outcome falls along racial lines, so this implies you’re saying that there are differences in intelligence, motivation, physical strength, and capacity for delayed gratification that are inherently racial. Is that what you mean to imply? You can just say it.
Disparity of outcome does indeed fall along racial lines – East Asians are the most successful ethnic group in the US, closely followed by South Asians and Nigerians, all more successful than Caucasians. Rather difficult to explain if these disparities are caused by racism.
How do you explain the near absence of East Asians in the NBA?
If you’re saying systemic racism doesn’t explain racial disparities, then what does? Be specific. Because if you’re pointing to outcomes and ruling out systemic factors, you’re left implying that there’s something about the races themselves that explains the difference. Is that what you’re saying?
And the NBA comment just makes it clearer: you’re leaning into racial essentialism without having the honesty to say it outright.
I have explained that both human variation and certain cultures can explain disparity of outcome perfectly well. Why do you have a problem with this?
The relative success of US Chinese and Japanese compared with Blacks, despite overt racism (within living memory, unlike slavery) rules out racism as a cause. Do you think the East Asian culture of respect for education and hard work might have something to do with this? Can you give me evidence for such a culture among urban Blacks? No, of course not.
Before the Civil Rights era Black America was thriving, and Blacks were becoming wealthier and rapidly attaining Middle Class status. What changed?
What exactly is the “human variation” you think is universal among Black people that explains these disparities? Be specific. Stop hiding behind vague references to “Black culture” and “human variation” and say what you mean.
As for the claim that Black America was “thriving” before the Civil Rights era, tell that to the families locked out of GI Bill benefits, forced into segregated schools, redlined into under-resourced neighborhoods, and systematically excluded from wealth-building opportunities. Black Americans weren’t thriving because the system was fair, they were surviving and resisting in spite of it.
I notice you have evaded my question about the success of East Asians and Nigerians.
Glen Lourie and John McWhirter have documented how Black Americans possessed a greater share of National wealth before the Civil Rights era than today, in spite of Jim Crow laws. Why should this be?
Have you heard of the expression “Acting White”, which is common among urban Black youth? Is this a manifestation of the dominant culture?
My answer to your disingenuous question is the same as for the disparities experienced by many Black communities: structural inequities that are baked into the very fabric of our society. Immigrants from East Asia and Nigeria often enter through selective immigration channels that favor the wealthy and highly educated, unlike the systemic deprivation faced by Black Americans whose ancestors were enslaved and then legally segregated. Comparing these two groups ignores how different their historical and contemporary experiences with racism are. Racism isn’t just about individual hatred, it’s about systems, policies, and generational theft of opportunity.
Definitively, yes. It reflects the social conceptions that tie success into assimilation into white norms.
Is there a particular reason you thought bringing up a flagrant racist dog whistle was going to be a compelling rebuttal? You accuse me of dodging your question while ignoring mine, so I’ll restate:
What exactly is the “human variation” you think is universal among Black people that explains these disparities? Be specific. Stop hiding behind vague references to “Black culture” and “human variation” and say what you mean.
“Transgender women are not suffering under a delusion. They fully recognize that they have male sex organs. They accept the reality of their biological sex, and find that it conflicts with their internal gender identity. Sometimes this misalignment produces feelings of distress.”
You just described delusional behavior.
“Transgender people, on the other hand, have a gender identity different from the sex they were assigned at birth.”
Sex is not assigned at birth. It is observed and noted. “Gender identity” is irrelevant.
Not remotely. Feelings aren’t delusions, they’re feelings. And such feelings are common among cisgender people as well. A lot of cisgender boys develop excess breast tissue that they find conflicts with their gender identity, for instance, and that misalignment can produce feelings of distress there too. These boys often pursue surgical intervention as a treatment for these feelings of distress.
Biological men in women’s clothes are TRANSVESTITES. It’s not my thing but I have absolutely no objection to the practice.
Why are you denying the existence of a group of people who do no harm to anyone? This is viciously dehumanizing, and you should be ashamed of yourself.
Describing my comment as tangled and emotionally charged says more about you than it does me, mate 🤣.
What are you doing on a climate site if you are a sociologist? Oh! I forgot, the left are experts in every subject despite not having a qualification between you.
“They accept the reality of their biological sex…”
I guess why they just lost a case in the UK Supreme court countering that very question. And we know there are men insisting they are women because they ‘feel’ like one. That in itself expresses their level of mental illness, as a biological man can never understand how a woman feels.
All DEI does is stimulate and legitimise their mental illness. They do and should face prejudice in the hiring process as they are mentally unstable. They certainly shouldn’t be considered for jobs in healthcare or emergency services, as they are a danger to the public and their colleagues. As for them being allowed unfettered access to women’s spaces or even women’s prisons etc. it’s unthinkable by all but the most deranged individuals. And if you think that way, you need psychiatric care.
Like DEI itself, the concept is fashionable and will run its course over the coming years, but not without leaving a trail of destruction, not least by mentally and physically scarring people for life. Especially young people. Look up Charlie Bentley-Astor (a University of Cambridge graduate) on YouTube for evidence from just one survivor of this barbaric and deranged practice.
DEI is the belief that life can be equitable. But it’s not. Life is inherently competitive and designed to ensure the strongest and brightest succeed, improving the breed and advancing the future of humanity. Like anything of, or from, the left DEI has the simple objective of dragging everyone down to the same, low level of existence, except for those who prey on its victims of course.
You can and will be simply written off as a useful idiot for falling for its demented concepts.
You’re just throwing out a bunch of irrelevant, emotionally charged asides. Transgender people do not suffer from delusion – they do not see something that is not reality. They see their physical, biological bodies as they are. Transgender people feel that their internal sense of personal gender identity does not align with that biological sex. This can be the source of distress (but it is not always). When such distress arises, and only when it is present, a transgender person can be diagnosed with the mental disorder of gender dysphoria. This condition has safe and effective treatments available, including surgical and non-surgical transition and general mental health counseling.
Transgender people should be afforded the same dignity and respect as all other living people, and they should not be discriminated against on the basis of their gender identity. Claiming that they are inherently a risk to others around them is blatant bigotry.
DEI is based on the belief that outcomes aren’t determined only by being the strongest and fastest or smartest, but by how the game is rigged from the outset. DEI is not about ensuring equality of outcome, it’s about trying to address the unfair advantage one team has been enjoying for more than a century.
DEI is not about ensuring equality of outcome, it’s about trying to address the unfair advantage one team has been enjoying for more than a century.
That is an outright lie. DEI is explicitly about equality of outcome.
Patently untrue. DEI is about removing structural barriers so that people from all backgrounds have a fair shot. It isn’t about ensuring identical outcomes for all individuals. You’re arguing from a position of believing that systemic barriers don’t exist, so you can’t comprehend how or why they might need to be addressed.
What systemic barriers? You have been asked several times and you have failed to answer.
No. Equal opportunity, the entry point, is about letting everyone have a fair shot.
You just love the sound of those words, structural and systemic. You used them like a religious zealot.
Getting the chance to run in the race doesn’t mean you have a fair shot if your opponent is given a 20 second head start.
So, who would you prefer to design the wing on a Boing jet? An engineer with a degree, experience, knowledge, and communication skills, or someone hired to give them a chance with little or no real qualifications other than being in a “disadvantaged” group?
Would you want to fly on that bird? (Assuming it made it off the ground in flight tests).
What NASA does that is not cutting edge science is hazardous. I’ve been on the launch pad hooking up ordnance (motors, etc.). There is no room or time to pick up the slack for an incompetent. The rule is, 2 sets of eyes, fewest people to do the job, and minimize exposure to the hazards.
Your contention that DEI in hiring requires hiring people without requisite skills or competencies is a simple lie, told poorly. You are either profoundly ignorant or are arguing in bad faith.
DEI is actually insulting to those “marginalized” people because it is saying they can not succeed on their own, no matter how hard they try.
The word of the day is systemic. In order for something to be systemic, all parties have to be in agreement. Otherwise it is not systemic.
Any Evidence?
Common sense …
And why would the NASA DEI program be any different than the FAA program?
Yep.
So back in wacky-wokey days, a typical job interview at NASA would have gone something like this –
NASA Interviewer –
“What we’re looking for in this role is an experienced mission controller with extensive knowledge & demonstrated success at planning, resourcing and controlling space exploration / research missions to outlying solar system bodies.
What can you bring to this role?”
DEI Candidate –
“Well, I AM a woman, have been for almost a week now.
my Xhosa ancestors were one of the early movers on climate preservation when in 1857 they slaughtered all their huge cattle herds and destroyed all their crops at once under the direction of noted climate scientist Greta Nongqawuse.
So I have big projects success in my DNA.
Also, I keep well informed about world events through a diverse array of media such as CNN, WAPO, The Guardian and of course NYT.
But most importantly, my research about your organization reveals that your employment base contains only 13% of people from similar demographic backgrounds as myself.
So when do I start?
NASA Interviewer –
“Sounds like you already have 🙁 “
Mockery is the most effective means of political criticism. You did a very good job there!
Also known as BOFH Unequal Opportunities Policy.
DEI has racial essentialism as a core concept. That a being a straight Black male says most of what is relevant about that person, or that all South Asians are interchangeable. So Bobby Jindal and Kamala Harris’ mother should be quite similar?
The real racists have always been on the Progressive side, as demonstrated by AnalJ’s drivellings.
I wasn’t talking about NASA itself but the POLITICAL side that was perverting the body with unneeded DIE policies which generates unwelcome politically designed framework that had nothing to do with science process as it was all politically based on a bogus narrative.
What is the bogus narrative behind DEI initiatives? I am an American citizen and I don’t want federal agencies to engage in unfair or discriminatory hiring practices, and I want federal workplaces to be inclusive and welcoming to people of all backgrounds. Why is that objectionable?
The bogus narrative is that women and minorities are held back solely by institutional discrimination. When one looks at the number and diversity of graduates from technical curricula it is obvious that self-selection of majors plays an important role in the workforce. DEI is probably also responsible for the declining number of young men choosing to go to college because they feel that it would be time and money wasted if they can’t find a job because women and minorities will be given preference.
That isn’t the narrative, the narrative is that systemic barriers exist and should be addressed. Both in hiring and in academics. The “anti-DEI” position is that there are no systemic barriers at play and that the system as a whole operates as a pure meritocracy when left alone, which is patently untrue.
I personally think (and this is my own personal bias peeking through) that the unspoken undercurrent implicit in the “anti-DEI” position is that a pure meritocracy just so happens to look like a lot of white men in positions of power and influence because they are inherently more capable and deserving.
It’s a lot like climate science. Nobody can find any evidence for it in the real world, but the models and political theory says it must exist, so we will destroy anything and anyone in order to eliminate it.
What a fancy word, “narrative”. It’s a synonym for story. Which is all it ever was. The story the left uses to explain away the fact that their earlier racist policies failed to solve the problem they wanted to solve.
You are the one who want to justify racism, it’s up to you to come up with a stronger reason than an invented story.
Maybe because they are inherently (whatever that means to you) more capable and deserving because they worked at being so?
Speculate for me why you think white men innately work harder to be capable and deserving than other people?
Who, for the most part, were principle in the slave trade? (And continue it to this day).
Who ended the Atlantic slave trade?
Who was most prominent in the Enlightenment?
Who was most prominent in the Industrial Revolution?
Where are the world’s best universities located?
Which communities advanced civilisation?
Which nations pioneered equality?
Which nations pioneered democracy and the parliamentary system?
Which nations pioneered equality before the law?
Agriculture.
Science.
Medicine.
Technology.
All achieved with no hint of DEI.
You have been asked several times to produce concrete evidence for “systemic” racism. We’re still waiting.
I think you are being deliberately obtuse. I taught in the health sciences at UCLA starting in 1973 during the beginning of “Affirmative Action”. I saw a number of candidates admitted to both medicine and dentistry who never should have been admitted but were carried along because administrators were afraid of backlash if these people were dismissed. Some I know did not pass state boards.
So the terminology changed to DEI. Still illegal and a disaster.
Back in the 70’s, too many minorities were failing the medical boards, so the left decided that the only solution would be to have two medical boards. One for whites, and one for everyone else. Fortunately, saner minds stopped that nonsense before it could be implemented.
DEI has taken to using Affirmative Action language.
Affirmative Action was to keep records and show progress at eliminating racial and other discrimination in hiring.
Affirmative Action was interpreted as meeting quotas in hiring and THAT the Supreme Court shut down with prejudice.
Its not objectionable at all (depending on what you mean by ‘welcoming’).
What is objectionable is that DEI, like Affirmative Action, has been used as a license to engage in unfair and discriminatory hiring practices.
Someone quotes MLK a bit lower down in the thread. Express those sentiments in many places now, and you will be called racist. Because you are trying to obscure the majorly important distinctions between, guess what, the ‘races’. Whatever they are.
A bright tribesman once asked a visiting Western anthropologist: why is is that the gods are so interested in the things that interest us, like food, sex, possessions?
Why is it that the progressive tendency is fixated on differences of skin color and ethnic background? And of course more recently sexual orientation. Why not on intraversion/extraversion? Or math ability. Or height or weight? Why is there no affirmative action for short people?
I’ll answer the second. Its because they are obsessed with this thing they call ‘race’. They are classic racialists. They really think that race, not abilities, interests and temperament, is what defines a person, and what defines a culture that person must belong to.
I suspect this is because they have little or no experience of living and working with people of colors and backgrounds different from their own, and so they think of them as alien, and having to be treated differently.
But whatever the reason, the phenomenon is racialism and similar attitudes on sexual orientation, and its scientific nonsense and worse ethics.
AlanJ has already said,
““I am an American citizen and I don’t want federal agencies to engage in unfair or discriminatory hiring practices””
So he is obviously totally against DEI hiring practices.
It reminds me of the John Cleese “Argument sketch”.
“I am an American citizen and I don’t want federal agencies to engage in unfair or discriminatory hiring practices”
Great to know you are totally against DEI…
… because that is exactly what DEI is.
DEI is all about discriminatory hiring practices!
It is also divisive to good teamwork.
“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” – MLK
DEI is and was just the opposite of that.
DEI did and does judge on the color of skin (and gender) rather than the content of their character (and their being the most qualified candidate to do the job).
DEI was and is legalized discrimination.
MLK once declared that if racism is the problem, then racism can’t be the solution.
Given 10 qualified men and 1 or 2 qualified women applying for a technical position, and choosing a woman, to meet the DEI requirements, it is highly probable that one of the men would have been more qualified technically.
There were several times during my career that I discovered that a woman had been hired for a position I had applied for. Sometimes, I, or a trusted friend, knew the woman. I can say that in all cases I was demonstrably more qualified. In one instance the hiring company had to rescind the offer because in their haste to hire a woman, HR overlooked the fact that she didn’t have the minimum educational requirements stated in the job description. In a couple of cases the women were clearly incompetent. In one instance, the woman hired had worked for my then Dean of Instruction. He shared with me that she had been so bad that he told her that if she didn’t find another job that he “would fire her ass!” Unfortunately, he apparently had given her a good recommendation to get rid of her.
These are the kinds of abuses that occur when more importance is given to one’s gender or skin color than their technical competence. “The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.”
It sounds like you’ve worked at places engaging in illegal hiring practices (that neither yourself nor anyone in the organization ever spoke up about…), but unless you worked at NASA and observed such illegal practices occurring, you can’t extend these anecdotes to NASA.
Isn’t this just a contrived scenario? Companies engaging in DEI are trying to get more qualified applicants from the available applicant pool to apply and be considered for roles, and they want to make their workplaces places that a broader swath of the qualified applicant pool would want to work in. They also want to make sure they are not considering an applicant’s race, gender, sexual orientation, or religious background in their hiring decision, as this runs afoul of civil rights law.
I’ve never seen someone work so hard to deny what is happening. With the possible exception of a climate scientist.
“They also want to make sure they are not considering an applicant’s race, gender, sexual orientation, or religious background in their hiring decision, as this runs afoul of civil rights law.”
This is exactly the opposite of what DEI managers want.
You’re just generalizing. There might be some managers who seek to hire based on race (which is illegal), there might be some organizations that seek to fill “racial quotas” and call that DEI. But broadly that isn’t what DEI is, and that isn’t what NASA is (was) doing.
How do you know? Tell us, exactly, what DEI is.
DEI assumes that others are racist, therefore they have to be racist in order to compensate. Of course, they can’t be bothered to actually prove that others are racist, you are just told to assume it. And if you disagree, that just proves that you are a racist.
DEI, by its very ideology, is a discriminatory hiring practice…
.. and hence runs foul of civil rights laws.
Then what is your explanation for this?
Fewer Young Men Are Going to College — Here’s a State-By-State Breakdown of Where They’ll Have the Best and Worst Job Prospects
Then there is the issue of self-selecting of majors, where the majors commonly selected by women have little prospect of good paying jobs — without the advantage of DEI
17 Worthless College Degrees Leading to Dead-End Careers and Massive Debt
When I started my higher education, all of the faculty in my major were middle-aged, white males with PhDs from UC Berkeley. All were highly competent (except the geophysics professor). After some time out to play soldier, I came back to find a woman on the staff, who had been hired to replace the mineralogist. Not only was she not as competent as the man she replaced, but my personal judgement was that she actually had some mental issues. After finally graduating, I went on to teach at a local community college and I stayed in touch with my professors. As time went on, and my professors retired or died, they were replaced with women. By the time I left teaching, after more than a decade, and went into the remote sensing field, most of the professors were now female. That is a joke because one of the excuses for adding women to the staff was so that female students could have professors that they could ‘relate’ to. But most of the students were still male at that time. Nobody seemed to care that the men had fewer professors that they could ‘relate’ to. It was like a state planned economy, with similar results.
Ditto, right down to the remote sensing part…I never saw a woman ground proofing anything where it was overgrown and buggy or snakey. Cheap shot, I know, but true.
DEI initiatives do not stop white men from entering universities or obtaining high paying jobs. These efforts level a playing field that has been slanted in favor of white men for decades. Certainly to the white men who have enjoyed this advantage, a leveling of the playing field feels like being disadvantaged. If I always get a 20 second head start when running foot races, and one day my head start is taken away, it’s going to feel like I’m suddenly losing all the time, when in reality I’m now competing with the same rules everybody else has been playing by the whole time.
You express a lot of opinions about women being “less competent” or having “mental issues,” but no actual evidence that DEI led to worse hires. What’s striking in this anecdote isn’t the number of women who joined the faculty, but how threatened you seem by their presence. When the staff was all white men from the same school, you didn’t question their competence. But when women entered the scene, suddenly everything became a “state-planned economy”?
That doesn’t sound like a hiring crisis. It sounds like a you problem, Clyde.
You have it backwards. When men are competing for jobs, and the DEI goals strongly favor women and minorities, they are competing against insurmountable barriers that do stop them from obtaining high paying jobs. I expected that when competing for a rare opening I would have competitors, therefore I had to be well qualified. When women who were not as qualified got the job offers I initially thought that it was just a fluke. However, it continued and I began to see a pattern. It wasn’t just my opinion. I had confirmation from other people that the people hired were not really my peers. The difference was that hiring managers were bending over backwards to find women or minorities that had even the bare minimum of qualification. That was like making me run a foot race with heavy boots, and that seemed to happen after affirmative action and DEI became entrenched. I didn’t question the competence of most of my professors because it was evident that all but one were competent.
If people are being hired for technical positions who are not the most technically qualified, then there is a hiring problem. It isn’t a me problem if others are experiencing the same problem, which they are. That was the point of the link to the article about men deciding not to go to college. It is evident to others even if you turn a blind eye to it. It isn’t a matter of me feeling threatened. It is more a matter of me feeling betrayed. An unwritten social contract, intended to encourage people to become well-educated and competent was unilaterally broken, without concern for what it would do to the motivation of men who had played by the rules and then were summarily rejected, destroying the principle of meritocracy. It is people like yourself, with blinders apparently surgically attached to the side of your head, that are leading the world down a path to ruin.
Male and female folk have historically lived in circumstances that are different and so have led to different preferred personal philosophies. Females give birth to babies, so they might well have more ingrained personal philosophies to avoid employment in “hard” industries like mining where use of high forces like blasting is everywhere, possibly seen to make women more likely to dislike work in the natural resources extraction sector. If you dislike your work, you are less valuable.
Having seen these effects in a limited environment of the places I worked in Australian mining, there is good reason why I automatically assume that a comparison of 100 male miners with 100 female miners will show less of the latter liking what they do and consequently worse.
You see this effect in the military. Having served there, doing many hours of parade ground drills, I cannot stop myself from laughing when I hear the voices of female parade controllers barking orders. In the battle environment, I marvel at the assumption that an order to charge given by a male has equivalent force compared to a girly scream.
We are not a society that assumes males equal to females in all fields of endeavour. Or assumed the fit similar to the disabled. I sat though 4 years of classes in the French language delivered by a teacher with a cleft palate. No wonder the French, when I visited them, were confused by my accent.
I say, vive la difference, but leave it out of the job market. (and add an acute).
Geoff S
DEI goals don’t strongly favor men and minorities, they remove the barriers to entry faced by these groups, and certainly the increased participation will feel like they’re being favored to the group who no longer has the unfair advantage.
Your anecdotal experience just sounds like bitterness that you were passed over for opportunities by (gasp) women. It does not reflect on broader DEI initiatives or the concept in general.
The problem is that the rules weren’t written fairly, so the men who believed they were just “playing by the rules” were enjoying an unfair advantages. This is literally what systemic discrimination is and why DEI is needed to combat it. If the rules aren’t fair, judging merit by who is winning in the unfair system is not a meritocracy.
Pray what are the barriers to minorities in employment? There are none if hiring is based purely on ability and experience.
Disparity of outcome is NOT evidence of racism.
What is it, then? If there are no barriers to employment, no systemic bias or overt discrimination, and outcomes are still not equal, what is driving the disparity? Again, say it loud and proud. You can do it.
See my posts above. Disparity of outcome is the inevitable consequence of human variability. Only Marxists like you assume human beings are all interchangeable.
Does the NBA discriminate against short people?
AlanJ is a proponent of what was once called IFUs (interchangeable faceless units).
That sounds good in theory, but is not supported by logic or the JPL statement, “Rajendra led efforts to diversify NASA, including promoting the “Space Workforce 2030” pledge, which focused on hiring women and minorities.” If there is one open position to be filled, and several qualified male applicants and a few qualified women, how does one hire more “women and minorities” without discriminating against the men? The odds favor the men by their numbers, but the only way more women can be hired is by hiring fewer men. That is, discriminate against the men.
The way that the problem should be handled is to start before the hiring by assuring that there are equal numbers of qualified men and women. That way there are pools of supposedly equally qualified applicants of both genders, making it possible to actually select the most technically qualified instead of weighting the decision with ‘points’ for gender and/or ethnicity. To increase the proportion of women and minorities, in order to achieve the “Space Workforce 2030 pledge,” it will be necessary to decrease the number of White male hires for a limited number of openings. Any way you want to cut it, it means that men can expect fewer opportunities for entry-level hirings, and subsequent promotions, regardless of their technical qualifications. Denying that reverse gender discrimination is happening is simply rationalization of the obvious.
The objective way of demonstrating bias is to show that the ratio of male-to-female hires does not match the ratio of applicants. If apparent hiring bias can be demonstrated, then there is a potential case for illegal discrimination. Then the existing anti-discrimination laws can be invoked and the academic achievements and work experience of the applicants examined by neutral third-parties to establish that there are no justifiable reasons for the disparity. The way that you and those like you want to have the system work is to just assume that discrimination against women and minorities exists because there are fewer in the technical workforce and to then use the blunt instrument of reverse discrimination to ‘fix’ a problem that may not exist. Always examine your assumptions!
Your assumption is that the only form of discrimination that can exist is overt bias exercised by a hiring manager during the interview process, and this is simply untrue. The very systems themselves that applicants navigate can contain implicit biases that lead to disparate outcomes. That is what DEI is trying to address (although, again, it can certainly also try to prevent illegal overt discrimination).
As I’ve pointed out in earlier comments, bias doesn’t have to be intentional or malicious, it can simply arises from the way systems are structured. If a company primarily posts jobs to job boards dominated by one demographic, their hiring will reflect this. So a DEI initiative might seek to expand the places where job postings are listed.
The wording of a job posting might discourage people in disadvantaged groups from even applying, even though they would be perfect fits and highly qualified for the role. So a DEI initiative might seek to understand to create job postings that are inclusive and appealing to broader demographics of qualified applicants.
Implicit bias can even persist after the hiring process, and be reflected in retention rates. Just imagine a company that has team traditions that are exclusionary to people of certain religious or cultural backgrounds and makes them feel unwelcome and installs barriers to career progression. A DEI initiative might be to see how to drive an organizational culture that is more inclusive and welcoming to people of all different backgrounds.
I agree with your statement that we need to examine our assumptions.
You are stating your personal biases as proof.
I work in one of the most diverse environment that anyone could ask for.
Everyone was hire on merit.
No. Wrong. Do not confuse equal opportunity with equity of outcome.
You still haven’t defined what you believe DEI to be.
Proof you are wrong. Harvard.
The problems occurred with both California community colleges and various remote sensing companies throughout the country. Why would I talk about the situation when I didn’t get hired?
The hiring processes are seldom transparent enough to provide evidence of being afoul of the law. I once tried to obtain resumes of the people that were interviewed for a job I applied for, with names redacted to preserve their privacy, and my request was ignored. It is a Catch 22 situation. Without evidence, it is impossible to get a subpoena to get evidence. However, I assure you that discrimination exists, to the detriment of men. Why should NASA be any different from academia or small commercial companies, particularly when they have people on staff whose job titles explain that they are expected to give a hiring advantage to women and minorities?
Scott Adams has written extensively about the illegal discrimination that he has also faced in his career. It’s not just you.
” Given 10 qualified men and 1 or 2 qualified women applying for a technical position.”
If you hire on merit, i,e., the best person for the job, not simply competence, you will have two possible scenarios. a diverse group of men and women, in which case dei is unneeded; or an all male group, which by definition means the women were not the best candidates. Using dei to ensure at least one woman is hired necessarily means you are discriminating against a better qualified person because of his gender.
Don’t give me crap about competence. It’s those who exceed competency who save lives and missions. If someone is plotting a burn for reentry where a mistake either turns me into ash or strands me in space, I want the best person for that task, not someone merely competent.
If dei really brought value there would be a dei office in the NBA to bring more diversity, equity, and inclusion.
If they were trying to hire the most qualified applicant then DEI wouldn’t come into it at all … why would you need it?
Pretty simple hold a company test and hire the best result no DEI required.
My son chose to become a professional musician. When he auditions for an orchestra he plays out of sight of the adjudicators. Music is pure merit. Then look at the composition of the orchestra. There are no quotas.
Blind auditions are a form of DEI practice. I’m glad we agree such practices are vital and necessary.
BS Alarm is blaring.
DEI hiring first looks at race, sex, gender identification, religion, etc., etc. etc. That you deny this is a stain on your character.
Hiring on the basis of sex or race is illegal, so that is decidedly not what DEI hiring does. You should educate yourself before forming such strong opinions.
Time (aging out of cold war era engineers) and mission creep (look at earth in addition to space) did more damage than diversity.
What is it about those on the left, and their complete inability, or unwillingness to respond honestly? He never said anything about NASA being not educated or competent.
Leftism is a sign of mental illness, it is why everything they touch goes downward in quality, rationality and sanely.
…nor, ahem, diverse. 🤣
That is not the case. We’re talking about education and competence which operate across a spectrum in any organisation – not suggesting that NASA as a diverse institution was or is not educated or competent. Your question rather suggests that you cannot tell the difference – which I am sure cannot be the case.
This does not speak well of her bosses at JPL who attempted to disguise her in order to protect her from the dissolution of the DEI enterprise as ordered by Trump. I would think they will be the next to go.
They apparently are looking out for each other.
All us JPLers are Caltech employees, not NASA employees. Even so, Caltech is as woke and leftist as any private university in the nation. JPL fired my sister-in-law because she didn’t want to take the COVID vaccine. I had to get the vax to keep my job at JPL. If a woman at Caltech brings a frivolous sexual-harrassment charge against a male fellow employee (this happened to a close friend of mine) Caltech simply takes the female accusers side irrespective of evidence and fires the male employee. Its pure woke nonsense at both Caltech and JPL. Trump has his hands full.
Probably a very nice lady whose contribution to the team being motivated and efficient was deemed to be worthwhile or they wouldn’t have tried so hard to keep her on staff. Not a jet expert so eventually the attempt failed. In the rounds of layoffs I have been involved with, I often found the people who stayed had good sounding resumes and those laid off contained far too many who were instrumental to group enthusiasm, effectiveness, and efficiency but whose resume talents were not core corporate knowledge.
People don’t change their ways just because they have a new job title. Once a DEIer, always a DEIer until they prove otherwise. Particularly when one is in charge of making DEI happen in the organization, serving as both the gatekeeper and the cop – the Madam Lafarge of DEIness.
If «they will be the next to go» was certain, the whole thing would simply not happen.
If Trump had it his way, there would not be any “reform” of NASA at all, but complete reboot, which obviously was his own plan (“Space Force”). Say what you want about Trump, but he knows the job of a CEO. It would be much easier to create the fresh command chain, pick and import actually useful employees from that old sinking ship who did not succumb to its plagues, hire fresh people to fill up the rest of jobs and dilute the demoralized old guard, then terminate what’s left of NASA. Instead we see the reformers try to police those patching facades, playing shell games and molesting rats, and on their own territory at that — it’s a waste of time and efforts.
TBeholder,
It is rare to hear comments from people in or from high management positions, because that are a tiny % of the workforce. Yet, they get to the tops of the pyramids because of knowledge and experience about how people behave.
I’m looking forward to more of your wisdom here, so pleased you do not have to waste time molesting your own rats. Geoff S
Does not speak well for NASA JPL. DEI, and then camouflaged DEI. Wrong priorities.
Seems to me that the camouflager should also be on the chopping block.
Read the links.
George Floyd was not murdered by police. It is a fact he died in police custody. Having read all the trial transcripts as well as the medical examiners report, murder was not the cause of death. Cardiac arrest was the cause and it had nothing to the knee on the shoulder restraint applied.
The medical examiner did not connect the dots. Floyd had 3 medical conditions that the police were unaware of. From the texts it is obvious Floyd panicked when first approached. There is nothing that confirms Floyd was taking his hypertension medicine. Panic increases blood pressure, the drugs in his system made that worse, and his 2 heart conditions led to cardiac arrest.
And he was high on fentanyl and meth:
4ANPP precursor and metabolite of fentanyl present in Mr. Floyd’s blood. Methamphetamine 19 ng/ML which he described as “very near the low end” and “a stimulant hard on the heart.” Fentanyl 11. He said, “that’s pretty high.” This level of fentanyl can cause pulmonary edema. Mr. Floyd’s lungs were 2-3x their normal weight at autopsy. That is fatal level offentanyl under normal circumstances. Norfentanyl 5.6 metabolite of fentanyl. Mr. Floyd’s urine was tested for things and are redundant, given the blood analysis. AB said, “the only thing that matters is what’s in his blood.”
https://www.fox9.com/news/court-filings-medical-examiner-thought-george-floyd-had-fatal-level-of-fentanyl-in-system
2. 🐟 ✕ b8
Let’s get distracted by offtopic that was chewed for years anyway.
🐟
It’s come back.
It is relevant.
The G.F. event was a nexus in that proclamations of systemic racism and defund the police and social justice and white supremacy and vulnerable minorities, etc. got a national following. All of those are precursors to DEI, which tried to re-establish the Affirmative Action the Supreme Court ruled as unconstitutional.
The point is, all of what is discussed today is an initiative based on a false narrative of what actually happened back then.
why isn’t whoever was in charge that tried to evade the order by changing her title also on the chopping block?
I think the core problem was/is that too many people who started careers usa science and engineering before the year 2000 fit a few specific out-of-style demographics, so when administration tried to diversify the workforce the candidates were not available. They did all they could, which was to invent well meaning roles with qualified candidates from other demographics. In the end, a DEI administrator can’t usually design a space shuttle. Some probably can, but that pool would be tiny.
Who is Mr. «the lab»?
This looks more and more like pruning is an enforced substitute to uprooting. Once it turned out that things like rebooting NASA as “Space Force” are not allowed to happen, waste of time was the most likely result.
I can just see it
“Conflict in the Reiner Gamma region of the moon, as CADRE robots refuse to cooperate, due to faulty DEI coding”
What I find troubling is the phrase “without human interference”.
DEI memo.
And like alanj they don’t understand the difference between interference & intervention.
Why is DEI a bad idea? Because it aims to achieve equal outcomes for all, whereas what is needed is equal opportunities. Equal outcomes guarantees a slow but steady and absolutely certain sinking into mediocrity. Just what NASA does not need.
AKA Lowest Common Denominator
Robots, with batteries? It gets ‘cold’ over a 14 (earth days) night
It sounds like Laurie Leshin had a part in keeping Rajendra and rebranding her position. If so Leshin needs to go also.
Lab director Dr. Laurie Leshin should find her way to the door, too.
She must have been responsible for “the newly formed Office of Team Excellence and Employee Success,” meant to evade the DEI closure.
Making the OTEES illustrates Dr. Leshin’s DEI/woke sympathies, which have no place at a JPL where merit must be everything.
One further notes the appropriate acronym for, “Dare Mighty things TOGETHER” => DaMitT, pronounced damn it, and suggestive of the proper terminus.
One word, sweet
The bureaucrats who helped rebrand her should be fired.
Here in the UK, I have sat on job selection committees when my Further Education department have wanted to hire competence based trainers. We didn’t know the age, sex or ethnicity of the candidates, only there experience and qualifications.
It made our task of selection much easier because we didn’t need to worry about any DEI. Of course when it got to the presentation and the formal interview stage we then knew what they looked like but by then we had a pretty good idea what the candidate was like. This was a few years ago now, I guess it’s changed now.
If you’re sitting on a rocket about to be launched into space you would want it to be built by the best people possible, regardless of race, sex, or ethnicity. DEI priorities never guaranteed that.
Why limit it to high risk jobs? If people are barely competent and get hired because of their gender or ethnicity, then even consumer products are more likely to have design defects, fail early, or cost more than they should. In a true meritocracy, the best should get the best jobs. If there is still a need to fill jobs, then dip into the pool a little deeper and do with what you can come up with.
A story from decades ago. A (I hate to use the expression, but must to convey the story) black woman was hired as a computer punch card typist. She routinely had over 25% errors in the cards the produced. One day the main frame crashed. They determined it was from her batch of card. She had typed one card using the top row characters and as bad luck would have it, that was the system password. They fired her. She sued claiming racial discrimination.
True story.
I am “color blind.” I see no value in the darkness or lightness of skin. We are all various shades of brown.
However, since I claim to be “color blind” I am labelled a racist.
Sooo…. does Leshin get fired as head of JPL since she would have been the one who approved Rajendra’s new job title?
Simply furloughed because her job is unnecessary (no need to bring up her weasely incompetence)