The failure of DEI has been well documented here at Twitchy. From the plagiarism scandals (yes, plural) at Harvard and other universities to illegal hiring practices at major organizations to, of course, the waste and corruption due to DEI in the United States government, the movement really should be called ‘DIE,’ not DEI.
Of course, one giant corporation that has fully embraced DEI has been Boeing, and they have had themselves … quite a year so far, haven’t they?
Because of all of the Boeing mishaps that have taken place recently, DEI demolisher extraordinaire Christopher Rufo — fresh off his latest conquest of Mark Cuban — has been speaking with an insider at Boeing to try to figure out how things have gone so wrong for a company that used to be the pinnacle of air travel, in the US and around the world.
Yesterday, he published his interview, and here’s a hint: it’s worse than we even knew.
I interviewed a long-time Boeing insider who explained exactly how DEI has undermined company culture and degraded performance. “DEI is the drop you put in the bucket, and the whole bucket changes.”https://t.co/HfGqIiiA5K pic.twitter.com/6VDYusb9lN
— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) April 4, 2024
DEI is anti-excellence. That sums it up perfectly. And if just the screenshot included in Rufo’s tweet was all there was to it, that would still be damning. But in the full interview, published in City Journal, there is so much more. The insider begins the interview by stating, very simply, ‘At its core, we have a marginalization of the people who build stuff, the people who really work on these planes.’
The headquarters in Arlington is empty. Nobody lives there. It is an empty executive suite. The CEO lives in New Hampshire. The CFO lives in Connecticut. The head of HR lives in Orlando. We just instituted a policy that everyone has to come into work five days a week—except the executive council, which can use the private jets to travel to meetings. And that is the story: it is a company that is under caretakers. It is not under owners. And it is not under people who love airplanes.
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This is not a problem exclusive to Boeing, of course. Since COVID, remote work has become standard, and people have very little connection with each other. This seems particularly destructive when, in Boeing’s case, those people who do not see each other — or their workforce — face-to-face regularly are the ones making all of the major decisions.
In this business, the workforce knows if you love the thing you are building or if it’s just another set of assets to you. At some point, you cannot recover with process what you have lost with love. And I think that is probably the most important story of all. There is no visible center of the company, and people are wondering what they are connected to.
The insider continued when Rufo asked him what the public still doesn’t understand.
Boeing is just a symptom of a much bigger problem: the failure of our elites. The purpose of the company is now ‘broad stakeholder value,’ including DEI and ESG. This was then embraced as a means to power, which further separated the workforce from the company. And it is ripping our society apart.
Boeing is the most visible example because every problem—like, say, a bolt that falls off—gets amplified. But this is happening everywhere around us, and it is going to have a huge effect. DEI and ESG became a way to stop talking honestly to employees.
The customer and the service are no longer where Boeing and other corporations seek to demonstrate value. Not even the shareholders. It is the ‘stakeholders.’ That means Vanguard, Blackrock, and other behemoths.
Do Bud Light and Target ring a bell? But the stakes are much higher when you are talking about planes carrying thousands of passengers a day and not just a can of beer.
There is more to the interview, but the insider concluded by calling DEI a ‘ form of cheap self-love’ that absolves leaders from actually leading. And the only way back is to regain a focus on service and on the people who made Boeing great over generations … who still love making outstanding planes.
This is a great interview, and should be informative reading to those who scoff at the notion that ESG/DEI play a significant role in elite-driven failures. https://t.co/uujI7y28jk
— Hampton Prescott 🇺🇸 (@hampprescott) April 4, 2024
They don’t just play a significant role. According to this insider at least, they play the PRIMARY role.
DEI mismatch problem long evident in universities: top schools like Harvard scoop up the small handful of qualified “underrepresented minorities” and it only harms them a little. But for every step down in the chain you’re fishing in a more and more unqualified pool. https://t.co/P4cybH1HOd
— Inez Stepman ⚪️🔴⚪️ (@InezFeltscher) April 4, 2024
I would suggest that its not only that DEI is “ill-defined,” but that, at worst, it’s non-defined, and, at best, it’s deliberately ambiguous, so that ‘inclusivity’ is such an open-ended proposition that there are no boundaries with regard to how its discriminatory precepts can be…
— Darrell B. Harrison* (@D_B_Harrison) April 4, 2024
‘Deliberately ambiguous.’ This is true and has been borne out over and over again.
Equity is the centerpiece of DEI.
Equity is the opposite of equality
Equity crushes excellence (Boeing!)
Equity is a nice sounding word for socialism
Equity must be eliminated!
— $8 Bartemy (@BartemyS) April 4, 2024
This is the precise point that Rufo himself made to Cuban during their Twitter back and forth. ‘Equity’ sounds like such a nice word. How could anyone be against that? Until you realize what it truly means.
That sound you hear is @mcuban scrambling to come up with a painfully pedestrian explanation for why this is actually virtuous and effective business.
— Matt Bilinsky (@mattbilinsky) April 4, 2024
HA. We’re still waiting for Cuban to accept Rufo’s invitation to a long-form conversation (Konstantin Kisin said he would host it). We might be waiting for a long time.
Don’t
Eat
It— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) April 4, 2024
As this tweet and Rufo’s reply point out, as did the Boeing insider, it doesn’t take much to infect an organization with DEI. Just one drop — or one rat — can poison everything.
It is the growth in HR departments that fueled this – job creation for non-STEM degrees in every corporation.
— Sara Boettcher (@Edtechview) April 4, 2024
The proliferation of DEI out of Human Resources departments was also a core of the insider’s indictment.
Sounds like shareholder lawsuits will be coming soon…
A radical focus on discriminatory DEI programs has likely done *irreparable harm* to a once great American company and its shareholders. https://t.co/drukW069Ml
— Will Hild (@WillHild) April 4, 2024
We agree that shareholders should be outraged. There’s just one problem with shareholder lawsuits. Guess who the biggest Boeing shareholder is. It starts with ‘Van’ and ends with ‘guard.’
But we don’t want to end on a downer. Corporations including Boeing may not yet be close to recovering their lost greatness, but there are good signs. DEI is slowly but surely being dropped by many colleges. And just yesterday, even The Daily Show, of all programs, called DEI ‘garbage’ (albeit in a very backhanded and still very leftist manner).
For corporations like Boeing, as the saying goes, ‘sunlight is the best disinfectant.’ The more Rufo and others like him talk to insiders and whistleblowers, the more will be exposed.
That would be great news for meritocracy, which built America. And very bad news for the cancer known as DEI.
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