Alan Winslow
(For readers unfamiliar with this acronym, “D” stands for “diversity,” “E” stands for “equity” and “I” stands for “inclusion.” DEI, for short.)
Richard Moss, MD, a practicing ENT surgeon from Jasper, has recently reported in a column at a national website, “American Thinker,” that Memorial Hospital in Jasper has announced it will begin DEI training for medical staff.
Dr. Moss vigorously opposes this new training: “I will do all that I can to ensure that it does not stand.”
Doesn’t it seem a bit weird that a physician, a healer, is antagonistic to medical staff DEI professional development at his hospital?
And after all, human resources, the hospital CEO, the hospital board and no doubt, other key hospital stakeholders had to have carefully considered this new training prior to approval. And no doubt, they judged it to be both advantageous for medical staff and ultimately a means of strengthening the quality of patient care.
So what are Dr. Moss’ concerns regarding DEI?
Let’s investigate.
Wikipedia and Dictionary.com state that “DEI refers to [implementing] [new] organizational [structures] which seek to promote ‘the fair treatment and full participation of all people,’ particularly groups ‘who have historically been underrepresented or subject to discrimination on the basis of [their] identity…’”
Hmm …
I do believe we already have affirmative action in place (actually, 59 years’ worth). I do believe it’s been illegal to discriminate on the basis of identity in the workplace since 1964. And it is my understanding that organizations have been training line staff, managers and executives for at least as long to be hypersensitive to minority concerns.
Yet, DEI trainings are now coming to Memorial Hospital in Jasper. (Which makes me wonder about our great hospital, Schneck Medical Center.)
Regardless, let’s continue the investigation into DEI.
In my attempt to understand what DEI training teaches, I found a website, readycsod.com, that provides free comprehensive online training for mastering DEI concepts and practices in organizations.
And after several days, here is what I distilled from my DEI “training.”
The main mission of DEI training is to dismantle an organization’s “white dominant culture” (or white supremacy culture).
Why?
According to the DEI teachings, the white dominant culture in American organizations is toxic for workers and is especially harmful to people of color and other minorities.
That is, by its very nature, the typical American organization does harm to workers and then operates to exclude minorities. Too, this pervasive white supremacy culture only benefits whites who are steadily rewarded with favors and privileges routinely denied to minorities.
Thus, DEI teaches that America’s history of, and its ongoing system of, white dominant culture works to prevent diversity, excludes people of color and denies equality to minorities.
Accordingly, DEI teaching seeks to establish a disruptive culture aiming to motivate employees to deconstruct the American system, the so-called white supremacy culture. (It has been reported that among the methods used, trainers have urged white employees “to act less white.”) And challenging that deconstruction effort only proves a racist or white supremacist mentality.
Finally, my DEI training identified many specific organizational values and practices that are part and parcel of white supremacy. DEI says they must be dismantled. These include:
-Perfectionism — there is too much emphasis on what’s wrong and focusing on a person’s mistakes.
-Productivity — there is too much emphasis on numbers and results. It’s always production and numbers and measuring outcomes.
-Writing skills — these are too highly valued over other forms of communication.
-Urgency and timeliness — there is too much pressure to get things done in too little time.
-Competition — the workplace is too competitive and too focused on individual performance.
-Objectivity — There is an over-reliance on objectivity and logic-based thinking in the pursuit of organization goals.
To summarize, DEI instruction intends to disrupt the white supremacy that reigns in American organizations. It aims to dismantle the toxic organizational structures whites have established over time that now function as white supremacy impediments to all minorities.
There you have it, the defining DEI features that my investigation yielded. I suspect you will find like features in any standard DEI curriculum.
Two appraisals of DEI
Let me now present two critiques of DEI, one of them from the above-mentioned column by Dr. Moss, who works at Memorial Hospital in Jasper. The second one comes from a black inner-city pastor in Chicago, a transplanted Hoosier, the Rev. Corey Brooks.
“DEI is a hyperaggressive and politicized quota system,” writes Dr. Moss, “a radicalized version of affirmative action for certain so-called ‘marginalized’ people.”
“It’s not your talent, your accomplishments or history of productivity that is the hallmark of a DEI-dominant organization. It is your identity as a minority, be it race, sex, sexual orientation, ethnicity, religion and so on.”
So for the DEI culture, the most important feature is the color of your skin or your sex or your sexual orientation, not the content of your character or past and current performance, according to Dr. Moss.
Pastor Corey Brooks writes in a Tablet Magazine article that DEI ideas and programs do nothing for his broken inner-city community. Once committed to race-oriented solutions for the black underclass, including DEI efforts, Pastor Brooks states the DEI program is merely a tool to build political power for upper-class professionals.
And poor blacks have basically become mascots for these privileged, mostly white aristocrats, who revel in sanctimony as they condemn America as endemically racist.
DEI at its core blames all minority failure on the fictional notion of a current, actively operating white supremacy, says Pastor Brooks.
“When I hear DEI advocates describe the American principles of merit, freedom and [self-help] as white supremacist values, I know that this language is toxic for my community and for the lives we are trying to save.”
A final quote from the good pastor:
“…hope lies in American principles. Despair and further generations of poverty, disease and hopelessness lie in DEI principles.”
Conclusion
Thank you, Dr. Moss, for opposing a path to medical mediocrity, a sure outcome of DEI practices.
Memorial Hospital is to be pitied if it follows through with DEI training. Primum non nocere, anyone?
Alan Winslow, a resident of Seymour, occasionally writes a column for The Tribune. Send comments to [email protected].