Is Diversity All That?

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The municipality I worked for on Long Island for 21 years wasn’t diverse by woke standards. Ninety-five percent of my co-workers were white like me and every supervisor had male plumbing like me.

The private company I worked for nine years prior to retiring was diverse by woke standards. Roughly 50 percent of my co-workers had non-white skin and roughly 50 percent of the supervisors had non-male plumbing.

I’m not a diversity-phile. I think diversity, as defined by our woke overlords is bullshit. But here’s something odd: I loathed working for that municipality on Long Island and really enjoyed working for that private company. Could it be, then, that I got this diversity thing all wrong? That diversity really is the key to a more fulfilling life—both in and out of the workplace?

No. Not even close. Let me explain.

I’m a content-of-character guy. I don’t care what people look like and who people sleep with. All I care about is character. Are you a good person? Do you treat others with respect? If asked, would your employer and your community regard you as an indispensable asset? You can be as unlike me as possible—say, a black lesbian with green hair who prays to a Hindu god—but as long as you’re a noble person, who honestly tries to better yourself and your little corner of the world, I would welcome you as a friend, co-worker, or neighbor.

The reason why I loathed working at that Long Island municipality was that it had too much diversity on the only front that matters—the character front. There were basically three kinds of employees in that woeful workplace: ones who resisted the toxic work culture and strove for excellence nonetheless, ones who surrendered to the toxic work culture and were more than happy to oblige the “soft cruelty of low expectations,” and, finally, ones who fiercely maintained the toxic work culture and turned our employment into a heinous dodge of extracting as much tribute as possible from the taxpayers while performing as little work as possible.

I can’t tell you the exact percentages of the three kinds of employees. I can tell you that the surrenderers and the dodgers were far more numerous than the resisters. I can also tell you that nearly everyone in a management or leadership role was a dodger. That’s why the work culture was so toxic, and that’s why our municipality gave the taxpayers around 50 cents of service for every dollar they surrendered to us in taxes.

For anyone in the resister class, working for that municipality on Long Island was hell. I didn’t know this until halfway through my government career I decided to leave the surrenderer class and join the resister class. For some reason, my morality gene kicked in and I couldn’t live with myself if I continued behaving dishonorably at work. Ultimately, joining the resister class was one of the best moves in my life. It spurred me to learn programming and SQL databases and become a better person both on and off the job. This newly acquired affinity for excellence, in turn, led to a professional reinvention—I transitioned from dead-animal-picker-upper to data analyst—and, most importantly, a social reinvention—I transitioned from an unmarriageable beer-swilling slob to a marriageable schnook with a lot of upside potential (which the Fabulous Mrs. Groovy happily, for my sake, rolled the dice on). But, as already alluded to, joining the resister class was hardly cost-free. I can’t tell you how frustrating it was to be a conscientious worker when nearly everyone around you didn’t want to work and didn’t care about the quality of work he or she provided whenever he or she actually stooped to do some work. Every Sunday night during my resister days was sleepless. The knot in my stomach from knowing I had five straight days of Bizzaro world before me was that grievous.

Now let’s shift to that private company that employed me for nine years prior to my retirement. Was management perfect? No. Were my fellow worker bees perfect? No. But they were all fundamentally good people. And most importantly, they didn’t have diverse attitudes when it came to something as critical as work ethic. All my co-workers, whether in management or not, were reliably conscientious. They came to work on time, did their jobs well, and played nicely with everyone in the office. The workplace was refreshingly free of drama, pettiness, and backstabbing. Sleepless Sunday nights were thus a rarity during this employment gig. And when the occasional Sunday night stomach knot did occur, it had nothing to do with my co-workers. It was always the result of a difficult client. The culture at this private company’s workplace was thoroughly agreeable.

Do We Really Crave Diversity?

Here’s a thought experiment. Imagine two neighborhoods. In one neighborhood, the residents are very well-behaved. The homes, shops, and parks are beautifully maintained, violent crime is extremely rare, and the schools are orderly and rather nerdish. In the other neighborhood, the residents aren’t so uniformly dedicated to amity. There’s a lot of riff-raff in this neighborhood. As such, a lot of its homes, shops, and parks are a magnet for litter, graffiti, and deferred maintenance, violent crime is commonplace, and the schools are chaotic and gang-infested.

Now a question: which neighborhood would you want to reside in? It’s a no-brainer, right? You would choose the neighborhood with well-behaved residents. But what if I told you the neighborhood with the well-behaved residents has a dismal “diversity” score. This neighborhood is 100 percent white and Christian. The other neighborhood with a more casual attitude toward decency has an awesome “diversity” score. It’s a “rainbow coalition” of many races, religions, and tongues. Would you still prefer the well-behaved neighborhood?

Our woke overlords have decided that the superficial diversity that they obsess over is the kind of diversity that we need to hold in the highest regard. But, again, I don’t give a rat’s ass about traits that solely result from the accident of birth. All I care about is character—a feature of humanity that we all get to control, that isn’t dependent on what genitals we are born with or how much melanin we are born with. And as long as I have a choice, I will shun character diversity with extreme prejudice. I only want to associate with people with good, moral character. If that means a school, workplace, or neighborhood that is nearly all white, so be it. If that means a school, workplace, or neighborhood that is nearly all black—or nearly all Hispanic or nearly all Asian—so be it as well.

Final Thoughts

Okay, groovy freedomist, that’s all I got. What say you? I say our woke overlords are welcome to their trait-based understanding of diversity. I also say our woke overlords have no right to foist their trait-based understanding of diversity on you, me, and the rest of the great unwashed. They can take their woke privilege and shove it. I will continue to focus on character and avoid environments peopled by those with diverse moral standards—I want as little contact as possible with the lazy, unethical, rude, and violent. But, hey, that’s just me. When you get a chance, let me know what kind of diversity you focus on—trait-based or character-based—and whether you really value being in an environment with a cornucopia of diverse moral standards. I’d love to hear your thoughts. Peace.