What’s Wrong with the World

écrasez l'infâme!

Yeah, I know. As if.

Oh, golly, can I play? I'm a Vertically Challenged Person and have been subjected to microinequities all my life, only I never knew what they were called. Now I can get really outraged!

I can confirm that large corporations are by no means bored of diversity and sexual harassment training. I've never heard of a microinequity before today though.

I'm sure this isn't a helpful comment and it doesn't add anything to the discussion but for some reason I have this nagging desire for some "coastal" salami now...

"You can either catch up, or be left behind."

This is progressivism using it's Darth Vader voice. Until they get called on it. Then it's, "There's no one here but us chickens." :)

Wait, was that video for real? I thought it was parody. For all the extolling of diversity as a modern virtue, it seems what is actually wanted is homogeny.

Wow. I hadn't heard of this claptrap til now. This eager desire to take offence at the slightest word or gesture seems like a cold charity-free pride-filled puritanism to me - the diabolical opposite of what the saints advise.

The concept is not new- it has been a pet obsession of critical theorists and some continental philosophers for decades. Witness the practice of "discovering" forms of "violence" and "repression" embedded in mundane interpersonal encounters e.g. the "male gaze" or Foucault's endless parade of invisible power relations. Of course, all of that continental gibberish ts too baroque for wiki-depth people like "scienceprofessor.blogspot" and the drones of the corporate world. Now, however, with some rebranding, it appears to have metastasized into the technocratic jargon of "microinequities." We can now rest assured that this meme will be worm its way into the collective conscience of those otherwise innocent of critical theoretic navel gazing.

I had been seeing small gestures in this direction in my large organization, but had not heard of the term before. Mainly from our dear, darling EEOC gestapo. I took the liberty of charging my employer 3 hours of time to reply to the EEOC coordinator on a pair of "don't celebrate Christmas, celebrate 'the holidays' so you don't accidentally make Muslims/Hindus/animists/Wiccans feel left out" memos. Surprisingly, she actually toned down the anti-Christmas message the following year.

I'm sorry, but Bill White has to change his last name.

I accidentally selected the "grammar" checker on my word processor. It flagged "husband" and "wife" as grammatical errors that should be replaced by "spouse."

The flames of righteousness need constant fanning. The addiction must be fed, the ersatz superiority & very real aggression are the markers of a fractured society where public crusading has taken the place of private morality.
Soon, calls for federal laws and regulations, a Tone of Voice Office within the already monstrous DH&HS, a congressional sub-committee chaired by a witless Medusa torturing hapless male witnesses with her exercises in idiocy, the NY Times, Katie Couric, I can see it all, there is no escape.

Dr Bauman - I was puzzled at first, then the light dawned! I oppress the easily-oppressed just by being me :-)

Untenured's comment is brilliant and deserves pondering.

I'd love the chance to work one day at the Tone of Voice Office.

Caller: Someone at this workplace has a bad attitude.
Step2: What did you do to deserve it?
Caller: Huh? Nothing at all, they were rude and condescending.
Step2: I don't have time for your nonsense. (click)

The world is divided between those who accept black and white thinking and those that don't. :-)

As for the student ID incident, why does the professor assume the worst of the worker? Don't we have an obligation--especially in civil society--to give our fellow citizens the benefit of the doubt? When we teach people to "look for" slights, they will find them, since the slights are tools of empowerment and who wants to be weak?

There is something deeply immoral about nurturing such habits in people. The fact that it is done by people who claim to be advancing civility, just shows how incredibly stupid corporate America has become. (Academia has been that way for quite some time. Trust me, you don't want to go there).

The "microinequity" concept is useful - it keeps microintellects employed.

The most frightening aspect of this latest PC fad is that unlike other pre-defined "Un-PC" speech, you are immediately guilty by the mere fact that the person to whom you are addressing is offended...

Tom, I'm afraid that was already in place. Remember the "niggardly" blow-up?

Lydia - untenured's comment is, indeed, brilliant. And Frank Beckwith, as is his wont, goes to the heart of the matter. But the phrase I can't get out of my head is johnt's: "I can see it all, there is no escape."

Wait, was that video for real? I thought it was parody.

No kidding, it was worthy of a parody. But I'm quite certain it was legit. "Coastal" appears to be a major player in corporate training. "Coastalami.com" redirects you to this site:

http://www.coastal.com/site/humanresourcestraining/index.php

For all the extolling of diversity as a modern virtue, it seems what is actually wanted is homogeny.

Good insight. It's all very Orwellian.

At that Coastal link Jeff, I saw this DVD: Ethics: The L.O.G.I.C. of Right Price: $949. Am I the only one seeing the irony?

"Microinequities?" What a crock! Back in my day, we referred to this as being "thin-skinned."
Get over it! Jeez!

Prof. Beckwith:

The fact that it is done by people who claim to be advancing civility, just shows how incredibly stupid corporate America has become. Academia has been that way for quite some time. Trust me, you don't want to go there).

Perhaps my involuntary retirement from academic America is as fortunate for me as Jeff Culbreath's from corporate Ameerica was for him.

Best,
Mike

If microinequities are the worst that happens you're having a really good life. What are you gonna do when the real inequities start to fly?

All,

Jonah mentions this post over at "The Corner" today. And earlier at "The Corner", there was discussion of "Harrison Bergeron":

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=Y2MzYjgyYWE4YjJiMGZhM2I1MzBlNWY0MDYyMWEwMzc=

(sorry Steve)

It's just old-fashioned deconstructurism going 3-D.

We need a new national policy of pushing microinequitarians over the border to Mexico, i.e. one microinequitarian per "undocumented" Mexican immigrant going north. The Mexican would have his feet solidly on the ground of hard-work-for-supper--on-the-table, while Mexico would gain all the benefit of our unlamented micro-loonybiscuits, who, like Lady Catherine de Bourgh sallying "forth into the village to settle their differences, silence their complaints, and scold them into harmony and plenty", could let fall the superiority of their wisdom upon the stunned populace.

(Though, admittedly, this could end in the entirety of Mexico deciding to bolt for the border...)

We need a new national policy of pushing microinequitarians over the border to Mexico

Sorry, but that will have to take a backseat to our current idea: Inviting every illegal to cross the border in Arizona and then bus them to rich neighborhoods in LA.

Wait-- does this mean I can start getting offended that the checker doesn't ask for my ID when purchasing alcohol?!?? Sweet!

In the Journal of Interdisciplinary Celtic Studies, Michael Newton, writes these consecutive sentences in a review of James P. Cantrell’s, “ How Celtic Culture Invented Southern Literature;”

"The fact that Cantrell doggedly clings to such fabricated dichotomies is indicative of his racialist fundamentalism.

Labels should always be used with caution…"

I thought that was the unintentionally funniest thing I had read in some time. And then I saw this crap.

I can not think of a group more deserving of being punished by this liberal BS than those responsible for it - white males whether in the Academy or the Business world.

Were it not for the white male children of the greatest generation (cough, cough) we might still be free.

Lydia writes: I'm a Vertically Challenged Person and have been subjected to microinequities all my life, only I never knew what they were called. Now I can get really outraged!

As a micro-sized person, you will make valuable contributions to our diversity team.

(Wait, am I stereotyping?)

Bill White *cough Supremacist *cough* suggests this microinequities trend is puritanism. It sounds more like pharasaism to me: straining out gnats, swallowing camels.

For all the guff tradCons get about being repressive, this is an issue where we are actually quite liberal-minded.

Untenured mentions Foucault. I suspect we're really dealing with technocratic pop-Freudianism: casual statements can cause great trauma, but benevolent expert training can repair the traumatized and assign reparative penance to the traumatizer.

The technocrat would only see the high price of the diversity video set as a sign of its craftsmanship. He thinks he's using his powers for liberation, but Foucault would recognize the treatment of the traumatized as another form of (inescapable) social control.

A couple more comments:

I actually thought this post was going to be about "microequities" and related to the stock market.

There's a movement to treat bathroom inequities between men and women as a cause for state action. It's at the point where businesses in old areas could be forced to perform renovations so that ladies don't have to wait as long for the restroom.

Also check out Brigid Moynihan and the interview with her. She is "a Master Practitioner of Neuro-Linguistic Programming." With many Fortune 500 companies as clients.

If microinequities are a significant issue, that must mean the fight against REAL oppression and discrimination has been won. It also means there's a new fight against people who don't want the fight to be over - like the con man in the video.

Recently I was asked for my student ID by a young man working at a campus site that provides a computer-related service to students and faculty.

FSP: I don't have a student ID.

Tech guy: Then I can't help you.

Also - there are only two reasons for answering the young man's question the way she did, "I don't have a student ID".

1. She was being playful and coy, in good fun. No harm, no foul.

2. She was setting him up for a "microinequity" offense.

If she simply wanted to get to where she was going, she would have said "I'm Professor So-and-So, a faculty member. Here's my ID." If it were me, I would have had my ID in view before the employee could say "boo".

But, no, she was testing him. Gotcha.

I recently was laid off by a Fortune 500 software company based in Silicon Valley. (A true blessing - seriously.) Though this is the first I've heard of "microinequities," I too, can vouch for the ongoing obsession with diversity training, etcetera in the corporate world.

I am convinced that human resources departments (remember when they were called "personnel" departments?) are filled with the most useless, humorless, uninteresting, and petty human beings on the planet.

Exactly, Jeff. What sort of woman must she be that, when she is old enough (by her own account) to have wrinkles visible from a distance, she sets traps for some young college kid? Doesn't she have any sense of noblesse oblige as a professor? I thought liberals (cough cough) were all concerned about not abusing power to push around the powerless. Well, okay, I didn't think that. I haven't thought that for a very long time. But that's what they _say_. Here's this woman probably old enough to be this boy's mother baiting him and pushing him around when he's trying to work his way through college. It makes me ill.

Note in the wikipedia entry:

Micro-affirmations are subtle or apparently small acknowledgements of a person's value and accomplishments. They may take the shape of public recognition of the person, "opening a door," referring positively to the work of a person, commending someone on the spot, or making a happy introduction.

I especially enjoyed that the phrase "opening a door" was in quotes. Because, you know, to actually open the door for a woman is a microinequity implying she cannot open a door without help from a man. But to open a door for a fellow man shows respect and "good-fuzzies".

Ergo, in order to avoid committing microinequities, hold door for men, but not for women.

So if I told woman: You got two arms and two legs, open your own dang door.

Would that be a micro-inequity or a micro-affirmation?

Rest assured that the "microinequities" racket is the latest step in the ongoing corporate emasculation of employees perceived as insufficiently diverse (i.e., straight white males) and who, according to the slimy diversity huckster in the video below, "will never get it".

Let's see - we've set up hiring to actively discriminate against SWMs. We've made "diversity" (aka "anti-SWM") a religion, with (well-remunerated) high-priests and heretics, the whole shebang. We've turned our universities (and lower schooling, too) into environments promoting poisonous hostility toward SWMs, complete with "self-criticism sessions" to humiliate and demoralize SWMs at every turn. And yet, I'm still not happy. It's still a tough world out there, a world that doesn't recognize me as its center. I'm still plagued by discontent and self-doubt, not sure if I have the respect of my peers, happiness seems elusive. But we all know that is an unnatural state for a human being, and never experienced by Persons of Privilege.

Obviously, the solution to all this is to redouble our struggle against The Privileged not paying sufficient attention to our suffering, to the bottomless need of the utterly self-absorbed for constant affirmation of our worth, and constant attention and deference to every nuance of our internal subjective state of being. Obviously, hundreds of thousands of dollars need to be budgeted for the healing ministrations of Slimy Diversity Huckster. Come, comrade, help us root out these last super-subtle, impossible to pin down, but still incredibly virulent, vestiges of White Male Privilege! Surely then, and only then, when the Righteous Penicillin of Dr. Diversity is applied to the last resistant super-bugs infecting the body politic, will the happiness I am due will come to me!

Truly vile.

hey i betchya if those good ole boyz on the deepwater horizon had had some of this outfit's training around micro-inequities the gulf of mexico might just be a whole lot cleaner than it is right now. ya reckon?