Time: Tue Nov 12 22:49:10 1996
To: barbara beier <barbb@Capital.Net>
From: Paul Andrew Mitchell [address in tool bar]
Subject: Re: piml] Racial quotas again
Cc:
Bcc:
>Quoted from the following article: "Only 13% of Levi-Strauss's
>employees are
>white males....."
>If you are as curious as I am as to how this racial inequity
>occurred in an
>age when quota is king,
>Levi-Strauss can be contacted at the following address:
>
> Levi-Strauss
> Levi Plaza
> 1155 Battery Street
> San Francisco <---- here's your answer
>==============================
>
>The Wall Street Journal Interactive Edition
>Editorial Page
>November 11, 1996
>
>" Race Still Matters To California Companies"
>By HEATHER MAC DONALD
>
> When voters passed the California Civil Rights Initiative,
>which bans
>racial and gender
>preferences in state and local government, they sent a clear
>message: Let's
>get back on track
>toward a color-blind society. It's a message most corporations
>haven't yet
>heard. "Proposition 209
>will not affect our commitment to affirmative action in any way,"
>says
>Charles Manor, a
>spokesman for Lockheed-Martin. Mr. Manor expresses a virtually
>universal
>sentiment among
>large California businesses, which employ a bevy of "diversity"
>executives
>and consultants.
>Despite growing public disgust with quotas, most of the state's
>major
>private employers have no
>intention of moving away from group-conscious policies.
> Indeed, during the campaign, Big Business could barely contain
>its
>disdain for the initiative.
>Pro-CCRI strategist Arnie Steinberg recalls his struggles with the
>business
>community: "We were
>constantly running just to stand still. The best we could do was to
>keep
>them neutral." Only a
>concerted lobbying effort by Gov. Pete Wilson prevented a stampede
>of
>corporations from joining
>Pacific Gas & Electric, which went public with its opposition
>to the
>measure.
> A coalition of Northern California companies polled voters
>about their
>views of affirmative
>action, and found that a majority wanted to end it -- in the
>private sector
>as well as the public.
>Presumably so embarrassed were the sponsors that ultimately only
>two --
>Hewlett-Packard and
>Kaiser Permanente, the giant Oakland-based health maintenance
>organization
>-- were willing to
>acknowledge having supported the survey.
> Meanwhile, the CEOs of such firms as Chevron, Hughes Aircraft
>and
>Atlantic Richfield issued
>ringing endorsements of affirmative action, clearly targeted at the
>CCRI
>debate. And many big
>companies, including Pacific Bell and Southern California Edison,
>conducted
>internal "education"
>campaigns explaining the need for diversity policies. Kaiser
>Permanente sent
>a letter to all its
>member physicians and employees warning of the initiative's
>dangers.
> Now that CCRI has passed, corporate explanations for its
>success range
>from voter ignorance
>to xenophobia. "A lot of fear was played on regarding the diversity
>of the
>California population,"
>claims Deborah Yarborough, a diversity initiatives manager at
>Silicon
>Graphics. Corporate
>opponents of the initiative, which is based on the language of the
>1964
>Civil Rights Act, never
>acknowledge the possibility that voters approved it out of a simple
>belief
>in equality.
> In light of the alleged petty-mindedness behind CCRI's
>approval, many
>corporations now view
>their own affirmative action efforts as all the more crucial.
>"Corporate
>diversity initiatives are
>enlightened resources to communities regarding the realities of the
>population," Ms. Yarborough
>asserts.
> Thus California corporations will continue to hire and promote
>based on
>race and sex. San
>Francisco-based Levi-Strauss, for example, hires employees based on
>their
>ability to fill a specific
>demographic gap in its work force. The company's drive for
>proportional
>representation has one
>exception: Only 13% of Levi-Strauss's employees are white males,
>but the
>company has yet to
>undertake a campaign to redress this demographic imbalance.
> Hughes Aircraft and Lockheed-Martin, among many others, pay
>their
>managers based in part
>on their record of promoting minorities and women. Corporations
>universally
>claim a business
>rationale for such policies. But while it's plausible to suppose,
>for
>example, that Hispanics tend to
>know best how to market to Hispanic consumers, the diversity
>mandate often
>leads to a
>preposterous essentialism. When asked how the racial composition of
>an
>engineering team could
>affect the team's performance, Dave Barclay, Hughes's vice
>president for
>diversity, explains that a
>racially diverse team would bring "diverse approaches to
>problem-solving."
>Do the laws of
>physics discriminate?
> The diversity ideology consists of an odd blend of power
>politics and
>therapeutic aspirations:
>We have to unseat white males from their alleged positions of
>power, the
>argument goes, but also
>make them empathize with "oppressed" groups. "It is important that
>white
>males in the power
>structure understand the problems we [women and members of ethnic
>minorities] are faced with,"
>says Mr. Barclay.
> "Understanding the other" was once a question for philosophers
>and
>psychologists; the
>diversity-training industry has imported it into the workplace,
>replete with
>pop-psychological
>trappings. "Diversity training draws people out to share those
>experiences
>that heighten
>sensitivity," says Laurie MacDonald, a spokeswoman for Nestle Foods
>USA. At
>Nestle's
>mandated diversity sessions, employees divide into four groups,
>representing
>the body and the
>three parts of the "triune brain," in order to experience how
>"stereotypes
>are hidden deep within
>the primitive part of ourselves," explains Maria Reifler, Nestle's
>diversity
>consultant. (Ms.
>Reifler has brought her theories of the triune brain and "buried
>prejudices"
>to Walt Disney,
>Chrysler and Chevron as well.) Kaiser Permanente is redoubling its
>diversity
>efforts in light of
>CCRI. The company will initiate "comprehensive" diversity training
>around
>the theme of
>"culturally sensitive health care" early next year, says its vice
>president
>for diversity, Ron Knox.
> Corporate diversity trainers have no patience with quaint
>notions of
>equality. "Most people
>operate with the mind-set: 'I don't pay attention to differences,"
>" scoffs
>Kathleen Terry, a
>California diversity consultant who works with Hughes Aircraft,
>Mattel,
>Mitsubishi and Northrop.
>Ms. Terry fights that "mind-set" by instilling a weird solipsism.
>"You have
>to look at the self
>first," she maintains. "Before I can teach you to become aware of
>others'
>differences, you have to
>get in touch with how those factors have affected your own life."
>It is
>difficult to understand how
>encouraging such self-absorption could improve business
>competitiveness.
> The irony of the diversity effort is that it is superfluous.
>Precisely
>because the population is
>becoming more ethnically diverse -- the mantra of the diversity
>industry --
>businesses that practice
>race-neutral hiring are bound to have a diverse work force. Cypress
>Semiconductors, a Silicon
>Valley manufacturer, is a rarity: It has never considered
>instituting
>affirmative action. CEO T.J.
>Rodgers says that if he discriminated against immigrants and
>minorities,
>he'd lose 30% to 40% of
>his company's talent.
> With the passage of CCRI, Californians can expect to be
>treated as
>equals, regardless of race
>or sex -- but only by the government. Those who work for big
>companies will
>continue to be
>regarded as representatives of groups, bearing either a
>responsibility or a
>claim for reparation.
>Corporate America lags far behind the public's commitment to equal
>opportunity.
>
>Ms. Mac Donald is a contributing editor of the Manhattan
>Institute's City
>Journal.
>
>Copyright; 1996 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
>
>
>
>
>
>___________________________________________________________________________
>There is so much frustration in the world because we have relied on gods
>rather than God. We have genuflected before the god of science only to
>find that it has given us the atomic bomb, producing fears and anxieties
>that science can never mitigate. We have worshiped the god of pleasure
>only to discover that thrills play out and sensations are short-lived. We
>have bowed before the god of money only to learn that there are such
>things as love and friendship that money cannot buy and that in a world of
>possible depressions, stock market crashes, and bad business investments,
>money is a rather uncertain deity. These transitory gods are not able to
>save or bring happiness to the human heart. Only God is able. It is
>faith in Him that we must rediscover -- Martin Luther King, Jr.
>___________________________________________________________________________
>
>
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