February 12, 2025

Facebook, Google, et al., And DEI: Let's Not Forget Their Insufferable Sanctimony

February 12, 2025/ Francis Menton

A few days ago, Google announced that it had abandoned its targets for “diversity, equity and inclusion” for its workforce. Here is the February 5 New York Times article covering the announcement. According to the Times, Google attributed the change of policy to its need “as a federal contractor . . . to comply with President Trump’s executive orders opposing diversity, equity and inclusion policies.”
Google’s announcement came about a month after Facebook parent Meta had (formally) made the same change of policy. (See CNBC’s January 10 piece here covering the Meta announcement.). Google and Facebook are now two leaders in what has become a full-on parade of corporate giants making the same sudden 180 degree reversal of what had previously been broadcast as fundamental corporate policy. Among others in this group are Amazon, Goldman Sachs, McDonald’s, and even Disney.
Was the commitment to DEI of Corporate America, and particularly of the tech giants, really this shallow, that they would all reverse course completely and suddenly and in unison and without a peep of objection?

January 04, 2024

In The New York Times, "Colonialism" Explains Everything

January 04, 2024/ Francis Menton

Why, oh why, is the world so unfair and unjust? In one of the latest narratives of the left, “colonialism” has recently become the trendiest part of the explanation. Or maybe it’s the even more evil variant, “settler colonialism.”
But didn’t colonialism end just about everywhere around 60 or more years ago? Sorry, but that doesn’t matter. Something as evil as colonialism has magic tentacles that can cause injustice and unfairness and ruination extending out multiple generations beyond the time when it came to an end.
This can go to quite absurd lengths.

March 26, 2023

March 26, 2023/ Jane Menton

There are different ways of looking at the issue of human inequality.
The modern Left obsesses about inequality as measured in dollars of income. But if one measures inequality based on quality-of-life, it quickly becomes clear that we have achieved great progress toward equality on the things that really count.
Much of that progress is at risk of reversal from imposition of the green dream.

January 05, 2023

January 05, 2023/ Francis Menton

Here’s a question where I’ll bet you think the answer ought to be completely obvious: Should the purpose of government “anti-poverty” programs be to help the beneficiaries rise from poverty and become successful and independent, or alternatively should the purpose of such programs be to entice the recipients of aid into a life of permanent dependency upon government handouts?
From the earliest days of the anti-poverty programs back in the 1960s, the programs were sold to the public as being a temporary boost by which the poor could be helped to escape from poverty and achieve self-sufficiency. And yet, about six decades in, the rate of poverty never seems to go down, and the number of program beneficiaries grows inexorably. Did something change along the way?
The answer is yes.

March 25, 2022

March 25, 2022/ Francis Menton

If you have followed the news coming out of Yale — and why would you, really? — you would know that it’s one ever more embarrassing thing after another for the seemingly “smart” people at this elite university.
Wokeism run amok; overt racism in the name of “diversity, equity and inclusion”; an uproar over a professor who offered a gentle defense of “culturally appropriative” Halloween costumes; and on and on. Most recently, a couple of weeks ago it was 100 loud law student protesters shouting down a free speech debate while the Dean of the Law School (Heather Gerken) stood by and did nothing.
But if I had to pick the very worst thing about Yale, a good candidate would be how Yale has inflicted its progressive/socialist ideology on its home city of New Haven, Connecticut, to the great harm of New Haven.
Unlike many of the events listed above which are frequently in the news, the consequences of these progressive ideas on a city take the form of a gradual decline that can pass unnoticed until one day you stop to take stock

September 14, 2021

September 14, 2021/ Francis Menton

In response to Saturday’s post, several commenters remarked that it is not appropriate to blame “bad schools” for the poor academic performance of many children from minority groups, particularly black children. These commenters suggest that there are other factors that play a principal role, and that these factors are things that schools can do nothing to change, particularly low IQ and/or a culture that does not value education.
The problem with this contention is that there is actually substantial and even definitive evidence that schools can make a very large difference in the educational outcomes of minority children. I previously discussed some of that evidence in this post from August 2020. That post focused on the issue of school discipline, as well as on Thomas Sowell’s recent book Charter Schools and Their Enemies.
Today I’ll focus on some data generated by the State of New York.