In 2014, Morgan Freeman, made waves by telling Don Lemon of CNN that racism is only a thing because it is talked about. If you want to end racism, then stop talking about it. Morgan Freeman was wisely telling the truth.In the intervening years we have accelerated our descent into the moral maelstrom of woke politics and business stupidity. Authors like Robin deAngelo and Ibram X. Kendi made fortunes telling us that White people are racists. It is definitional. But isn’t that racist?“No need to apply here, Whitey!”“Time to give back the land you white, European colonizers!”It was an exhausting ten years of nonsense, and it appears that perhaps the fever is breaking. Woke-ism is falling apart. Black author Glenn Loury calls the racist claims baseless and silly. Hey Ms. DeAngelo, maybe the emperor is naked, and you have been the racist all along.In the United States, large companies are dumping their woke diversity-equity-inclusion (DEI) programs. Wal Mart is the latest thanks to the unstinting work of Robby Starbuck. It can be argued that the "racist" campaigns of an influential conservative do not indicate an end to DEI or its woke foundations. But that argument doesn’t explain the $14 billion lost by Anheuser-Busch over its silly Bud Light marketing campaign. Companies are cutting their DEI anchor chains because they know that the woke programs, once exposed, will lead to a significant loss in market value as the customer base erodes.Rutgers University has even published a replicated study that argues that DEI programs make people hostile. Maybe the hostility is expressed in an inclusive way. The study is mute on this. According to ZeroHedge, the results of the study were so shocking that the New York Times and Bloomberg stopped reporting on it. So, is woke-ism and its DEI offspring dying of late-stage moral cancer? We can only hope so. But sadly, here in Alberta there are lingering signs of life. The University of Calgary hasn’t gotten the memo and maintains its Office of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion where Whitey need not apply. But worse is the push to more deeply embed DEI in the Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of Alberta (APEGA.) In full disclosure, I am a retired member of this association and am bound by its professional rules. But not its programs.APEGA wants thirty percent of its members to be women by 2030. It is currently looking for a DEI Manager at least on a temporary basis. Am I against women in the engineering profession? Not at all. But nor can I remember any time in my over 40-year career that there were barriers to women entering the profession. Yes, engineering was predominantly male and that comes with its own peculiarities. Get used to it because the profession will remain predominantly male according to the preferences of most females. But are things so dire for minorities and women that special programs need to be invented to dilute the influence of the “male chauvinists” who apparently habituate the profession?The ”science”, remember, suggests strongly that DEI programs do not promote inclusion and equity. Rather such programs make angry those who are told that they are being systemically shut. And it makes those who are told that they are systemically racist and sexist feel resentment towards those who seek to be included. Now everyone is angry. Well done APEGA and U of C.Perhaps we can agree that a vanishingly small number of professional people behave other than professionally. Then perhaps we can stop dividing people into “camps,” perhaps we can stop preparing the battlegrounds upon which those camps must fight. End DEI. Now.I trust that the announced review by the Government of Alberta of the professional associations and institutions of higher education will include a full assessment and excision of all DEI programs.
