Mark Cuban hits back after Elon Musk criticizes business diversity initiatives - "Musk, the world’s richest man, who employs thousands of people at Tesla, SpaceX, and X, formerly Twitter, claimed diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) was “just another word for racism” in a post to his social network. Cuban, the entrepreneur and investor who rose to prominence as owner of the Dallas Mavericks NBA team and star of the reality TV show Shark Tank, rejected Musk’s argument. Such initiatives are good for business, he wrote in a series of posts, enabling companies to find the best employees, getting the best out of workers, and increasing productivity by reducing “unnecessary” stress. “Good businesses look where others don’t,” Cuban, 65, wrote. “You may not agree, but I take it as a given that there are people of various races, ethnicities, orientation, etc that are regularly excluded from hiring consideration.”... Cuban said Musk was losing out. “By extending our hiring search to include them, we can find people that are more qualified. The loss of DEI-phobic companies is my gain,” he said... Cuban elaborated on his rebuttal of Musk by waxing philosophical on what it means to be a good employer. Equity is a “core principle of business”, he said. “Put your employees in a position to succeed. Recognize their differences and play to their strengths where ever possible.” Inclusion efforts were focused on ensuring that “all employees, no matter who they are or how they see themselves, feel comfortable in their environment and able to do their jobs,” he wrote. Following Cuban’s tweets, Musk wrote: “Cool, so when should we expect to see a short white/Asian women on the Mavs?” Ackman himself chimed in late on Thursday, bringing the debate between billionaires full circle with a remark to Cuban: “That’s exactly what I thought until I did the work. I encourage you to do the same and revert. DEI is not about diversity, equity or inclusion. Trust me. I fell for the same trap you did.” Musk replied: “Yup.”"
Te𝕏asLindsay™ on X - "The Hodge twins told Mark Cuban to not “be a white supremacist” and hire @WuWei113 as a Mavs Point Guard 😂"
Wei Wu 吴伟 on X - "Hello white woman with big teeth and big smile. Your support show your character. You possess wisdom. Very honor. When I be 15 millionaire dollar, I also give you best job. You be my bodyguard. What you do? Smile. Shiny teeth blind all enemy. Blind enemy can not attack. I'm safe."
Thread by @wokal_distance on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "The issue here is that radical leftists are running a motte and bailey game with DEI. They use the very reasonable position @mcuban outlines as their motte, and one they gain power they abolish merit hiring, use hiring quotas, and require the adoption of leftist politics. Further, the adoption of particular political positions is very often made a condition of hiring. This usually takes the form of requiring employees to sign mandatory diversity statements containing loaded political language. Other times the demand is simply implicit and those who don't get on board are denied advancement or are not hired. In essence, DEI seeks to enforce a particular worldview and a set of (very left) social values on entire companies. In it's most pernicious form, DEI departments hijack entire institutions. The DEI activists re-orient the hijacked institution away from it's original mission and then use it as a vehicle for to advance their political and social goals. As ever more resources are dedicated to DEI, the organization becomes ineffective at it's original mission. When this happens the reputation of the organization suffers, and it's ability to recruit talent, raise funds, and operate effectively is compromised. This is how woke takeovers of institutions occur, and almost always DEI policies are the way it is done. I think that @mcuban is arguin in good faith, taking the plain meaning of the terms Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, and attempting to craft a workable policy. However, in the Academic literature those words are actually terms of art that have very specific meanings. For example, In academic literature equity does not mean "treating people equally but while taking their specific situation into account." In DEI literature equity means means: "an administered system in which shares are adjusted so that participants are made equal." In the DEI literature, equity is not a reference to equality, it is a reference to making sure that everyone has equal share of wealth, money, and power in society. In other words, in the DEI literature equity refers to using administrative systems to make OUTCOMES equal. The point here is that while the program @mcuban laid out might work very well (it may not, I can't say for sure) the fact is the program he laid out is VERY different from what you find in the academic DEI literature, and in the actual DEI programs in the corporate world. This is why DEI must be abolished. Once we ahve abolished DEI, we can then go about trying to figure out what actual best practice is for hiring, and we can experiment with different ideas. But we can't do that until we get our institutions out from under DEI."
Colin Wright on X - "That @mcuban is so naive to believe that DEI ideology simply entails expanding the applicant pool, still hiring based on merit, but maybe giving a tiebreaker to the "diverse" candidate is absolutely laughable. Somebody needs to go on Shark Tank and try to sell him a bridge."
Mythinformed on X - "Mark Cuban and The Dallas Mavericks setup a hotline for employees to turn in their fellow coworkers that weren’t following the DEI rules because Woke is Communism."
Frank McCormick | Chalkboard Heresy on X - "Mark Cuban can champion DEI because his billions insulate him from its effects. He’ll never have to sit through diversity training, be operated on by a “diversity-pick,” or suffer career setbacks because he’s a white male. DEI was always for the peasants."
Scott Adams on X - "Mark, literally everyone who has spent a minute in the real business world knows DEI might have been well-intentioned but in practice it is pure race discrimination. Every time. Ask me about the five careers I have lost so far for being white and male. 1. Crocker Bank ("We can't ever promote you because you are white and male.") Yes, management told me directly. 2. Pacific Bell (See #1) 3. Dilbert on UPN bumped from Monday TV schedule so they could create an all-Black comedy lineup. 4. Speaking career eliminated for backing Trump in 2016, because that makes me a racist they say. 5. Cartoon and publishing career canceled for saying in public you should stay away from people who have been taught in school that you are their oppressor. (I could have worded it better, but no one of any color disagrees with the obvious.) I understand Elon Musk says race could be a tie-breaker if qualifications are the same. That's called racism too. Get the fuck away from that scenario too, if you can."
Thread by @Hebro_Steele on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - ""I pastor one of Chicago's toughest neighborhoods on the South Side and @mcuban's defense of DEI is deeply flawed for one reason: this poisonous ideology has no impact on my community, the very community it professes to help." -- Pastor @CoreyBBrooks... From my church located in one of Chicago’s most violent South Side neighborhoods, I watched with disquieting fascination the public trial of Claudine Gay. I followed the debates on the influence and impact of the DEI movement not just in the case of Gay but throughout America. What I heard was that these DEI policies were being done in the name of my community. Sometimes I laughed out loud at some of the claims. It was like listening to people who don’t know you talk about you as if they knew you deep down. Perhaps the most visible example was @mcuban's response to @elonmusk’s claim that “Discrimination on the basis of race, which DEI does, is literally the definition of racism.” .@mcuban responded: it is “a given that there are people of various races, ethnicities, orientation, etc that are regularly excluded from hiring consideration.” The implication here is that USA is systemically racist. I agree there is racism but not in the way that he thinks. .@mcuban then wrote, “By extending our hiring search to include them, we can find people that are more qualified.” This rather simple sentiment is one that most people would find agreeable and I do so to a certain degree. What this ignores is how profoundly education and skill development has declined in our community for generations. We are behind in nearly every social and educational metric and while living in an ever-changing world that seems to be speeding beyond the grasp of our fingertips. If @mcuban came into my community it wouldn’t take him long to understand that this DEI ideology is profoundly flawed, has no impact upon us, and creates more racial divisions. The reality is that the countless of diversity programs that came into being since the late 1960s have been abysmal failures. Nearly every one of them, if not all, professed to have the goal of uplifting poor blacks after centuries of racial oppression. The original intent of Affirmative Action was true uplift by providing bootstraps: better schools, teachers and resources to uplift the undereducated segments of the black population. However, this process of development was too slow for the many white university presidents who wanted to increase the diversity on their campuses now. They moved away from development to cold racial preferences. Diversity, not development, became the new virtue of our times. At the same time, our community was bombarded with one liberal policy after another since the 1960s. We were encouraged to move out of our homes — many admittedly not in good condition, but which we owned — and into housing projects where we had zero equity. Man-in-the-house rules broke apart too many families. Our schools produced far too many illiterates. For decades, our culture rewarded black deviancy shown on countless of @BET rap videos. The only way too many of our children know how to buy food is with Uncle Sam’s dollar. Instead of embracing freedom and responsibility, too many of us allowed ourselves to be seduced into the culture of dependency. Those who could escape and make a life for themselves did and many did. But for those of us who have been caught up in the multigenerational cycle of societal and governmental dependency, that is the only world they know. And we ask them to believe in the American Dream? This is the world of bad faith that I’m trying to reverse every day with my work in the streets, which includes overseeing the building of a community center that came after long years of struggle. I have encountered far too many tragedies. A young man I mentored since he was knee-high was shot dead and all I could think about was the promising future he had been working toward. Another kid I mentored made a dumb mistake and is now on trial for murder. But many kids in my neighborhood have made it out — one of them was just awarded a prestigious fellowship at NASA. Here's a picture of DeMario at NASA, second from your left. The only tool I used with these youths: the American principles. Be on time. Say, yes sir, no sir. Respect your elders. Be responsible. Be accountable. Save money. Build credit. Plan for the future. Be a parent. Get married. You fall, get back up. Never give up. Just do it. That is why I laugh out loud when I heard DEI advocates describe merit and punctuality as white supremacist values. Too many people were destroyed by this culture of dependency and now they want to take away all the remaining lifelines to a life of possibility and future? I know @mcuban surely doesn’t believe in this ridiculousness — he is a businessman. I also hope that he surely recognizes how racist it is to create the belief that standards — educational to societal — across America must be lowered in the name of helping black people. What Cuban doesn’t realize from his post is that the systemic racism that my community faces is not white supremacy but post-60s liberalism. With diversity and not development as its focus, every one of those principles was created in the name of our inferiority. That is why it was disappointing to learn how little Gay produced by way of academic merit and yet rose to the presidency of Harvard because of race. Seeing people like @mcuban defend this only reminded me of how profound the stigma is that we cannot succeed without race. That is why it is my mission in life to develop strong individuals to the point where the thought of using race as an advantage would be an insult to their well-earned pride. We are only at the beginning of reversing the fortunes of our community and we have a long ways to go. We may not save everybody. But we know the harsh realities and it is our refusal to look way to some false ideological comforts that gives us the best chance of giving these young Americans a good life. That is how you create a deep and meritorious talent pool. -@CoreyBBrooks"
Thread by @stclairashley on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "ey @united On July 29, a United plane was nearly totaled after a hard landing Who was flying that aircraft? Was the co-pilot a former flight attendant who was FIRED and then rehired through United’s DEI program despite being on a list to not return to United? Am I correct that this individual failed multiple trainings including simulator training? Am I also correct that United has covered up this DEI disaster and many others? Was the #2 at the Denver hiring center also onboarded through DEI? Did she or did she not change fail grades for DEI hires because “it makes the numbers look bad”? Did the instructor who failed this co-pilot ask corporate why they passed him?
It’s Sowell Goodman!! on X - "He seems to forget that they measure effectiveness based on diversity % of workforce. Weird there’s no insight or metrics to track that it correlates with merit, at all."
The woke believe that all groups are equally good. So if a "minority" group performs worse than others, that is due to discrimination and not a problem with diversity quotas
United Airlines Vows 50% Of Its New Pilots Will Be Women, Minorities
Peachy Keenan on X - "Update: I checked on United's corporate diversity report and am happy to report they exceeded their quota of 50%. Fully 80% of the new class of pilots they graduated is W or POC. Congratulations!"
i/o on X - "United partners with Elizabeth State University, an HBCU which had the distinction in the 1980s of being the only university in which the average SAT math score was lower than that score which would have been produced if a person had guessed "B" on all the multiple choice questions on the test from the previous year. How do I know this? Because my housemate, a stats grad student who went on to teach at UC-Davis, performed this analysis on one of his papers."
Clearly, imposing a hard limit of 50% of white men doesn't mean that standards are lower, because all populations are equal in ability so this is just picking up "minorities" who are unfairly discriminated against
Boeing, in new diversity report, says it fired 65 workers for hateful words or actions - "Boeing has fired 65 employees and disciplined another 53 for racist, discriminatory and hateful conduct since Chief Executive Officer Dave Calhoun vowed “zero tolerance” in June. The CEO is trying to make good on an anti-bigotry pledge he made last year after George Floyd’s murder by a police officer spurred protests across the U.S. Now, in a bid for greater transparency, Boeing is releasing a breakdown of its employees by gender, race and ethnicity — and the report shows that the company has a long way to go to attain its goal of a more diverse workforce... Boeing is working to bolster inclusion as investors press U.S. companies to help address deep-seated racism and to be more transparent about their own hiring practices. McDonald’s is tying executive bonuses to targets for increasing underrepresented groups. Investor proposals for independent racial audits were backed by more than one-third of Johnson & Johnson and Citigroup shareholders at annual meetings this month... One of Calhoun’s first hires after taking the top job last year was Michael D’Ambrose as human resources chief, with a mandate to bolster diversity... “By being more diverse, more inclusive, we will make better decisions,” he said."
How Boeing 737 MAX's flawed flight control system led to 2 crashes that killed 346
Clearly, the problem was that they didn't have enough diversity
Boeing's 737 Max software outsourced to US$9-an-hour engineers - "It remains the mystery at the heart of Boeing Co.’s 737 Max crisis: how a company renowned for meticulous design made seemingly basic software mistakes leading to a pair of deadly crashes. Longtime Boeing engineers say the effort was complicated by a push to outsource work to lower-paid contractors."
Boeing Lost Its Way on a Wall Street Detour - Bloomberg
‘Designed by clowns…supervised by monkeys:’ Internal Boeing messages slam 737 Max | Fortune
R A W S A L E R T S on X - "🚨#BREAKING: Alaska Airlines Forced to Make an Emergency Landing After Large Aircraft Window Blows Out Mid-Air 📌#Portland | #Oregon A Forced emergency landing was made of Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 at Portland International Airport on Friday night. The flight, traveling from Portland to Ontario, California, faced severe depressurization, causing the ejection of a large window section and an unoccupied seat. This incident resulted in a child's shirt being ripped off. The Boeing 737-900/-9MAX aircraft reached a maximum altitude of 16,300 ft before safely returning to Portland International Airport. As of now, it remains unclear if anyone on board the flight was injured, as this story is still developing."
Wolf Bronsky on X - "Apparently, this aircraft came off the line two months ago. It's brand new. The failure is in the fuselage, not a door. This is something not seen on the aviation industry in decades. Not since the Brits were making flying trashcans post-war. It's a scandal."
Matt Walsh on X - "Ladies and gentlemen, meet the “dream team” at the manufacturer that made the plane door that just blew off in the middle of a flight
"Spirit Aerosystems Engineering Dream Team!""
Boeing's subcontractor Spirit AeroSystems repeatedly warned of 'excessive' defects in the Alaska Airlines door plug that blew out at 16,000ft and nearly caused worst air disaster in 22 years - "The Boeing subcontractor that manufactured the door plug that blew out at 16,000 feet during an Alaska Airlines flight was warned of an 'excessive amount of defects,' according to a lawsuit days before the fateful flight... The lawsuit adds the problems at the company were 'widespread' and included 'the routine presence of foreign object debris in Spirit products, missing fasteners, peeling paint, and poor skin quality.'... Both Alaska Airlines and United Airlines, which are the only two US carriers to fly the aircraft revealed they found loose bolts inside several other door plugs on their fleets."
James Lindsay, anti-Fascist on X - "Don't let them fool you. At American Airlines, they have "intentional recruitment and advancement" goals based on DEI, including for pilots. We need to be demanding leaders in these industries answer for why they're potentially putting a Marxist ideology ahead of people's lives."
James Lindsay, anti-Fascist on X - "Let's have a close look at Boeing and DEI! Boeing's corporate filings with the SEC reveal that in beginning 2022, the annual bonus plan to reward CEO and executives for increasing profit for shareholders and prioritizing safety was changed to reward them if they hit DEI targets."
Elon Musk on X - "Do you want to fly in an airplane where they prioritized DEI hiring over your safety? That is actually happening."
Of course, left wingers claimed this didn't mean they were unqualified
Michael O'Fallon - Sovereign Nations on X - "Scott Kirby, the CEO of United Airlines (@united ), wants to emphasize that Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI) guided racial and gender quotas are the key considerations when determining who will be piloting your upcoming flight."
i/o on X - "United Airlines partners with three HBCUs to help it recruit blacks into its diversity-oriented flight school. The average SAT scores at two of those schools — Delaware State and Elizabeth City State University — are in the bottom 2% of all undergraduate institutions in the US."
FAA’s diversity push includes hiring people with ‘intellectual’ and ‘psychiatric’ disabilities - "The Federal Aviation Administration is actively recruiting workers who suffer “severe intellectual” disabilities, psychiatric problems and other mental and physical conditions under a diversity and inclusion hiring initiative spelled out on the agency’s website... The initiative is part of the FAA’s “Diversity and Inclusion” hiring plan, which claims “diversity is integral to achieving FAA’s mission of ensuring safe and efficient travel across our nation and beyond.”... All eyes have been on the FAA and airline industry in recent days, after a plug door on a Boeing 737 Max 9 blew out during an Alaska Airlines flight on Jan. 5... Dr. Stanley Goldfarb, chairman of Do No Harm – a group of health care professionals, medical students and policymakers working to “protect health care from a radical, divisive, and discriminatory ideology” – told Fox News Digital that similar to the medical field, the aviation industry has an obligation to protect its travelers. “The aviation industry has a responsibility for traveler safety just as the health care industry has a responsibility for patient safety. These responsibilities outweigh other factors when considering applicants to work in those fields. People with disabilities who can successfully complete the task should never face discrimination,” said Goldfarb, a retired professor and the former associate dean for curriculum at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. “Unfortunately,” Goldfarb said, identity politics is “creating opportunities for so-called oppressed groups by lowering standards for entry into those fields and thereby endangering the safety of those which it’s designed to serve. Some endeavors simply do not lend themselves to identity politics,” he added."
REVEALED: United CEO Scott Kirby is drag queen, pushes drag and DEI on staff - "The United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby who went viral for championing DEI measures for pilots at the company is also a drag queen in his spare time... "Today only 19 percent of our pilots at United Airlines are women or people of color." Kirby then boasted, "And by the way, from all the data I've seen, that's the highest of any airline in the country." When pressed for why there were not enough women and people of color in the c-suite by the Axios interviewer, Kirby shrugged off the comment... Maya Tallman, a trans-identifying male, is running the newly formed DEI Committee at the company. In a letter sent to employees about DEI, Tallman explained the committee would be going by DEIB instead of DEI because the "B in DEIB stands for belonging."... Tesla and X owner Elon Musk posted to X last week about all the DEI efforts in airline industry, saying that "people will die due to DEI" when a panel blew out on a Boeing airplane."
Oren Cass on X - "Absolutely brutal Boeing story @nytimes. "What used to be a duopoly has become two-thirds Airbus, one-third Boeing. A lot of people are looking at Airbus and seeing a company run by competent people. The contrast with Boeing is fairly profound.”"
constans on X - "Airbus is staffed by Europeans for whom being an engineer at airbus is one of the best jobs you can get. Boeing is staffed by Americans for whom working at Boeing is something you do because you can’t get a better paying job with a tech company."
Meme - 🇺🇸Travis🇺🇸 @Travis_in_Flint: "Why would Delta Airlines send this to all employees?"
"Race and Ethnicity. Style Note. Capitalize "Black" and "Brown" in Delta communications. Unlike Black or Brown, "white" should be lowercase. When referencing race, ethnicity, or nationality, be as specific as possible."
Be Yourself: a culture of belonging at Virgin Atlantic - "it’s crucial we commit to a robust diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) strategy... It’s not just a moral and social responsibility either; if an organisation wants to compete in today’s marketplace – attracting and retaining top tier talent and customers – fostering an inclusive environment is non-negotiable... Better decision-making can be achieved when you realise the benefit of having a range of perspectives. Equity bridges the gap between minority and majority groups"
Virgin Atlantic flight canceled after missing bolts on wing - "According to Airbus UK's Chief Wing Engineer Neil Firth, the missing fasteners had “no impact to the structural integrity or load capability of the wing, and the aircraft was safe to operate.” The panel in question is part of a secondary structure dedicated to enhancing the aerodynamic performance of the aircraft. Each panel has 119 fasteners."
Of course, there was an asinine "fact check" which didn't address the meat of the issue
KC-10 Driver ✈️ 👨✈️ B-737 Wrangler on X - "Can you fly with missing screws? Yes. You’ve been doing it your whole life, going back to the dawn of the jet age…you just didn’t know it. The trick is knowing how many screws are missing, what they support & how many can be gone. We have a whole book for it: the MEL. MEL stands for Minimum Equipment List. It’s essentially a book that describes all the various systems installed on the airplane, which can be broken (INOP) at any given time & if there are restrictions on flying with that system broken. Sometimes, you may have multiple broken systems. The MEL will tell you if the broken systems affect each other. For example, we have two radar altimeters on the 737. The MEL lists them as “Radar Altimeter. 2 installed. 1 required (to fly)” The MEL may also list any specific restrictions that apply in that situation…for example, the weather forecast at destination may have to be above a certain level if one of the radar altimeters is inop, because certain instrument approaches require the use of both radar altimeters. The MEL may further elaborate, restricting you from flying if the wing anti-ice is also inop because of some relation to how the plane would be flown (I’m making that anti-ice part up just to illustrate). The engineers have designed & approved the MEL in such a way that the plane can be flown without increasing risk when some systems are inop. There are many systems on the aircraft that are listed as “2 installed, 2 required”…they can’t be broken. Keep in mind - we’re not talking about big items here, like an engine or a hydraulic system. MEL items that can be deferred are always “nice to have, but not necessary”. But…it’s just not practical to expect that every system will be operational on every flight. Airplanes are complex & though our maintenance practices have evolved to the point we now replace some systems before they even break, you’d paralyze the entire air travel industry if you insisted every single system worked every single time. While the MEL doesn’t cover how many screws have to be on that section of the wing, Maintenance teams have similar guidance that does cover those things. As the article explains: “Both Virgin and Airbus stressed there was no impact to the safety of last week’s aircraft despite the missing fixings.” They counted the missing screws, noted their location and referred to the book. The engineers have already done the work; you need X number of screws on component Y and no more than Z can be missing in sequence, according to the book (I’m creating that as an example). Maintenance comes back & tells you the airplane is airworthy, but that they’ve documented the missing screws in the log book, which will be replaced at the next maintenance opportunity. Most pilots trust that, and with good reason – we know there’s often something broken or missing on the airplanes. Just going through the maintenance records on the number of dents alone on every flight is kind of painful, but it’s all there, on every flight, attached to the flight plan: the log book’s most recent maintenance discrepancies, which have been deferred, which have been fixed & what they did to fix it. Over time, some of the screws will come out. The jets are up & down multiple times a day, going through turbulence, landings, thrust reversers and – most damaging of all – taxiing at ORD. So, yes – you can fly with missing screws. The tolerances are well known & can be quickly referenced. Your last flight probably had a few screws missing somewhere & your next one will, too. Why did they cancel the flight? I don’t know, but anytime the word “Panic” is used, I start to tune out mechanical issues & focus on people issues."
