If Donald Trump is cracking down on race and gender preferences in diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs on campus and in the workplace, Delta Airlines sure hasn’t heard about it.
At least from the recent trip I took. Why, you’d have thought Joe and Kamala were running the outfit. From the LGBTQ+ posters on the jet ramp to the gender-f flight attendants to the in-cabin announcement touting the airline’s new female pilot on board.
Of course, there’s certainly nothing wrong with a woman pilot—unless she was hired because she was hired in order to comply with some ‘diversity’ metric. Unfortunately, in the aviation industry these days, you never know.
It wasn’t that long ago when United Airlines proudly proclaimed that “our flight deck should reflect the diverse group of people on board our planes every day. That’s why we plan for 50% of the 5,000 pilots we train in the next decade to be women or people of color.”
Which begs the question: what happens if said 2500 don’t have the most experience and aren’t the most qualified? Are you putting them in the cockpit anyway?
Delta, meanwhile, remains downright defiant, doubling down on DEI just last month. The airline’s executive VP of external affairs said the airline wasn’t bothering to reconsider its DEI programs or, for that matter, its ESG (environmental, social, and governance) policies.
Nothing like an airline with a gargantuan carbon footprint lecturing its customers on the ‘climate crisis.’
Lots of self-loathing white liberals sold the nation on the virtue of quotas and for a time the peer pressure worked. At least as long as it was relegated to the halls of academia, journalism or even a nauseatingly “woke” NFL. But in things that actually matter, no one ever really bought into abandoning meritocracy for the most important workers.
You know, like plumbers—not to mention pilots, surgeons, architects, etc.
It is difficult to discuss DEI and aviation without mentioning last week’s tragedy over the Potomac killing all 67 aboard an American Eagle commercial flight. Social media is full of theories. But whether it was due to air traffic control or the extra altitude of a military helicopter that collided with the CRJ, knowledgeable observers have been warning about this for years.⁵
The fact that the Army conspicuously delayed releasing the name of one of the Black Hawk helicopter pilots, Capt. Rebecca Lobach of Durham, North Carolina, certainly raised a few eyebrows. Perhaps it feared her background as a social function volunteer in the Biden White House and her work as a certified Sexual Harassment/Assau Response and Prevention Victim Advocate would lead to unfair suspicion.
The sad fact is, were the most nefarious actors among us willing to adhere to the law, none of this divisive and dangerous agenda would be a part of our lives. For decades, the Supreme Court has been inching away from such toxic tribalism.
Starting with Justice John Roberts’ nearly two-decade old declaration that “the way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race” and culminating in last year’s opinion in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, wherein the majority wrote that race-based affirmative action programs are a violation of the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.
Moreover, since Congress has the power to “enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of” the post-Civil War amendment under Sec. 5, as it did in the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Harvard laid to rest DEI’s ‘disparate impact’ discrimination in corporate training and hiring as well as education.¹²
I wonder if shareholders understand that those company officers are ignoring the fiduciary responsibility by refusing to get a maximum return for ad dollars and profit. Regardless, ad agencies are the worst offenders. All you need to do is take a look at the DEI commercials Madison Avenue spews out for their corporate clientele. Nary a straight white male in sight.
Corporations are now in the business of virtue signaling for their government benefactors. That’s why at companies like Delta, executives are promising to remain “steadfast in our commitments because we think that they are actually critical to our business.”
Yeah…well, so are Epipens. But the airline, as of last year, refused to stock them in on-board medical kits should an allergy-related anaphylaxis occur mid-flight. Undoubtedly, the cost of restocking the oft-expiring injectors is just too high.
But then again, the cost for DEI could be a lot higher.
Former Congressman Jason Lewis is the author of “Party Animal, The Truth About President Trump, Power Politics and the Partisan Press.” This article was originally published on the author’s Substack page, which can be viewed here. Lewis is also the weekday host of Jason Lewis Live on Patriot.TV.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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