I am Judas

 

Every day I remain silent in the face of increasingly discriminatory policies at my Fortune 50 company.  Quotas, or ‘targets’, are formulated.  Training programs are ‘offered’ that proclaim me a racist for the color of my skin.  Struggle sessions, or ‘difficult conversations’, are orchestrated where we are segregated by race or gender and encouraged to talk about how some people’s culture, by dint of their skin color, harm women, people of color, or the LBTQ community.  We talk about equity and how lack of equal outcomes are toxic; and how people of a certain skin color, stand in the way of racial progress.

I take all of this in and say nothing.  For saying anything that contradicts the religion of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion will get me fired.  Even asking questions that may illuminate contradictions or the potential unintended consequences of such thinking is enough to limit your career at the very least.  You are quickly seen as an apostate or heretic to the cause.  In the face of such repercussions, in the face of losing our ability to take care of our families, most of us sit quietly, waiting for the latest ‘training’ to be over.

I am now Judas.  I take my bag of silver each day and, without a word, allow everything humanity has learned be slandered and denigrated.  I allow myself to be shamed.  Everything I believe about how to treat others, about how humans best organize themselves, about how we most fruitfully interact with each other and world, has been turned on its head.  There is nothing that I can do or say.  Perhaps I could leave to find another job, but it is unlikely that things will be any different there.  All of Corporate America has converted from a belief in valuable ideas and competence to an orthodoxy of skin color.  From aspiring to a functioning meritocracy to devolving into a racial and gendered nepotism. 

I consider myself a child of the enlightenment.  I was brought up with the belief that logic, reason, data, critical thinking, and a robust debate of ideas is the best way to elevate humanity.  Starting from an age of magical thinking, dogma, and superstition, we somehow devised this way of interacting with each other and the world that has allowed us to partake in an astounding flourishing of human progress.  My belief in this model is validated by these achievements.    

Look around you.  See the vast interlocking systems that humanity has built. Look into the palm of your hand and see instant access to every bit of knowledge ever discovered.  Turn on your heat, roam aisles of endless food, visit a doctor to cure your cancer.  None of this happened by accident.  Humanity devised a way to interacting with each other and the world that has allowed even the lowly among us  to live as kings of old.

And now we willingly abandon these principles and beliefs.  We devolve towards a new age of magical thinking.  We once again believe in monsters and witches and hunt for their presence in every dark corner.  We have devised a new religion to explain the wrongs in the world.  Its scripture written daily in every newspaper and in a thousand books.  Its priests pound their pulpits in every corporate diversity office and in every newsroom.

There is no doubt that the world is unfair.  But the principles that are now decried as racist and sexist are the very ideas that have made the world demonstrably less unfair.  Logic, reason, the rule of law, temperance, competition, debate.  These are simply tools that allow forward progress. They are the tools that have lifted billions out of poverty.  They are the tools that have allowed us to abandon superstition and magic.  And they are the only tools that will help us continue our forward momentum. 

I am now told that logic is racist. That reason is a tool of white supremacy.  That competition, living by a set of principles, and even being on time are attributes of ‘white culture’.  No.  They are the attributes of people who accomplish things.  They don’t care about your race or your gender.  They are there for the taking and accessible to all.  They are gifts that have been bequeathed to us by generations of humans struggling to survive in a relentless world.

And so, I sit in my training and allow diversity trainers to tell me that the combined wisdom of a thousand generations is evil and is responsible for all of the ills of the world.  I am told that because of my skin color and for my belief in the tools of human progress, that I am responsible for maintaining the white male patriarchy.  That I am evil.  I had thought that we discarded such racist thinking long ago.  How naïve of me.  But there is nothing I can say or do.  I am Judas.  Can I have my bag of silver now?