I know I shouldn't, but I'm going to say it. Some of you won't like some of what I have to say today. Others will, but won't like other stuff I'm going to say. But it has to be said. I'm going to try to speak in broad terms. Today's taboo topic: DEI hiring in aviation.
To begin with, I take endless pride in my affiliation with and having worked in aviation with minorities and women. I have had minority employees and women work for me, with me, and I have worked for them.
At the moment I am thinking about the Black pilots who earned my respect, admiration, and fondness: my friendship. Of the things I take most pride in is the friendships and mutual respect. I'll leave last names out, but those of you who knew me on the job will know who I mean when I mention Leon, Tony, and Norm, and Edward. These are guys whose justification on the job I'd argue with anyone who said different. Professional in appearance, behavior, and performance. I put these guys at the top of my list. There was one very special guy, Larry. I have never met a finer example of a human being in my life. As a pilot, as a person, as a manager (he was my manager in the mid-90's), and as a friend, talking bad about him is going to get my dander up.
I could make the same kind of a list of women, too. For the sake of brevity, I will simply say that throughout my career, I have worked with, for, and had amazing female co-workers. Many of them were very successful working with me, and to be humble, I recognize how much their efforts and talents contributed to my own success.
Competence is gender neutral and colorblind. You either are or you aren't. When you hear that the controller was a woman or a minority, or that the helo pilot or CRJ pilot were a woman or a minority, and immediately holler, "DEI hire," you're badmouthing many thousands or aviation professionals without an inkling of knowledge of who it was. It's unfair and it's wrong. It's a mistake. Trump walked this walk today. It's disappointing and he ought to walk it back. Some will never let him live it down, but that's irrelevant. Walking it back is the right thing to do. Politicizing it is wrong.
Now, listen up. This is where it gets harder. There is a very valid concern out there that DEI hiring in safety sensitive jobs like pilot (civilian and military) and air traffic controller has diminished safety margins. Anytime hiring criteria, training and qualification standards, and or job performance requirements are lowered or ignored in the interest of improving percentages of women and minorities in these kinds of jobs (I presume to mean aircraft maintenance, too), there is a very real downstream risk of increasing the odds of an accident or incident. I have had, personally, pilots who I trust and who I do not believe to be racist, when they learn my background in compliance and Safety Management Systems, tell me that hiring, training, qualification, and standards at the airlines where they were have been compromised in the interest of improvement workforce representation and diversity. They told me NOT because they had a gender or color problem, but because they saw a potential downstream safety of flight issue. I do NOT support ethnicity, race, or gender based hiring if standards in a safety sensitive job have to be lowered to meet quotas. If there are more than ample fully qualified, highly competitive candidates, then and only then do I support letting race or gender influence the hiring decision to achieve a workforce that better represents the population.
Acknowledging the foregoing, it is not possible to presume when there has been an accident like last night, should we find the pilots or controller to be Black, Hispanic, female, etc., that DEI hiring was the cause. Neither can you rule it out, but blaming DEI without knowing those aviator and controller records for training, qualification, and job performance just because you have been told DEI hiring has impacted those workgroups is an egregious error of presumption.
Even when standards have been lowered, that does not
rightfully make every woman and minority a suspect for being a substandard pilot or controller,
you dumbass. You do realize that even with lower standards, it is still
possible that the woman or minority in question finished at the top of
their peer group in training? If we lower the passing score (making this
up) from 90 to 85, and the person involved scored a 96, how in the f*ck
are you blaming the lowered minimum score? If, on the other hand, the
person scored an 83, two points below the lower minimum standard, and 7 points
below the old standard, but they were pushed along anyway, justification for lowering the standard and hiring below the standard should
be scrutinized. Clearly.
If we find out one or some of these folks were only hired by compromising standards, were only successful in training because someone let a marginal trainee slip through, or that their performance was known to be substandard and they weren't dealt with because the company's diversity goals would be adversely affected, then you can point a finger at DEI. Lacking that, you're pointing fingers unfairly at a lot of people, like the previously mentioned, some whom I call my dearest and most respected former work mates and friends.
Even if we find out one or some of these folks got by with lesser performance, which I am not assuming, but hypothetically, that is still not conclusive evidence DEI hiring was to blame. It could be that what happened had nothing whatsoever to do with their hiring, training, or on the job performance, lowered standards and all. What if the beneficiary of those lower standards did everything right, to a "t"? What if, and I am NOT speculating or presuming same, there was intent or malice somewhere else? If you don't know what happened, or who was involved, that fact that you heard there were "DEI problems" there doesn't make every problem a DEI problem. Capisce?
