[00:00:00] Foreign.
[00:00:05] You're listening to casual talk radio where common sense is still the norm, whether you're a new or longtime listener. We appreciate you joining us today. Visit
[email protected] and now here's your host. Leicester. The dismantling of DEI continues as President Donald Trump is actively passing his own executive orders to try to rein in what has been described as rampant, I'll just say distraction in the education system and the form he's taking, the approach he's taking is to target funding. You starve the source, you take away funding, and by doing so, you encourage change.
[00:00:51] And it got me thinking, I happen to be, for those that don't know, in the category of folks referred to as minorities.
[00:01:02] It may not seem like it, it may not sound like it. Me telling you that and you believing that is part of the problem, isn't it?
[00:01:10] Because there's been a myth. If we take Candace Owens, you don't know who Candace Owens is. She's a podcast host, she's been on tv. She used to be news.
[00:01:19] Candace Owens does not speak like someone that you would expect of her statute. She doesn't Ben Shapiro doesn't speak as you would expect, someone of his stature, so on and such.
[00:01:33] At some point we got to this narrative. I'll even say Bill Cosby, if you go back to old Bill Cosby interviews, the way that Bill Cosby has historically expressed himself came across as unique for the time. I'll go back even to David ruffin in the 80s. David Ruffin was one of the most well spoken people I'd ever heard in my life. Marvin Gaye, when he gave his interview, and I believe that was a couple of years before he was killed.
[00:02:05] One of the most well spoken possible. Eddie Kendricks, one of the most well spoken possible. Mary Wells, one of the most well spoken possible. Prince, one of the most well spoken possible.
[00:02:17] We have lost, for whatever reason, we have lost our ability to communicate what we think and feel in a form that is intelligible.
[00:02:28] And we have created a separation in our minds and I'm using plural when I say this in our minds about what somebody is expected to sound like because so many people fit a stereotype.
[00:02:45] When I hear the young people speak, it's quite frankly offensive, not because they can't speak better, but because they don't see a reason to speak better. So when these same people are looking for jobs, it's hard to justify giving them jobs because they were never conditioned.
[00:03:06] This is why you have to speak with intelligence and why you have to master this and understand it. So then they turn to what? Crime, drugs?
[00:03:16] Because they don't have any other answer.
[00:03:18] That's a failure of parenting. I'll straight say if the kids are not speaking intelligibly, if they're not able to explain what it is they're doing, if they're not able to express themselves in a professional manner, the parents have failed those kids. In some cases, it's a matter of availability. In some cases it's a matter of opportunity lacking of. In some cases, it's simply location.
[00:03:48] All of these can be changed.
[00:03:52] We can change our situation. You have to start by believing that you can and believing that you should. And that's what's lacking and why I put it on the parents. I'm not suggesting for a moment that any of this is simple. I'm not suggesting for a moment that this does not take effort. I'm not suggesting for a moment that it happens overnight.
[00:04:14] I am suggesting that it's a decision, it's a choice.
[00:04:18] Kanye West, I believe, was the one who made the very controversial statement. And I'll paraphrase what I believe. He was the one that said slavery was a choice, and he got attacked for that statement. Now I know what he meant, but I understand why he got attacked.
[00:04:37] What he meant was at a time, there was a time when certain of the slaves preferred the safety of being slaves as opposed to the struggle and the fight.
[00:04:50] So when you make a global statement slavery was a choice, he's right and wrong. He's wrong in putting all of them under that umbrella. But he's not wrong in the idea that certain of the slaves were content to stay in that situation. If what we say wasn't the truth, then explain how it is that certain of the slaves chose not to leave their situation at the time.
[00:05:18] Now, I'm saying that not to piss people off, because I know some people get pissed off of that being said.
[00:05:24] But you got to think about why that makes sense in the modern world. We have never gotten out of the concept of slavery simply that slavery is no longer a physical construct, it's now a construct of the mind. You choose to be enslaved. Your mind is trapped. If you don't want to free it, you might say it's all about opportunities.
[00:05:50] In many cases, the opportunity is that which you create for yourself. I go and use the example of Bobby Brown, arguably one of the greatest singers of that generation. Bobby Brown came from nothing. He came from drugs. He came from violence. He came from abuse. He came from seeing death he came from seeing all sorts of things that a young kid should never see or experience.
[00:06:17] And he turned that into an opportunity that made him the Elvis of that time. And I'll say the statement, because he was. He was the Elvis for us. He was the Elvis of the time. There was nobody that was touching him for that period of time.
[00:06:33] The point, though, is he started from nothing and created an opportunity for himself. Then he ran into trouble after. He runs into trouble and arguably almost dies, let's be honest, multiple times.
[00:06:46] He turned it around and continues to try to turn himself around. He gets criticism for his weight, he gets criticism for his conditioning. But when you think about what he's been through, the loss of two children, the loss of his wife at the time, seeing his best friend killed in front of him, he actually saw somebody else get shot. He was in the car and somebody else got shot. And he's around. He's been through a lot.
[00:07:13] This comparison I'm making, everybody goes through something. Some people go through worse than you do.
[00:07:22] Now, back to where this whole DEI plays in. You might have think that I deviated from the conversation. I didn't. Because if you look at what DEI has become, you understand that DEI at its very core is. Is an attempt to maintain the enslavement of your mind. It is an intent to keep you enslaved mentally, not physically, mentally. A lot of the DEI programs, the start had sounded good. Just like Black Lives Matter sounds good, right? Some. But black person gets killed, unarmed cop, and we're putting out a plea to make sure that we're heard and were not overlooked. Sounds good. Then it turns out Black Lives Matter is a scam. And the people who started it are banking millions of dollars off your back. Because that's the game.
[00:08:14] When we have these. These runnings, you know, the Creflo dollars and all these, where somebody is put up on a pedestal as some sort of a savior, and it turns out they're just as slimy as everybody else.
[00:08:28] Dei's origins are in that root. Somebody might have had a good idea at the time. Somebody might have had the thought about opportunities being inequally applied, that certain people are not being provided those same opportunities as other people. Now, the reason I find that blatantly offensive and false is because if you look at many of the people that are talking about DEI in these different colleges and schools, we're Talking people with PhDs, we're talking people in high ranks, and they would say, why? Didn't start that way? Of course not. Nobody suggested that you did, but you ended up there. So you're on that pedestal. You're already up there. You have not. You're beyond the struggle. And if we're going to suggest, and again, many of them are older, so if we're going to suggest that the people now are subject to the same things that you allegedly went through, you're a liar. And if we're going to suggest at a time when there was absolutely no concept of a DEI that you were able to overcome and get to that peak and that the same thing applies to them, you're a joke. You're either a liar or you're a joke. Pick your poison.
[00:09:41] Because if you're coming in highly credentialed talking about dei, it makes you a hypocrite. Because we know what the truth is. And I say this from direct experience myself as well as with others. We worked hard and busted our ass to get to a point of what we call success. Might not have even got to that full success yet. Some people are still working towards it and it's going to take longer. For some people versus others. I would argue race plays a very small part in whether or not somebody can be successful. That doesn't mean that it doesn't play a part. I said it plays a much smaller part. If I'm honest. I would suggest that gender. And when I say gender, I'm going off the federal designation that there's only two of them. I would argue that gender plays a bigger role in equality. Equality in terms of opportunity, availability. Not that it's just blindly given, not that it's biased towards.
[00:10:44] I've gone through hiring processes where there's less of a desire to hire women, not because they're women, but simply because of the perception that based on what this company says that they need, which isn't really what they need, you, you create an implicit bias against women that don't have those traits. Things, for example, technical acumen, technical skill. We already know statistically it is not women who are developers. Statistically, I'm not talking what's right or wrong. I'm talking by the numbers, by the book. We do not see female developers to a significant degree compared to their male counterparts. So if you try to hire for an IT role and you prefer somebody with development experience, you're implicitly biasing against women, whether you realize it or not.
[00:11:37] So if a female is trying to come in and be a business analyst in it, a business analyst doesn't need to have history as a developer. They need to understand terminology. They don't need to have the experience.
[00:11:50] That means the company has to be very careful about what it looks for in its requirements in the job description. When you have these young kids out here then who have never worked a job and you list a position with all this required experience that isn't really required and degrees, when back back in my day all you needed was a high school diploma, you're creating an implicit bias against those young people who never would have it. You're saying you're not worth training to get to the point that we need you. That's because they assumed the colleges were going to train those kids in what they need to know in the workplace. College was never intended to teach you how to do what to do in the workplace. College was intended to be supplemental experience for certain trades. In high school then we used to have things like auto shop, metal shop, wood shop, electric shop, blue collar trades that we could train young people long before they get into the workplace as at least certain marketable skills that help them get an entry level job in those trades. Those jobs still exist irrespective of AI.
[00:13:02] But then I've been told, and apparently it's different by state, I've been told many of these high schools don't teach cursive anymore, which is a joke to me. Don't do electric shop, don't do metal shop, certainly don't do auto shop, they don't do any of the blue collar classes. Everything is biased towards stem. That's a fallacy because not every job needs to be stem. And the truth is some kids, some young folks simply are not aligned to STEM type work. It's just not within their DNA to do it. Some kids are blue collar in mind. Some kids might be the greatest auto mechanic you can think of. If you don't expose them to that as an option and a viable one at that, those kids are going to wash out. Those kids are going to end up criminals. Those kids might end up dead on the street.
[00:13:53] Where am I going at with this?
[00:13:56] Dei's intent was to try to sell the narrative that there's an inequality that is predicated around race, creed, color, him, nor her.
[00:14:10] And what I'm saying is that the inequality has always existed, but it's less about your race, more about gender. I would argue. Certainly so.
[00:14:21] But often it is initiated by the employers and the way that they position jobs in the first place. That creates an implicit bias that doesn't have anything to do with specific. It's not a specific attack, it's not a target. It's not intentional of that group. Whatever disadvantaged group you call out, it doesn't matter. It's not that they don't understand how to post for jobs. They don't understand why the certain job postings automatically exclude certain people. They don't understand why their requirements are bs. They don't understand why the school system, when it's changing away from all these other viable job educational opportunities, why the school system is complicit with the decline and that from the very junior high all the way up, it's endemic.
[00:15:16] It's a system.
[00:15:18] The system is broken. It's not about this manager or these managers don't like black people. That narrative is what DEI was evolved to promote. I just saw where somebody said it's some sort of a online course and they were talking about what Ebonics is. That has nothing to do with. First of all, let's talk about where that's a problem. It's a problem in the professional space. Why is it a problem in the professional space? Because as a brand you have an image you need to put forth to your customer. So it doesn't matter about Ebonics or a super heavy accent. If communication is a requirement of the job and you be able to clearly outline who you are, what you do, why you do a product, if that's part of the brand, if it's part of what you have to push forward, it's fine to have that as a requirement. What we shouldn't do is accept somebody who uses a bunch of slang and the word mid and the word kek and the word jeet and whatnot in the business context. We should not accept somebody who just chooses to have excessive tattoos shown on a sleeveless when you could very well wear a long sleeve shirt to cover it up during the workplace.
[00:16:39] Somewhere along the line we've demonized brand, we've demonized the perception of professionalism. So what happens? You go down to the local McDonald's, let's say, and you've got a bunch of slackers working at the McDonald's who don't get the job done. Correct. And they're lazy and they use slang all over. Left, right. There's no professional image. Now what happens? The perception is that it's just a drug riddled, crime riddled whatever place that's avoided. What happens? Crime starts to promulgate around that place. It's not because of anybody there and it's not because of the race. If you have a degraded experience, you are encouraging a degraded atmosphere has nothing to do with race, it just so happens predominantly that kind of behavior that you see is coming from the black community. You don't see that kind of nonsense from the Asian community, for example. So now it creates this perception that those people are not worth hiring. I would argue they're perfectly worth hiring as long as you put the foot down on how they're going to behave in the workplace. And if they don't behave that way, you get rid of them immediately after giving them a chance, you give them a chance to show up. If they don't show up, you let them go. You set the stage. You will act like a professional while you're at work. And if you do not, you will not work here. Am I clear? You test them on how they speak and how they explain. You test them on how they show up on time, etc. Put them on probation.
[00:18:20] This should be standardized across everybody. You're going to have some people who show up. Whatever. You're going to have some people who show up like perfectionists and then people in the middle.
[00:18:31] What we have to then do as a community. When I say community, I mean nationwide. What we have to do as a community is somehow get in touch with the parents, because the parents are not doing enough to ensure that their kids don't show up in that regard and don't speak like idiots and don't walk around with sagging, skinny pants. That perception is the problem. If they are doing that and they're not corralled and controlled and constrained, they're going to fall into a life of crime. If you fall into a life of crime, it affects everybody. The DEI conversation is not solving the problem. It's making it worse. Because those people should not be allowed to just get a free pass to be unprofessional simply because that's who they are. And that's what DEI largely encourages, is to accept people for who they are. There's the you that you are in your home and there's the you that you should be when you're at work. And the two should not cross in the school system. Then we shouldn't have some of these ruffians. And I'm talking ruffian behavior. Ruffians who are slapping teachers, talking slang to teachers, disrespecting teachers, refusing to do stuff where the teacher is not empowered to discipline that child. And I'm not suggesting spanking. I'm suggesting you have one. You got one chance, sir or ma'am. If you disrespect a teacher, you're done. When I Say done. Let's re implement the idea of juvenile hall. If you are a dissident in the school system, you have to do something to encourage better behavior before we unleash these people into the workplace. If you do it from the earliest moments and you maintain it and cultivate it all the way through, that also includes getting them exposed to the right mentors, which I know is a rare thing, but the right mentors we shouldn't have. And I forget who it was. It was Megan Thee stallion or somebody, some very poor role model talking at schools. How about you get some professional people talking at schools? And they should be varying in the industry, not just singers and rappers. Get some other people, get some farmers, get some bankers, get a variety of different people who are people worth looking up to and inspire some of these kids and make sure they're not going to leave the school system, you know, with a high school diploma. If they cannot properly express themselves, if they cannot control the aberrant behavior and grow out of it, if they're coming from a troubled household, you may want to reach out for some help to make sure that that kid is positioned for success. It can be done, but it takes the desire to do it. It takes the desire to make that happen. I'm not criticizing any individual. I'm disgusted at the idea that what we call DEI has gotten out of control. And it's gotten out of control because we're trying to solve the wrong problem. The right problem to solve is a parenting issue. The parents are not doing what they need to do to make sure that the kid is set up for success. Well, that's disgusting to me. And I'll call it out for what it is here on President's Day. I hope anybody listening takes at least some of it. And if you have any sort of influence anywhere, I'm talking in the schools, I'm talking in the college, I'm talking anywhere. If you have any sort of influence, you'll see what I'm talking about. You'll see. We should not just give somebody an opportunity just for their skin color, just for their gender, or just because of whatever they call themselves. That's not the way it should work. The way it should work is that we push for excellence and we push for greatness and we push for you to be a strong contributor to society. Because if you're a strong contributor to society, it benefits everybody. What doesn't benefit everybody is to put somebody ill equipped to do the work and set them up for failure and then point the finger at them. Or even worse, cause the decline of otherwise reputable businesses along the way.
[00:22:45] Oh, oh, oh.
