Reflections From a Murky Pond

Michelle Obama, wife of presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama has drawn a lot of flak for various of her comments during the campaign. She’s a hard-hitting woman of no uncertain opinion and this has caused her to be occasionally reviled for her heartfelt but ill-advised rants and declarations. She does speak truth as she sees it though.

If you can’t run your own house, then you can’t run the White House.

– Michelle Obama

I think that is a very wise observation. If a candidate cannot properly manage and nurture that which is close to them, how can anyone expect them to properly manage and nurture the nation?

Sadly, like all truths Michelle’s wisdom is a two-edged sword that twist in the the hands of its wielder.

If Michelle’s husband can not successfully look after his constituents in Chicago how can anyone trust him to be President of the whole nation? If Barack Obama was willing to sacrifice the most vulnerable of his own constituents to the greed and corruption of his campaign supporters and business partners, how can trust him to be President of the whole nation?

Sen. Obama, talk to your wife; she may well be wiser than you.

Most diversity training efforts at US companies are at best ineffective and often even counterproductive in increasing the number of women and minorities in managerial positions. Decades of conventional wisdom have been shown to be horribly flawed and erroneous by a recent study of the long-term effects of diversity training in the American workplace.

An in-depth recent American Sociological Review study performed by by Alexandra Kalev of UC Berkeley, Frank Dobbin of Harvard, and Erin Kelly of the University of Minnesota reviewed 31 years of data from 830 mid-size to large U.S. and found that the kind of diversity training exercises offered at most firms were followed by:

• A 7.5% drop in the overall number of women in management.
• A 10% drop in the number of Black, female managers
• A 12% drop in the number of Black men in top positions.
• Similar drops in management were seen for Latinos and Asians.

The sociologists’ study shows that organizational responsibility and accountability make a difference; diversity training and evaluation don’t. It begs the question - why didn’t the EEOC examine these issues years ago?

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