Yes she made an error and apparently failed to listen to an instructor that was disastrous for all... my point is there were a whole lot of systemic failures and to assign the tragedy to DEI is irresponsible and demeaning to all women serving in the military and as first responders.
Consider the NSW police Inspector than ran into the Bondi Mall at risk of her own life and ended probably saving many other lives..... women don't have to be DEI hires to be capable and heroic
I guess we will have to wait for the full report to determine exactly what happened, but based purely on what has been reported in the NY Times, pilot error appears to be the main cause. I’m not sure how “systemic failures” contributed to the pilot not changing course when instructed to.
My issue with DEI is that it is almost by definition, the antithesis of selection on merit. It forces organisations to meet quotas for certain segments of the community, rather than selecting the most able candidate, be they man, woman, black, gay whatever.
This accident itself is a case in point. The FAA in the US was already fighting a class action lawsuit alleging that it had denied 1,000 would be air traffic controllers jobs because of diversity hiring targets. The crux of the lawsuit is that the FAA, under the Obama administration, dropped a skills based system for hiring controllers, and replaced it with a “biographical assessment” in a bid to boost the number of minority applicants. One of the plaintiffs, a white male, was turned down despite receiving a 100% score on his training exam.
So it appears one of the “systemic failures”/air traffic controller shortages you referenced earlier may in fact have been caused by DEI policies that resulted in perfectly qualified candidates outside of selected demographic segments being turned away.
I’m not saying all women are selected to meet DEI targets. That would be ridiculous. It would be equally ridiculous to say women don’t excel in just about every job/role. I am saying that DEI increases the probability that people hired for roles may not be the most qualified candidate. In the case of Blackhawk helicopter pilots, I assume that the population of males who aspire to be such significantly outnumbers the population of females. If the DEI quota is 50/50, the resultant outcome is almost mathematically guaranteed to be sub-optimal, given the different population sizes.
DEI doesnt matter so much in non critical jobs like working in an office. But when you start applying it in areas where people’s lives are at stake, I think it is entirely appropriate to question its validity. I for one, will never fly in the US again knowing that the body that hires air traffic controllers has DEI quotas to fill, including for those with severe intellectual disabilities and psychological problems.
www.army.mil
