DEI is downing airplanes!
You’d better be careful out there. I don’t know if you’ve heard, but planes are currently disintegrating in mid-air because of diversity. That’s right, thanks to wokeness gone mad, women and minorities are being ushered into the highest levels of the aviation industry without a single qualification to their name. Nobody cares if you can fly or not, the only qualification for being a pilot these days is a vagina and some melanin.
Obviously, this is all nonsense that only a bigoted fool would believe. Alas, the US is awash with bigoted fools (indeed, many of them are politicians) and the idea that diversity, equity and inclusion efforts (DEI) are putting airplane passengers in danger is the latest deranged talking point from the right. You know, the same crowd that brought us such classics as “all gays are groomers” and “Bill Gates has put mind-controlling microchips in vaccines!”
Conservatives have been obsessed with disparaging DEI initiatives for a while now, but they only started explicitly connecting DEI with aviation safety earlier this year, after a terrifying mid-air cabin panel blowout on a brand new Boeing 737 Max 9 operated by Alaska Airlines.
The Alaska Airlines incident, I’m sure you know, was not exactly the first time a Boeing 737 Max has had issues. Indeed, there have been so many fatal crashes and troubling safety incidents that someone even set up a website that lets you check if you’re travelling on a 737.
Beyond Boeing, there have also been a spate of high-profile air travel problems recently. Earlier this month, for example, domestic flights across the US were temporarily grounded after a failure in a critical aviation safety system. And, last year, a New York Times analysis found that “close calls involving commercial airlines have been happening, on average, multiple times a week”. Speaking to a Senate panel about the issue, Senator Tammy Duckworth proclaimed: “Our nation is experiencing an aviation safety crisis with near misses that are happening way too frequently.”
Rightwing geniuses have been following this worrying trend carefully and have come to the astute conclusion that women and Black people are to blame.
“DEI is destroying the airline industry, and lots of people will die because of it,” the rightwing blogger Matt Walsh told his 2.6 million Twitter followers shortly after the Alaska Airlines incident. The rightwing commentator Ian Miles Cheong similarly tweeted: “The 737 MAX was put together by a team of ‘diverse’ engineers. Boeing is hiring based on DEI. No surprise that they’re falling apart.”
Whenever there’s a stupid and bigoted theory floating around the internet you can bet that Elon Musk is close behind, eagerly endorsing it. This is no exception. “Do you want to fly in an airplane where they prioritized DEI hiring over your safety? That is actually happening,” the billionaire recently said, quote-tweeting someone who noted that executives at Boeing were being rewarded if they hit DEI targets.
This wasn’t all Musk had to say on the issue. The X CEO also replied to a tweet that suggested students at historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) have lower IQs and therefore shouldn’t become pilots. Musk’s reply? “It will take an airplane crashing and killing hundreds of people for them to change this crazy policy of DIE.” It’s hard to overstate just how racist this is.
Where Musk goes, his crowds of adoring fans follow. The “DEI is making airplane travel unsafe” theory has gone from a fringe view to a staple of the rightwing news. Outlets like the New York Post have been churning out pieces on the issue: “America’s safety at risk as FAA’s latest diversity push puts the woke mob at the controls,” squealed one headline. “FAA’s diversity push includes focus on hiring people with ‘severe intellectual’ and ‘psychiatric’ disabilities,” screeched another.
Amid all this bigotry there is one tiny grain of truth: there is a problem with safety in the airline industry. But, like most things that women and minorities get blamed for, this problem is caused by unfettered capitalism. There is a great deal of “coziness” between Boeing and the US government: their special relationship has long raised questions about just how much influence the company has in Washington and whether Boeing is allowed to regulate itself too much. Like many companies, Boeing seems to be more obsessed with delivering returns to shareholders than anything else and has frequently been criticized for putting cost cutting over safety. DEI isn’t putting you in danger, corporate greed is.
Ali Wong becomes first woman of Asian descent to win an Emmy for a lead role
And it was incredibly well deserved. If you haven’t watched Beef yet, I highly recommend it. Not sure what it means about me that I related to her character (a rage-filled entrepreneur who would ruin her life in pursuit of revenge) so much …
Improving women’s health ‘could add at least $1tn a year to global economy’
On average, women spend 25% more time in “poor health” than men, according to a new report by the McKinsey Health Institute. One reason for the gender health gap? Women often receive a later diagnosis than men for a range of diseases. Women often have their pain dismissed by male doctors. Women and racial and ethnic minorities in the US are also 20% to 30% more likely than white men to get misdiagnosed by doctors, according to another study. And this institutional sexism doesn’t just hurt individuals – it hurts the economy.
Australia’s ABC denies pro-Israel groups pressured broadcaster to fire journalist Antoinette Lattouf
Who knows if that’s true or not. We do know, however, that a hell of a lot of people have lost their jobs and other opportunities for voicing even the most milquetoast of pro-Palestinian comments. Lattouf is just one of many journalists dismissed or sidelined after offering a Palestinian perspective. As for journalists actually in Gaza? Many of them are now dead. There has also been a communications blackout for a week in Gaza making it hard for people to know exactly what’s happening.
Men are better at navigation that women, study finds
But only slightly. And it’s probably cultural rather than anything inherent: boys may receive more encouragement to play outside than girls, for example.
It looks like Elise Stefanik might be Trump’s running mate
She is a rising star in Republican politics and – no surprise – she’s a dangerous bigot who likes echoing white nationalist conspiracy theories.
Sexism is on the rise in soccer
“Reports of sexist mass chanting at games have quadrupled in the first half of this season,” according to the anti-discrimination organization Kick It Out.
The week in pawtriarchy
While humans have been behaving very badly recently, dogs have been very good girls and boys. In Philadelphia a husky called Kobe saved his neighbours from a potential gas explosion. Meanwhile, a shiba inu called Peanut Butter is trying to raise millions of dollars for charity by playing video games. Let the world go to the dogs, I say.
