Diversity and the "Bottom Line", con't

I think most Americans supported and would still support President Johnson’s classic statement on Affirmative Action in 1965:

“You do not take a person who for years has been hobbled by chains, and liberate him and bring him to the starting line of a race and then say 'You are free to compete with all others' and still justly believe that you have been completely fair.”

Yet the diversity movement has muddled this type of clear thinking. It has turned diversity into one more HR program. As a consequence, diversity consultants try to show relevance to the business world. Here,in my view, is one example.

Diversity Blues by Gladys Gossett Hankins, PhD published in 2000 makes this statement: “The annual productivity increase in the United States is around three percent a year. Today, some nations are exceeding that rate….What is happening inside American corporations that causes them to produce less than optimally”

This of course is a very soft statement (i.e., “some nations”). Here is a harder statistic:

In the 1980s and '90s the U.S. created about 40 million new jobs; Western Europe created some 10 million, well over half of which were in the public sector. If this divergence in economic performance continues for 40 years, the American worker will be roughly twice as wealthy as his European counterpart.” (Source OpinionJournal.com June 3, 2005 OECD)

Dr. Haskins is not, to my knowledge, an economist. She holds a Ph.D in Organizational Behavior and Development from the Union Institute at Cincinnati, Ohio.