"The Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee" wants to exclude me for diversity of thought. by Dan Sullivan

I was sent the following letter from “The Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee” of the Alliance for Just Money. There was no name attached. Apparently the DEI Committee is anonymous.

7/14/2022 9:01 PM

Dear Dan,

We are emailing you regarding your May 27th comments on the “Economic inequality hurts all of us” post in the Alliance For Just Money Facebook Group.

We are concerned with the comments you made regarding race and gender that reflects an attitude that is hurtful and damaging to members and the AFJM culture.

“The skin color of the economist is irrelevant.”

“Women do, in fact, approach problems less analytically than men.”

“Women avoid work that is strenuous, hazardous, unglamorous and exposed to the elements.”

These types of microaggressive comments corrode trust and safety in our relationships within AFJM, hurting the collective effort of AFJM to broaden its support base to achieve monetary reform.

We invite you to read the Community Guidelines (Group rules from the admin) that have been approved by the AFJM Board, especially the first guideline of Respecting Differences and the second guideline of Recognizing Social and Power Dynamics.

This is your first warning and if this behavior continues it may affect your participation within AFJM. We look forward to your cooperation.

From the AFJM Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee

What I say here is similar to what I wrote on Facebook in reply to this letter.

Diversity Double Standards

My responses that drew a warning were to a thread that contained the following feminist comments. To the best of my knowledge, none of those comments drew warnings from Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. My observations about these comments are in italics:

The FACT that an undeserved majority of our institutional power is in the hands of white males is a problem that needs fixing. [We can apparently accuse men of not deserving what they have, and that accusation cannot be challenged.]

I don't hate men. My own family is full of wonderful, kind, strong, caring men. [In the '60s, it was “Some of my best friends are colored people.”] But, I know I've been lucky! I hate toxic masculinity (men bosses who throw tantrums, yell abuse, stomp their feet, throw chairs, and are considered good leaders..men who think draping assault weapons over their shoulders to go grocery shopping makes them a hero). I hate what patriarchy has done over centuries ---sidelining talented women, raping and abusing women without consequence, giving us bad decision-making often driven by a few elite men's need for power over others, etc. [Sounds like a lot of hateful accusations to me, but I'm apparently not allowed to rebut them.]

Women's desires to have equal opportunity, to be paid equally for equal work, to not be subject to male violence at home and in the workplace, have nothing whatsoever to do with a couple long dead white men and their economic philosophies. [I'm not allowed to rebut that, either, and I didn't even get into the fact that most violence is mutual, that 70% of unilateral violence is female on male, or that lesbian couples are the most violent and gay male couples the least violent.]

Nor are they based on “hate,” unless you mean women hate being raped and watching the men get away with it; women hate finding out that they've been doing most of the work and getting paid half what the men are making; women hate when they are consistently passed over for jobs for which they are better qualified than the male counterparts who get the job. If that's what you mean by based in hate, then I'll agree on that. [Those are all lies that are based on prioritizing hate over honesty. The burden of proof and the presumption of innocence when women accuse men is lower than for any other criminal charge, women making less for the same work is a lie, women getting passed over for jobs they are more qualified for hasn't been true for 40 years, and so on.]

And, if you're paying any attention to what goes on with the incels, and the old white men who are violently clinging to patriarchy, turning to white supremacy, and walking around with an arsenal on their backs....what else would you call that, if not, “white male fragility.” [“Incel” means “involuntarily celibate”; it is not something that men chose. Rather, it is a function of women abandoning monogamy and throwing themselves at alpha males, of women's proven female hypergamy (of only marrying up) when, in fact, unmarried women earn more than unmarried men, and so on. The irony of the “white male fragility” accusation is that it isn't white males who are demanding “safe spaces” from “hurtful and damaging” “microaggressions.”]

The three comments listed were pertinent responses to the post and to previous comments, and I thought they were quite reasonable.

There was no explanation of how they were “hurtful and damaging,” or why a person should not be able to say something that another person considers hurtful, especially when the thing being hurt or damaged is an unwarranted belief.

It went on to claim these “microaggressive comments corrode the trust and safety in our relationships in AFJM,” as if we are now so thin-skinned that we must look under microscopes for signs of aggression, and as if making people feel safe in their errors is both more important than getting to the truth and more important than the mission itself. Their “trust” is jeopardized by honest disagreement and strengthened by stifling disagreement.

The statement I had criticized was,

Economics needs to be open to more diverse, intersectional, and inclusive perspectives from Black economists and other underrepresented groups.

The DEI letter implied that the “other underrpresented groups” meant feminist women, whom I had criticized. First of all, that claim was premised on the dubious notion that economics has not been fully open to these groups. In fact, over 60% of all college enrollees are women, and every effort has been made to put more women into economics. Black women are also over-represented, with disproportionate scholarships tailored to both blacks and women. The problem is that women, especially, are less interested in studying economics. Assuming that we must have equality of outcome (an assumption that is more communist than rational), it is not that economics needs to be more open to women and minorities, but that women and minorities need to be more open to economics.

It recalls the old joke,

Why did the Boy Scout have so much trouble helping the old lady across the street?

She didn't want to go.

My first “microaggressive comment” was,

The skin color of the economist is irrelevant.

The post had reduced “diversity” to skin color and gender, as if differences between black and white or male and female economists are more important than differences between liberal and conservative economists, or between those from different schools of economics. It also presumes that black female economists are being somehow excluded, such that we must celebrate those who break through this mythical exclusion.

Shall we celebrate the skin color of the eminent conservative economist Thomas Sowell, an extremely poor black man who earned his doctorate at the University of Chicago in 1958 under the tutelage of Milton Friedman, with zero affirmative-action support, and who has served on the faculties of Cornell University, Amherst College, UCLA, and, currently, Stanford University? From the woke jargon in my warning letter, I suspect he will be vilified rather than celebrated.

Women do, in fact, approach problems less analytically than men.

This has been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt, and it was in response to woke diatribe against “toxic masculinity.” How a factual statement can be more “hurtful and damaging” than a sexist slur against men is beyond me, unless the DEI committee embraces the Orwellian Animal Farm maxim that “All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.”

Indeed, the claim that we need more “intersectional” diversity presumes that black women approach problems differently from white men. Moreover, I had explained that,

It has nothing to do with positions of power and authority and everything to do with seven million years of evolution, in which men took risks for the survival of the tribe and women were protected so they could nurture children.

If there is a woman whose work is so analytically rigorous and profound as to merit consideration alongside the top men, stop with the woke sexism and show that work to me.

Of course, it is perfectly acceptable to say that men are less intuitive than women, because sexist comments are just fine if they are sexist in the approved direction.

Women avoid work that is strenuous, hazardous, unglamorous and exposed to the elements.

This was in response to the lie that women are not getting equal pay for equal work. That lie has been thoroughly debunked, and I had explained that it just uses Bureau of Labor Statistics that average all wages regardless of the type of work. Apparently lies cannot be corrected if they might offend a woman. With all their ability to do everything men do, women still have to be protected from “hurtful and damaging” disagreements.

Why this matters.

The monetary reform we seek has been supported from across the political spectrum, and we must not undermine that support by pandering to a woke, left-wing agenda that will alienate others. I am not the one “hurting the collective effort of AFJM to broaden its support base to achieve monetary reform.” Rather, my whole point of objecting was that the woke nonesense to which I replied will prevent AFJM from extending its support base out of its woke echo chamber.

The modern version of our reform was pioneered by the conservative University of Chicago, and was strongly supported by Milton Friedman, an icon of libertarian conservatism. Moreover, we particularly need such support as the left is imploding.

It is therefore important that we not pander to left-wing, woke agendas that have nothing to do with that reform. There is a racist, sexist notion, popular within the woke left, that sex and skin color matters to an economist's qualifications. Ironically, it was the left who had fought for decades to get rid of that racist, sexist notion. I am not going to accommodate this racism in order to prevent the “Diversity Equity and Inclusion Committee” from inequitably excluding me for diversity of opinion.

When did we concoct this ridiculous committee anyhow, and who is on it? If I am to be accused, where is my right to face my accusers?