Corporate Diversity…Subverting the Constitution?

Recently, Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch reported that he has received e-mails from readers informing him that his site has been blocked at corporations like Bank of America, Fidelity Investments, Site Coach, GE IT, JPMorgan Chase, and DFAS, as well as at least one federal and one city government agency.

In response to this news, reader, Ipwnalla, of RightWingNews brought up a valid point

With all due respect, shouldn’t this decision be up to executives of companies? If it is indeed a private organization, should they not have the say in what is blocked or not? On a side note…should people, using company resources, be viewing ANY of this stuff anyway while at work? Most of it probably violates a company policy.

I would be inclined to agree, if this policy is applied an enforced across the board to surfing the internet, regardless of the political persuasion of the sites being viewed. And who knows? It is possible that these companies have blocked the word “jihad” from their sites in an effort to make it difficult for anyone within their organization to access jihadi websites, right? We hope so.

Unfortunately, however, there is another, very likely, possibility. There is a trend right now in Corporate America, to promote “Diversity,” in the “Politically-Correct,” sense of this term. DiversityInc is a company that specializes in promoting workplace diversity, and on it’s “About” page, it has this to say:

DiversityInc’s mission is to bring education and clarity to the business benefits of diversity…By providing foundational information about the business benefits of diversity, DiversityInc has been a catalyst in moving diversity from a compliance mandate to a serious business discipline.

Our target audience is line executives at larger corporations and organizations and is appropriate for line management, owners/partners of women-and minority-owned businesses, and educators and students. Our audience is diverse in race, gender, orientation, ability and age and includes senior executives, community leaders, educators and professionals who are highly educated, key influencers and decision makers all passionate about diversity in their professional and personal lives.

DiversityInc has an annual “Top 50 Companies for Diversity List,” which listed corporations can use as a bragging point to improve their image, particularly when dealing with minority-owned businesses, government agencies, and other corporations which buy in to the modern “Diversity” philosophy. The first business on this list for 2007 is Bank of America. Bank of America, coincidentally (?) is one of the corporations Robert Spencer lists as blocking the site, Jihad Watch.

The reasons Bank of America was chosen for this honor include their high employment rate (44%) and retention rate (88-90%) of minorities, the fact that Monica Lozano is on the Board of Directors (Ms. Lozano also serves on the Board of Directors for LaRaza), and its inclusion of a “global diversity and inclusion executive,” on staff.

Another company Spencer listed was JP Morgan Chase, which is number 9 on the list. It’s “Diversity Strengths,” include it’s phenomenal 53% minority new-hire rate and it’s efforts to work with GLBT (gay, lesbian, bi-sexual, trans) suppliers.

DiversityInc explains its methodology:

Companies in The DiversityInc Top 50 Companies for Diversity demonstrate consistent strength in the four areas the survey measures: CEO Commitment (the most heavily weighted), Human Capital, Corporate Communications and Supplier Diversity; This year, questions were added on Native Americans, CEO commitment, mentoring, work/life, management retention, people with disabilities and GLBT people. Our commitment to GLBT rights is so strong that we determined that a negative answer to one question-giving domestic-partner benefits to same-sex couples-disqualified a company from appearing on the Top 50 or any of the specialty lists.

Back to Robert Spencer’s plight, I tried searching the site for specifics about “Islam,” and “Muslims,” and most of the articles I found were available only with a free subscription. The one article I found under “jihad,” was this article, which was compiled by the DiversityInc staff, critical of the Pope for comments perceived to be anti-Islamic.

So, it seems that the promoters of political-correctness have finally found a way to circumvent American Constitutional law. By encouraging the largest corporations in America to enforce to a “code of diversity ethics,” not only within their organizations but among their vendors, they hope to bully the remaining population into also adhering to this code for the sake of competing in corporate America.

Will we let them get away with it?

Follow-up: Corporate Diversity…Socialism’s Change Agent?

Also see:

• AWOL- Civilization: Politically Correct Corporations?
• A Pig Named ENDA