Unfortunately, DEI initiatives are not just a thing here in America. We’re seeing the rush to discriminate based on sex, race, and sexual orientation in the name of “diversity” play out with similar intensity in Europe, where a female CEO in Britain has sparked an outcry over remarks she made on the vetting of prospective employees during a parliamentary committee on sexism in the workplace.
Amanda Blanc, CEO of Aviva insurance company, told members of Parliament this week at a “Sexism in the City” inquiry that there would be “no non-diverse hires” in senior positions at her company until she’d had a chance to vet them first:
Speaking to a parliamentary committee, she said that “there is no non-diverse hire at Aviva without it being signed off by me and the chief people officer”.“Not because I don’t trust my team but [because] I want to make sure that the process followed for that recruitment has been diverse, has been properly done and is not just a phone call to a mate saying, ‘would you like a job, pop up and we’ll fix it up for you’,” she said at the Sexism in the City inquiry yesterday.Her comments only apply to senior staff at Aviva, which has a workforce of 22,000.
Blanc went on to explain that she believed that putting women in some of those senior roles could help stamp out the sexism that is allegedly running rampant in corporate workplaces in the U.K.:
“The scope of the charter is to get more women into senior management roles,” Blanc explained the reasoning for the measure. “My belief is if you have more women in senior management roles, this behavior will go away.”“We will always hire the best person for the job, and ensure that Aviva has a diverse workforce that reflects the customers we serve,” an Aviva spokesperson told Fortune.[…]Blanc, the “Champion” of a government Women in Finance Charter initiative that pushes for equal gender representation in finance, said that the percentage of woman who faced verbal and physical abuse in finance firms surveyed last year was 10 percentage points higher than in other industries.
Watch (about a minute into this video):
U.K. Telegraph columnist Annabel Denham hit the nail on the head in response to the reports:
There is no need, she implicitly admitted, to sign off on the appointments of non-white people and women. Most people would call that clear evidence of discrimination.But don’t expect the Left-wing mob, usually so vocal in its condemnation of racism and sexism in all its ugly forms, to sharpen its pitchforks this time. Social media is not awash with calls for Blanc’s resignation, nor have demands for a boycott been issued. Others have suffered obloquy for far less: advertisers refused to be associated with GB News due to concerns over “bias”. McDonald’s was targeted after a location offered free food for the Israeli military.Performative progressivism, as has long been suspected, doesn’t extend to campaigning against discrimination against white people or men. Perhaps we should thank the exquisitely named Blanc for giving the game away: rarely is the true purpose of DEI – not to, rightly, fight against hateful racism and sexism, but to position us all on an intersectional pyramid of victimhood, white men placed bottom – put so bluntly.
As Twitter CEO Elon Musk noted in tweets that may or may not have been a response to news of Blanc’s remarks, “DEI must DIE. The point was to end discrimination, not replace it with different discrimination.”
“‘Diversity, Equity and Inclusion’ are propaganda words for racism, sexism and other -isms,” Musk went on to write. “This is just as morally wrong as any other racism and sexism. Changing the target class doesn’t make it right!”
MP Jacob Rees-Mogg, a conservative, wondered, “Why should a white man use Aviva when it discriminates against him?”
My thought here is why should any person no matter their color/sex want to do business with or work for a company like Aviva that openly admits they engage in discrimination based on physical characteristics on grounds they are attempting to forcibly level the playing field by using unfair methods? I mean you either oppose this type of discrimination or you don’t. There’s not much—if any—middle ground here.
— Stacey Matthews has also written under the pseudonym “Sister Toldjah” and can be reached via Twitter. —
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