As I have stressed in the past, I don’t care if someone is straight, gay, trans, female, male, black, white, brown, liberal or conservative. If that person is the best candidate for the job, they should get it. Period.
That said, while I am strongly against discrimination of any kind – and oh, by the way to those on the left, that includes blatant discrimination against conservatives and people of traditional faith – I am also against putting “identity politics” above real-world qualifications and experience when it comes to the hiring for certain positions. Most especially those where the lives of human beings are literally at stake.
Shockingly, it is exactly those professions where some on the left are trying to make identity politics the determining qualification for being hired. As was reported by this site and others, newly elected Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass has stated that she is determined to remove “obstacles” for police recruits who fail to initially qualify for training as a means of further diversifying the Los Angeles Police Department.
In response, Tom Saggau, spokesperson for the Los Angeles Police Protective League (LAPPL) told Fox News Digital in part: “We think that particular provision or that goal or that idea is dangerous. … If you have police officers that can’t make minimum qualifications or attained minimum standards, for instance, there are recruits that have been in the academy that just can’t score the minimum requirements for a physical fitness test. … One hundred is the maximum score, 50 is acceptable. There are folks that are scoring under 10. That’s just dangerous.”
Dangerous indeed, if those clearly unqualified recruits are forced through the system and then find themselves in life-or-death situations. Suddenly, their life may be at risk, the life of their partner, or a civilian they are seeking to protect.
This, on top of the left’s movement to “defund” the police forces of many of our most crime-ridden cities.
Unfortunately, “defunding” the police is not enough for some far-left politicians. Going back to Bass, while calling for the watering down of the qualifications needed to become a police officer in that failing city, she also pledged to root out officers with ties to “right-wing domestic extremist organizations.”
OK.
Naturally, it is those on the left in politics and alarmingly even some in our own Department of Justice, who now define “right-wing domestic extremist organizations.” Will that list soon include your local church, the Boy Scouts of America, or the mailing list for Hobby Lobby?
Attempts to “lower the standards” in the name of the identity politics movement are now taking place in New York, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and a number of other cities. And not just in the police department. But also in fire departments, hospitals and the greater medical community.
This movement has also spread across our military. I recently spoke with two flag officers who warned that it was becoming a dangerous trend which potentially puts our national security at risk. As these military officers stressed, from the bridges of our warships to the cockpits of our military aircraft, job one of many on the left – and especially within the Biden administration – seems to be to fill those positions via identity politics instead of qualifications.
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Again, positions where either lives are at stake or our nation’s national security is at risk.
This trend is also taking firm hold among certain airlines in both the United States and the European Union. Pilots should be hired and then put on the flight deck based only upon their superior qualifications.
By the same token, candidates who do prove themselves highly qualified but don’t happen to check the correct “identity politics” box at the time should not be overlooked, or in reality, discriminated against. Only the best should be in positions where the lives of others are at stake.
To reiterate, if that person who is clearly the best of the best happens to be Black, White, brown, gay, straight, trans, female, male, liberal, conservative, of any faith, or no faith … give them the job. She or he has earned it.
Perilously, the Planet “Woke” seems to be getting more divorced from common sense and pragmatic thinking with each passing day. Counterintuitively to be sure when you stop to realize that those pushing identity politics over qualifications must fly occasionally. Or may find themselves in the need of a police officer, a firefighter or a doctor.
Don’t they want those pilots, police officers, firefighters and doctors to be the most-qualified possible?
Surreal times.
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https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/las-diversity-quota-police-is-coming-all-us-soon