DEI Hires...

Living where I live, and being who I am, I shall never be described as a DEI hire.  But for those that think DEI hires are a problem, well, let me tell you as a fat old man, those who think so are wrong, in my not-very-humble opinion.

Yeah, I know.  Shocking statement, but think about it.  

I live in Minnesota.  I grew up in a town in the middle of the state, in what has been described in national media of the time as the "most Catholic" and whitest area of the country.  Then the early 1970s came upon it.

In the area around St. Cloud, where I grew up, the early to mid 1970s saw a large influx of what were then termed "southeast Asian Refugees."  Due to the end of the Vietnam war, many people were seeking to settle here.  And by "here" I mean areas where farms were not yet ridiculously expensive, communities were thought to be welcoming, and people were just people.

The current presidential race does tend to bear some of that out, with the Democratic candidate for Vice President being our Governor, Tim Walz.  The guy is not a native Minnesotan, but he is here, he is our Governor, and he's a heck of a lot like the rest of us.  

There is, however, only one statement which he's made in the campaign so far which I'd like to take issue with.  In regards to the alleged spiciness of food around here, black pepper is not the peak of what some of us prefer to think of as spicy food.  And in many ways, we here do owe our growing immigrant population to thank for that.  These days, you can find small, and large restaurants with a broad diversity of cuisine.  Which is pretty significant.

Growing up, my mother cooked about 99% of our meals.  We didn't get much in the way of take out - though as I got older it did start to grow a bit, but generally, if we ate, we ate at home.  My mother's version of Asian foods was "Chow Main" - she called it - which was something out of a can with the same name, quite probably spelled "Chow Mein" - and it included some hard dry little twigs she called "Chow Main Noodles".  I believe the protein in this particular dish was ground beef when it came to the table.

My family wasn't very well off.  We were blessed with a breadwinner, my father, who had a stable job, an opportunity to make some additional money by writing history books about local history, and...  Well, we made things work by mostly living frugally.  

What's all that got to do with DEI?  When you grow up in a community that considers ethnic diversity being a German Catholic and Polish Catholic churches in the same small town, yeah, that's not "diverse".  And it's the root of the problem.

Far too many people (thankfully, not my parents) find the "different" to be worthy of suspicion and fear.  "They aren't like us" is something I never heard at home, it wasn't a consideration.  The college campus which was also where my father's employer was based was very internationally connected.  As were the other two of "three" college campuses in town.

That is, as the local jokes went, there was St. John's University, in Collegeville, St. Benedict's University, in St. Joseph, St. Cloud State, in St. Cloud, oddly enough, and then "Greystone College" the unofficial nickname of the St. Cloud Prison.  In a not-widely-promoted fact back when I was a kid, the prison, surrounded by a 20-foot tall granite wall that was reputed, at the time, to be the longest granite wall in the world, was a Maximum Security lock-up.  Which did have signs on the highway outside it recommending people do not stop for hitchhikers on the road there.  

All three of the legitimate colleges did bring students in from communities around the world, who did spend some time interacting with the rest of the community.  And I do rather vividly recall a moment where it all came home to hit me right between the eyes one day.

My second job was working for a then-growing retail chain called "Shopko".  Based in Wisconsin, one of their first twenty stores (#17, if I recall correctly) was built in St. Cloud.  On the same site of a rather spectacular baseball stadium which was torn down to make room, it was part of a small mall that had a grocery store on one side, a block in the middle of small storefronts, and Shopko on the other side. If you've had experience with Wal-Mart or Target, think that, though not quite as large as either of them.  

St. Cloud was primarily mom-and-pop shops, with a few "department stores".  Downtown there was Jupiter and Herbergers, out at Crossroads, our local larger mall, we had Sears and J.C. Penneys.  When Shopko opened, we did not yet have a McDonalds, or any other sort of national fast food brand.  But Shopko had many things.  I worked in the Hardware Automotive Pet and Paint departments.  I was surrounded by our Housewares department, one of the highest-performing departments in the entire company, Sporting Goods, Toys, and Domestics, which was pillows, blankets, tablecloth, curtains, towels, and the like.

One evening I was called over to the paint aisles by a child, who, in heavily accented English, was translating for his parents.  They had questions about some Formby's paint stripper.  There I was, reading the can, providing the information to this five year old child (who may have been six or seven or so, I don't know his actual age then), who was fluent enough in two languages to explain things to his mother and father.

I drove home upset at my own shortcomings in the language department, and a bit miffed that I had to try to bring what had to be very complex ideas like protective gear to be worn, the stripping process, and how things should be disposed.  I had experience with the product outside the store, which was a bit unusual, but probably why I was working in that department.  I'd assisted a friend of mine in stripping old painted furniture, and knew, because I had first read that can under bright outdoor sunlight as we figured out what we needed to do (we were about 14-15 at the time) to improve the dresser he'd been given.  

I got home after punching out from my 5-10 pm shift, and ate a bit of dinner, then went to bed.  The next morning I got up (it was summer time), and it had finally occurred to me that this family, these adults (there appeared to be multiple generations with the little boy) had left not only everything they had, but also everything they'd known or learned behind - they had come to a new place to live where the climate was going to be a real shocker, as we did get warm and humid during the summer, but the winter was going to let them know there was no doubt they were a long way from what they used to call home.

What does any of that have to do with DEI?  Diversity, Equality, Integration?  Well, I got an eye opener at 17 that the world was a heck of a lot bigger than my experience had shown it to be, and I was lucky to look like my neighbors and friends.  I wasn't going to stand out in a crowd, I wasn't going to be someone who was ever going to have a problem finding a job (so I thought at 17), and I was going to be on easy street.  Which meant my responsibility was going to be to make sure that if I had the opportunity to make someone else's life a little easier for them, I should probably take it.  Not because I was better than them, but because I probably had it a little easier than them.  Yes, I knew plenty about not understanding the conversation, as a few relatives remained fluent in German.  My Grandmother, my father's mother, still had a very slight accent from her birth and first few years in Germany - and undoubtedly from growing up next to her immigrant family in St. Cloud.  

But why DEI?  I dunno, why should we at all be considering the ethnicity, the appearance, or the gender of the person we're considering hiring?  Gee.  I thought that most businesses were in business to make a profit.  I figure the basic tenet of business is to find something you and your people do well, can do well enough to show your works to others, who would then wish to part with some of their money to acquire your product, benefit from your experience, appreciate your hard work, and pay for it in such a way that after your expenses, including labor, are charged against the sale, there's a few bucks left over.  Or a few cents.

Which therefore means you, or people who work with or for you, understand your market.  Which means understanding the people whom you are trying to sell your product to - that is, do they need the widget you make?  Is it going to make their lives easier?  Is it something which they're willing to pay for?  

I think I was in college before I realized that sunscreen isn't just a white-people's product.  It was rare when I was a kid.  We had countless products that advertised as "suntan lotion" - people would put these things on their skin then lie outside in full sunlight to darken their skin.  Being of northern European ancestry, exposing me to direct sunlight without the proper preparation of the time, I'd turn bright red like a lobster.  My mother had advised I avoid those lotion things, just spent a little time outside with short sleeves, then work my way up to longer time, and shorter sleeves, up to a tank top.  

I forgot her lesson when I was nineteen and an Assistant Scoutmaster on a Canoe Trip down a river.  The trip was a week long, and my first day out I put on my tank top, and my vest life jacket.  And my shoulders sunburned and blistered and promptly made me fairly miserable for the rest of the trip.  Lesson learned.  

But it wasn't until College that I learned that people with darker skin than mine also sunburned.  Granted, the bright red of my burned skin was more comical than theirs, but they too blistered.  Go figure.  

So I could be taught.  I see the advantage of having this sort of education compressed into a much shorter time period.  Sure, some folks will never get it.  They deal with and stick within their own communities, do not desire experiences outside their own little part of the world.  I get that.  Whether it's fear, distrust, or prejudice, I understand they don't want to have anything to do with people who don't look like them.  I feel sorry for them, because I have learned the world is a much bigger place than I can wrap my brain around, but I would like to think I've become a bit smarter over the years.  I have friends who have fallen for all matter of stupid ideas.  One is firm in his belief the world is flat.  He still cannot explain why I cannot see both the former Sears Tower in Chicago or the Burj Dubai in the Middle East from here.  Or why the sun rises on one side of the sky and sets on the other, or what's on the other side.  Or gravity.  

But that's not DEI - that's just ignorance.  Which, I suppose, may also be the problem for those opposed to DEI.  I would like to think we're all equal, not that some are better than others.  But I do understand some are probably unwilling to give up their misconception of supremacy.  But that's their problem, not mine.