Mediaboss Marketing

Uber hired former attorney general Eric Holder to give it some advice about its scandal-ridden workplace. Predictably, much of that advice turned out to be more politically correct than legally sound, much like the Justice Department when he was running it. Alas, the Uber board has already announced that it will adopt Mr. Holders recommendations.

In particular, Mr. Holder wants Uber to get its numbers right, by hiring more underrepresented minorities and women. And so: The Head of Diversity (or Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer) should set goals with respect to annual improvements in diversity and regularly publish data on Ubers diversity and inclusion numbers to judge how the company is meeting its goals.

Mr. Holder recommends that Uber adopt some version of the Rooney Rule, which is illegal, since it requires the sorting of job applicants by race, ethnicity, and sex. Perversely, he also recommends that Uber have blind resume review that is, resumes that have had all indicators of race, ethnicity, and sex removed from them which is a fine idea but flatly inconsistent not only with the Rooney Rule but with the rest of his recommendations. Those recommendations, for example, urge setting and meeting diversity goals and then rewarding and punishing (recognizing and holding accountable, meaning getting bonuses and getting fired, see recommendation II.D) managers based on metrics that are tied to improving diversity. In a word, quotas.

Candidates who are themselves diverse is one quality the board should look for in the new chief operating officer. Theres plenty in the recommendations on unconscious bias but nothing on the quite conscious bias that would be required by them. Tellingly, Mr. Holder criticizes the companys embrace of Meritocracy and Toe-Stepping as a corporate value.

There is a simple choice to be made here, folks, whether were talking about jobs or university admissions or government contracts or whatever. We can strive for nondiscrimination, which is what fairness and the law require, or we can mandate diversity, which inevitably means politically correct discrimination, which is in turn neither fair nor legal. We cant have both. Nondiscrimination will lead to more diversity if the status quo was politically incorrect discrimination, but it is nondiscrimination that must be the aim, not a predetermined bean-count.

Originally posted here:
Eric Holder's Uber Diversity Advice | National Review - National Review