MISCmedia for 1/18/01
Racists? Here? You're Kidding, Right?

SEVEN DISGRUNTLED MICROSOFT EMPLOYEES (current and former) have filed this here $5 billion race-discrimination lawsuit. They claim there's a ``plantation mentality'' at the software giant, in which black employees were routinely denied promotions and raises and were subject to retaliation if they complained.

In its statements of denial, MS officials essentially said such a thing could never, ever have occurred at a company so forthright, so diversity-conscious. The routine tech-media gang of MS defenders has gone on to share this line.

Why are some people so shocked to hear about the Microsoft discrimination suit? You all oughta know by now how the software giant's got this corporate culture in which only a certain type of person (the Gates clone wannabe) gets ahead.

The MS corporate culture was, at least indirectly, inspired by that of Nordstrom (which, you may recall, faced its own discrimination suit a few years back).

In both companies, and in whitebread Seattle society in general, the real goal of preaching "diversity" isn't to bring more minorities into the corridors of power but to allow the white folks already there to feel better about themselves. If corporate Seattle could figure out a way to support minority rights without having to actually deal with real black (or hispanic or American Indian) folks in their own offices, they would.

One quintessential example of this hypocrisy is the awful movie version of that breast-beating, locally-written novel Snow Falling On Cedars.

It's ostensibly about the WWII relocation camps and other racist acts against Japanese Americans in our state not too long ago. But the movie (in which no Asian-American actor is billed higher than eighth!), and the novel, are really all about raising audience sympathy for the nice white-boy hero, a noble hack journalist (and the author's presumed alter ego).

This past week's local Martin Luther King Day public-service ads further exemplify this faux-diversity mindset.

The ads all venerate King as a visionary, a leader, a forward-thinker (i.e., a representative of the values CEOs often imagine themselves to have). The ads then close with pats-on-the-ol'-back to the forward-thinking corporations who pitched in to pay for the ad space or time. Little or no mention is made of the real social issues King confronted, many of which still need confronting today.

So it stands to reason that a theoretical company that participated in these and other "diversity" themed self-celebrations (which theoretically might also include donations to inner-city schools, representatives at minority recruiting fairs, and internal sensitivity-training classes for white employees) might theoretically, and informally, decide it's been doing enough to feel good about itself diversity-wise, and that it doesn't have to go that extra, often-unpublicized step and actually demand fair treatment for actual minority persons within its own employment ranks.

If that's what really went on, I (though perhaps not top company management) wouldn't be the least surprised.

TOMORROW: I know what IT is. Will I tell you? Find out.

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