The Wrong Stuff
[L] 2024 #NASA (now deleted)
[R] 2025 #Labor(now promoted)
Keith’s note: A year ago NASA and other government agencies were trying to broaden outreach to all Americans. NASA had a particular focus on reaching underserved communities. That has now evaporated. Instead, government agencies such as the Department of Labor have decided that 1950’s white males with chiseled features in heroic poses should be the symbol of what America is all about.
4 responses to “The Wrong Stuff”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
NASA pretended to have a focus on reaching underserved communities, and the moment they got the go ahead to stop they did. Remember the now deleted OIG report reviewing 10 years of data during DEI efforts that showed the needle never moved in terms of actual representation across NASA centers? They sure liked to put us in social media videos and brochures but not actually update their hiring approach. The same people that were pressured to represent underserved communities over and over felt degraded because they were hired based on skill, not skin color. But no way anyone could speak up about that.
NASA culture had a particular way of making us feel guilty for not “representing”, ignoring our actual suggestions for increasing diversity and quality of engineers, and turning their backs on us if we balked at their “strategy”. As someone who sat around a table of white men for 15 years, nothing changed for the bulk employees. Oh except that we were openly called emotional or difficult or high maintenance when we disagreed in a meeting during risk assessments…sorry we were SMEs and our jobs were to assess risks critically. Everyone sitting around a table acting like that was ok to call a woman emotional. NASA was never diverse but sure liked getting credit for pretending when it was convenient.
Yes I know this happens – and that saying you support diversity is one thing – but doing it is quite another. And I also know of true instances at NASA where the intention and reality of encouraging and accepting diversity worked – in synergy. That said at least NASA tried. But this new wave of white guys representing America in EVERY ONE of the posters is troubling and a 180 degree pivot in the wrong direction.
I couldn’t have said it better. There was a lot of frustration with the method and the lack of real results, but if anything it convinced me that it was even more important.
Oh definitely agree that the new posters are troubling and the wrong direction for society. After 15 years at NASA watching women and minorities get quietly fired if they did not essentially assimilate into white male culture…well that felt like the wrong direction too. In design and materials engineering women have disproportionately left over the last 5 years after having enough discrimination despite being leaders or experts in the field. They were not replaced with technical equivalents. I watched dreams broken and predecessors fail upwards or promoted only because there were no other people at qualified GS positions to take on the roles once people had been pushed out. Every time, management claimed the women left to spend more time with their children. Ummm no these women took jobs at healthier workplaces.
I personally felt that it was worse to put the diversity mask on and then feed employees and new hires hope along with micro-aggression soup to the point where they felt unsafe in their jobs. These are hard working employees dedicated to the missions.
I am sure there are instances of actual trying and successfully applying diversity. I know great advocates exist that encourage diversity. I think fondly of one outspoken white senior male who always included everyone in the conversation. We needed more like him. But NASA was incredibly weak in this area overall, despite what old posters show. The numbers do not lie, well they did not used to. That old OIG report was shocking.