EARN YOUR RANK
How DEI compares to Merit
by Rene Jax
The difference between a diversity hire, and earning it.
In the six days since Donald Trump was sworn in for a second term of president, much talk about Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion has taken place. On Friday, January 25th, President Trump visited the Los Angels neighborhood of Pacific Palisades, which only two weeks ago suffered a conflagration from the normal Santa Anna winds. The winter winds, which LA Fire Department has a long history of dealing with, created multiple fires which ultimately destroyed over 20,000 homes and businesses, and displaced nearly 300,000 people.
During the height of these fires, it was discovered that the LA mayor, Karen Bass had taken her family on an all expenses paid trip to Africa, and was out of the country, and out of all communication to reach her during the initial and critical hours of the fire.
Compounding the seriousness of the fires, was the fact that the top three chiefs of the Los Angles Fire Department were all DEI hires. It was on these three lesbian women's shoulders that fell the command and decisions of what fire department resources would be allocated to the Pacific Palisades region. But alas, the first fire trucks were not dispatched to the area for nearly an hour after the blazes were reported.
Then, there is the fact that another DEI hire was the head of the LA Water and Power district. A woman that Mayor Bass hired at twice the salary ($750,000) of the previous department head. Under her (sic) watchful eye, she had allowed the Palisades water reservoir, right above that city to remain empty for nearly a year, because of the need to repair a torn cover of the reservoir. The reservoir, which normally held 117,000,000 gallons of water, would have been able to save the city and thousands of homes from these wild fires.
And many people will challenge my assertion that the end result of the damage, loss of lives, and extreme loss of property is directly attributed to the five women running these departments. We need only look to the cornucopia of systemic failures to prove that these DEI hires were simply not up to the task of doing the job they were inserted in.
What advocates of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion refuse to acknowledge is the simple fact that a person having to earn their rank, ie... through a merit based system, is what qualifies a person to hold that rank. That is why there are so many laws on the books prohibiting nepotism. Just because a person is the grandson of a local mayor or politician, does not qualify the person to run the Assessor's office of that city. Positions of power and responsibility not only require years of relevant experience, they demand that the person has a deep, and rounded understanding of office from having worked their way, from the ground floor up. And the Los Angeles Fire Department is one of those systems.
Let's look at two other clear cut examples of DEI vs. Merit based advancement.
The first person is a lesbian named Yvonne Gray. Born in the UK, she completed her Bachelor of Education to become a teacher, but signed up with the Royal Navy instead. For the next eight years she worked as an officer until she decided to relocate to New Zealand. There, in 2012 she was hired by the New Zealand Navy and promoted to Commander. Much fanfare was made at the time, of the fact that New Zealand had promoted their first lesbian to command a ship.
In 2022 she was place in charge of the new, $150,000,000 ship, NZN Manawuwanui. A few short months later, under her command, while on a routine mapping mission, the ship ran aground, and caught fire. Within hours the ship sank off the Samoan coast. A recent analysis found that Commander Gray had left the wheelhouse of the ship while the autopilot was on, and the ship's crew were not trained well enough to know to turn off the autopilot so they could have avoided the reef.
Now keep in mind, that the seas were calm, the skies clear, and the ship was brand new and built for navigating and mapping oceans. Yet due to how she managed and trained the crew and operations of her ship, it crashed and sank to the bottom.
Now let's compare her command to that of Ernest E. Evans.
Evans, whose mother was a full blooded Cherokee India, grew up on a Creek Indian reservation in Muskogee, Oklahoma entered the Navy, and graduated in 1931. He spent years dealing with racial prejudice in the navy, with many of his bunk mates calling him “Chief”. He slowly worked himself up through the ranks, eventually serving on eight different ships.
When World War Two broke out, he was given command of the USS Alden. He served as her Commander for over a year, until he was ordered to outfit the USS Johnston in Seattle, Washington. He took command of it in October 1943, and served as her commander until she was sank in October of 1944.
On that date, the small US fleet which contained the USS Johnston, faced a Japanese fleet of 4 battleships, 7 heavy cruisers, and 12 destroyers. The Johnston was a Fletcher class destroyer, and was no match for the Japanese fleet.
The Battle of Leyte Gulf, is considered the greatest naval battle in history. The US Navy had over 300 ships, to the Japanese's 67 ships. To help you understand this battle, the Yamato, the largest battleship ever built was steaming straight at the American Navy. The Yamato was 839 feet long, and 127 feet wide and had nine eighteen inch guns. Commander Evan's USS Johnston, was one of 17 destroyers that fought in that battle. The US Johnston was only 376 feet long, and 39 feet wide, with only five inch guns.
For the two hours of the battle, Commander Evans made multiple runs at the Japanese fleet. He fired every torpedo onboard, and emptied every possible round into the Japanese ships. At one point a Japanese round struck his wheelhouse, and he lost many fingers on his hand. Yet he kept control of his ship and fighting the enemy. Eventually, taking heavy damage from the onslaught of Japanese ships, the Johnston's engine was destroyed and she sat dead in the water. For the next twenty minutes she took massive hits from the surrounding Japanese fleet. And at 9:45 am, Commander Evans called “abandon ship” The ship sank under the sea at 10:10 am, taking Evans with it.
Both Commander Gray and Commander Evans lost their ships. Both were minorities. But that is where the difference ends. Commander Evans worked his way up through the ranks, having to deal with ingrained systemic racism, every step of the way. Yet, when war broke out in the Pacific, Evans had the skills, years of experience and personal grit, to take his tiny ship into harm's way and put up a fight against the largest battleship ever built.
Compare this to Yvonne Gray. It was Minister of Defense, Judith Collins who gave Gray New Zealand's brand new ship to sink. Collins has spent decades bouncing from one government position to another. And her long career in local New Zealand politics is filled with countless allegations of political bias and under handed dealings. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Collins) And it was Collins who appointed another DEI hire to helm the NZN Manawuwani. And it is Collins who ran cover for Commander Gray during the investigations into the sinking.
Looking at the accidental sinking of the Manawuwani another way. Commander Gray managed in one fell swoop, to sink ten percent of her own country's navy, in one day.
On a personal note, on May 8th, 1980 I was sworn in as a San Francisco Patrol Special Police officer by the San Francisco Deputy Chief of Police. I was the first transgender woman in the nation to be sworn in. It would be another forty years before SFPD would swear in another transgender person as a cop.
I was not a DEI hire. I had spent the previous nine years working in the south bay as a male police officer. Senior management in the department wanted nothing to do with me and legally fought me for nearly two years, trying to keep me off their force. But I persevered, and started work on May 9th, 1980. Yet for the next three years, I faced every kind of hate and discrimination from other officers but kept doing my job. It wasn't until I was injured in the line of duty, that I eventually left the job.
I say this because I know how hard it is to face daily personal attacks for what I believe. My star wasn't given to me, it was earned in the ten long years I served on the street. And I continued to earn it every day I worked on the street in San Francisco.
Not every one, can expect to live up to Commander Ernest Even's example. But everyone should attempt to. And if you are a lesbian, or transgender or other minority, and are given a role that you are not qualified for because of your intersectionality, you should turn it down.
Earn your rank. Your soul requires it, your family requires it, your community requires it.
Earn your rank. Claim your rank. Evans did, I did, you can also.
Rene Jax.
- March 2025 (2)
- February 2025 (2)
- January 2025 (4)
- May 2024 (1)
- January 2024 (2)
- October 2023 (1)
- August 2023 (1)
- May 2023 (1)
- March 2023 (1)
- February 2023 (5)
- December 2022 (1)
- November 2022 (1)
- October 2022 (1)
- August 2022 (2)
- July 2022 (2)
- June 2022 (6)