When I was a young man, I was very fortunate. I grew up in a time and a place where bad things rarely happened; at least they weren’t reported. I watched Ozzie and Harriet and Leave it to Beaver and I could relate; the Nelsons and the Cleavers weren’t all that different from my family. I had my heroes: the real ones like the Lone Ranger and Sky King, the fantastic ones like Mighty Mouse and Popeye, and my most favoritist hero of all: Bugs Bunny.

Those were the days. Twelve-year-old boys could buy their own ammo and go shoot empty beer cans. No kid ever brought a gun to school to settle a score with the principal. Absolutely unimaginable! There were Arabs in the city, but they were merchants, not terrorists. The World Trade Center buildings hadn’t been built yet, and no one thought of flying an airplane into anything but the sky.

We were in sixth grade; we were expected to know the capital of each and every one of the 50 states, including the two new ones, and the name of each and every president of the United States, but those details didn’t matter to us. We sold newspapers, and that’s how we earned the money we spent on model cars and airplanes – and MAD magazines – the things that mattered to us.

On Friday, each student in our class had to present a news story. We had to stand at the blackboard, give the details of a story, and explain why those details were important. We were going to inherit an excellent democracy when we grew up, and so we needed to know what was happening and why. How else would we ever be able to make good decisions and maintain an excellent democracy?

We’d be sitting in class, and then the alarm would sound. It was time for another duck-and-cover drill. In orderly fashion, we went into the hallway outside our classroom. We’d crouch down and cover our heads and stay there until the alarm sounded again, meaning the drill was over. The Russians had it in for us. We didn’t know why, but we figured they’d fly an airplane over New York and drop an atomic bomb on us. Hah! We’d outsmart them with our duck-and-cover routine. They might destroy our classroom, but we’d be safe in the hallway.

For a while, it looked like something might happen. It looked like we just might go to war. It was called the Cuban Missile Crisis. President Kennedy warned the Russians that if they bombed one of our classrooms, then we’d take out a whole bunch of theirs. The duck-and-cover drills became more frequent. There were special announcements on TV every day. There was Bugs Bunny getting ready to kick Elmer Fudd’s butt, and then an alert would suddenly appear: “Stand By! Special News Bulletin! Stand By!”

Had the Russians attacked one of our classrooms? No, not yet. Maybe tomorrow. We knew what was happening, but why? Why did the Russians have it in for us? I could see Bugs Bunny’s problem with Elmer Fudd. That was easy. Elmer wasn’t shooting empty beer cans. I could see the perpetual dispute between Popeye and Bluto. They both wanted the precious, scarce commodity of Olive Oil. I could understand the civil rights movement, but I couldn’t see why the Russians wanted us dead or red.

I’ve been reading the New York Times since then. It was my source of news stories for those old Fridays, those days back when middle-aged white men ran just about everything: business, government, the news, universities and grammar schools: you name it. Black men couldn’t become the CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, and white women couldn’t get into certain clubs. Businesses didn’t involve themselves in social causes; they focused on the bottom line. I remember all that.

As I grew up, the Times kept me informed about the civil rights movement and the women’s movement and I applauded the changes. I’d come to believe that it was right when merit mattered most. When Martin Luther King talked about a world where people are judged by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin, I imagined that must be a right, good world.

That was years ago. Now I’m a middle-aged white man. I still like the idea of King’s dream world, but I’m wondering what ever happened to King’s dream. It used to be that Equal Opportunity meant something. Now, what matters is Diversity. Companies aren’t looking for middle-aged workers, men or women, white or black. They’re looking for recent college graduates – people without experience – but not those belonging to certain ethnic groups: Irish, Polish, German, Italian; especially not English. Why, those people aren’t even ethnic!

Today, the slogan isn’t equal rights or equal opportunity: it’s diversity. A Fortune 500 company advertises its diverse work force and proclaims its commitment to making it even more diverse.

Consider how Carly Fiorina, CEO of Hewlett-Packard, puts it:

The value proposition for diversity is very clear:
Diversity drives creativity.
Creativity drives invention.
Invention drives profitability and business success.

Here’s the CEO of a company that was started by a couple of middle-aged white men, and she’s saying that those men couldn’t possibly do what they did! (Perhaps she’s thinking of a career in politics.)

This attitude prevails among Silicon Valley’s high-tech firms. And it shows. Watch workers on their way into a just about any high-tech firm in Silicon Valley. Why, if those workers are reflective of the diversity of the U.S. workforce, then for every African American in the U.S., there are 50 immigrants from India, 20 from China, 10 from Japan, and 5 from Russia. And the median age of all workers is 26.

Look at the employment section of a high-tech firm’s Web site. There’s a section titled Corporate Culture. There’s a statement of the firm’s commitment to diversity. Here’s how one firm puts it:

"Walk into the cafeteria on any given day, and you will hear conversations in English, French, German, Russian, Vietnamese, Cantonese, just to name a few."

What strikes me about the story of Jayson Blair at the New York Times is this: how ‘commitment to diversity’ makes age discrimination sound like a noble cause. It’s a pretense for hiring younger workers: people who are more malleable and have lower health insurance premiums than experienced workers.

Think I’m kidding? Just wait and see who replaces Jayson Blair at the Times. It’s not going to be someone who remembers duck-and-cover drills.

About the Author: Mister Thorne is a freelance writer/editor in San Francisco. For information about him, visit www.misterthorne.org. To contact him, send e-mail to mister.thorne@comcast.net.