I spoke to a senior administrator of a well known private school recently. He was filled with frustration over the ever-shifting sands of the diversity game.
"Things that were best practices until recently are now considered racist," he said. "Five minutes from now it will change again. The nomenclature changes almost constantly. Who decides these things? I have no idea."
The fact is, the DEI industry needs the rules to change, because they can never have achievable goals. Otherwise, success would sow the seeds of their own irrelevance.
This is why DEI objectives are always amorphous, impossible to quantify, to prove or disprove. The very concept of "systemic" racism is to move away from specific instances of racism - things that can be dealt with - to diffuse, societal racism, something that will always just "be."
It's also why the DEI industry invents new concepts such as "microaggressions," which are instances of racism so subtle that frequently neither the victim nor the transgressor know it's occurred. ("Where are you from?")
The DEI industry needs friction to survive, so it sows dissension where it can, which is just about everywhere. Perpetually reworking the definition of racism such that institutions never know where they stand is part of the game.
(The educator also said that the National Association of Independent Schools, the accreditation body in charge of our nation's private schools, has gone full woke. "I can't remember the last time the cover of their monthly magazine didn't have something to do with diversity. I mean, it's important, but so many other things are as well.")
Diversity has morphed from a social movement to a full blown industry with scores of conferences, consultants, and expensive opportunities for absolution. Martin Luther would blush at the scope of modern indulgence buying.
A lot of money is being made. Books, speaking fees, consulting contracts...Want to hire Ibram Kendi for a 45 minute Zoom? That'll set you back twenty K.
Dalton's diversity consultant is an outfit called Pollyanna. Separating where Dalton ends and Pollyanna begins is a bit difficult. Pollyanna itself appears to be a Dalton creation. Its founder, Caspar Caldarola, is an alumna as well as a former Dalton trustee for ten years - right up until the moment she started Pollyanna. Of Pollyanna's nine full time staff, six have deep ties to Dalton. Of the twelve board members, half have similar ties. The original board was 100% Dalton. Every year Dalton hosts the "Dalton Conference," a DEI conference for New York private schools. Pollyanna organizes this conference and uses it to raise money.
Casper Caldarola
Many of Pollyanna's donors are Dalton people as well. Interestingly, much like how Dalton made the names of its trustees disappear, Pollyanna has purged the names of donors from its own website. I have the list, although I can't see any purpose in reprinting it here, other than I will say that Dalton Headmaster Jim Best is on it.
There's nothing, prima facie, wrong with any of this. But it does raise conflict of interest issues when Dalton hires Pollyanna, which they did from the outset. Dalton and Pollyanna are deeply in bed. Jim Best's letter to parents last week said they were hiring "independent experts" to evaluate Dalton's DEI efforts. Dollars to donuts he's talking about Pollyanna.
Best was also prominently quoted on the Pollyanna website until that, too, disappeared. For the sake of posterity, here's what he said:
"Pollyanna is transformative. You'll talk the talk, you'll walk the walk, and you'll see the world - and your work - in a new light."
He's right about one thing, what Pollyanna promotes is transformative. But it's a transformation few parents sign up for when they actually understand it. The 1619 Project, forced equal results, race-shaming, cop hatred...it's all there.
So, what does Pollyanna do? Here are some of the services they offer:
Curriculum Assessments This is where they tell what your kids are being taught isn't woke enough.
Cross-Constituent Assessments The description of this is a progressive word salad. I have no idea what it means.
Conferences Pollyanna will organize them. Intra-school, multi-school, you name it.
Racial Literacy Curriculum This is where, having failed the assessment, schools are told they have to revamp their curriculum, and Pollyanna will show them the way.
This last one is the dangerous part. It is an entire K-8 program where "racial literacy" is woven into every aspect of school; science, health, history, the whole thing. It is a full embrace of Critical Race Theory. If you aren't up to speed on CRT and you're a parent, you should get there.
While Dalton claims to be reviewing its curriculum for DEI, the program is, in fact, already embedded into the fabric of their school. Pollyanna is Dalton, Dalton is Pollyanna.
Want a play where one of the parts is "Racist Cop?" Dalton's got your back. They had one.
What does Pollyanna charge for its services? Well, that's hard to say, because there's little transparency in the DEI industry. I am reminded of when I was writing Campusland and I tried to find out how many DEI officers a typical Ivy college had on their staffs, and the information was nowhere to be found. (I later discovered that Yale has 150.) As for Pollyanna, one school administrator believes that hiring Pollyanna for the full array of their services (which keep growing) would cost "somewhere in the six figures a year."
How many scholarships could that pay for?
Parents and alumni: this is where your donations are going; to neo-segregation ("affinity grouping"), America-bashing, and ethnic self-loathing. Your dollars enable this intellectual virus.
To that administrator who wondered who was making all these rules up: it's organizations like Pollyanna, plus their enablers in the academic world.
The interesting thing is that few people at Pollyanna have any experience in actual, non-diversity related, education. Caldarola doesn't. Her background is marketing and communications. Of Pollyanna's nine employees, only three have teaching experience. Of the twelve trustees, exactly two have teaching experience. (One trustee is a high school student who is "actively looking for a job," according to his LinkedIn profile.)
However well-meaning they may be, these are the kind of non-qualified people being allowed to completely rewrite the curricula of our schools and redefine their very missions.
One school I spoke to said they paid Pollyanna "low five figures" for two Zoom calls. They discontinued their relationship when it was clear that Pollyanna was a big proponent of the odious New York Times 1619 Project, a view that America's very founding and history is little more than the story of slavery and racism. It has been widely denounced as factually inaccurate by scores of historians, but that hasn't stopped it from gaining full purchase in the DEI industry, and therefore our schools. Dalton's own "Anti-racism resources" web page links to it. While you're there, you can also read such ideological effluence such as:
- Me and White Supremacy
- Intersectionality Matters!
- Black Feminist Thought
It's a long, long list, likely curated by Pollyanna. It's the kind of material that is crowding out the rest of the curriculum. Every minute kids spend getting indoctrinated in wokeism is a minute they are not reading Shakespeare, learning algebra, or practicing creative writing. And besides being factually and philosophically challenged, the list embodies a relentlessly depressing view of the world, and of America in particular. No wonder our schools are producing so many kids who no longer view our country, the Great Experiment, with pride. Many actively detest it.
How sad. Not the way I want my kids or anyone else's kids to grow up.
DEI has evolved into its own interest group, one that has little to do with actually helping minorities and others among the "oppressed." To the contrary, it wants to create permanent victim classes, ones that will perpetually be in need of saving. For a price.
In reality, the DEI industry is serving the interests of white people far more than black.
I am reminded of a quote from African-American economist Walter Williams (who sadly died a few weeks ago):
"I am glad I was educated before it was fashionable for white people to like black people."
Read this for an interesting perspective from a black Ph.D. in astronomy.
The Big Grift
However well-meaning the diversity movement may have once been, the DEI industry is now a grift - and an incredibly successful one. Social justice warriors on social media ensure compliance. Anyone who raises a red flag is forever branded a racist and cancelled for good measure. This cows most into silence. So much easier to hire DEI consultants and go on about your life.
I think, though, that the tenets of CRT and DEI are becoming so outrageous that more are starting to speak up, particularly as they discover that others have quietly agreed.
Let's pray that's true, because while many adults choose to engage in ritualistic self-flagellation, our kids, white and black, are paying the price.
Post Script: In a Zoom call with parents two days ago, Dalton headmaster Jim Best called the Naked Dollar a "blog with a few dozen followers." The Naked Dollar may not be the Huffington Post, but it got a quarter of a million hits over the last few weeks, so...But perhaps Best should ask himself why, if the Naked Dollar is so irrelevant, the story could gain such wide coverage. Perhaps because it touched a nerve? Perhaps because it's saying things that the parents at your school are afraid to say out loud? Your problems were not created by this blog.
