By Frank Weber
Copyright ©2025
I have no love for the DEI initiative and agenda.
I say good riddance.
Something like that should never take the place of qualification.
It should never have taken precedence over The People of this Country.
The world does not dole out participation trophies just for showing up.
If you win, you get the trophy.
If you lose, you get nothing…unless maybe some small flicker is ignited in your loss.
If that happens, then maybe you’ll be back again and maybe that time you’ll claim the trophy.
But until that time, NO ONE is entitled to the trophy without earning it.
I should explain. When I got stung by it, back in late ‘89, the movement was still called affirmative action.
It’s basically the same thing, and I am uniquely justified in pontificating on the subject due to the simple fact that even though I ‘earned’ the trophy, it was ‘gifted’ to someone else who didn’t even come close.
It’s basically the same thing, but now they’ve lumped new piles into their blender in a misguided, presumptuous effort to make ‘everyone feel good about themselves’.
And why, do you ask, did this happen?
Because I was not the ‘favorite’ color of the day.
Fuck that nonsense.
Anyway, here’s what happened…
I went to grade school with a kid named Dave. We went to different high schools, but we all stayed in touch and still hung out over the years. After graduation, Dave’s father helped him get into an ‘apprentice program’ at a MAJOR local company.
The program was a sweet deal if you could get into it. If you got in, your education was company-paid – while you worked for them – and you were guaranteed a job within the company when all was said and done.
Dave got in.
Dave graduated all of the company’s classes.
Dave landed his dream job.
Dave began to travel all over the world for this company.
All inside of just a few years.
One night over beers, he suggested that I should apply for the program.
He said that from his experience, I was a perfect fit for it.
He said I would have zero trouble with the classes and he figured I would love the job and the travel. So I said, “Why not?” and I applied.
I was scheduled for the initial exam early one morning in the company’s training facilities.
Jesus, what a complex that place was! And still is.
There were twenty-five of us in the classroom that morning…men and women of all colors.
The entire exam took somewhere in the neighborhood of four hours.
It was thoroughly exhausting, but that was more from the pressure of it all and everything that hung in the balance.
As I answered question after question and solved problem after problem and many equations to boot, I felt pretty good about my chances. There was A LOT of algebra, trig and chemistry in this exam. Algebra, trig and chemistry were some of my favorite subjects in high school.
Me and another guy used to race to finish trig tests, and not only finish first, but finish with a score of 100%. We went back and forth over the year, but I like to think I had more wins than he did. I’ve always loved solving problems and balancing equations.
I’m still a geek that way.
Like I said, I felt good when I was done. I knew I killed it. I can’t remember anything in that exam that made me worry or second-guess myself. I felt good about it.
The exams were followed by four – yes, four – separate, one-hour interviews. This grinder lasted another four hours. Again, I left feeling good about my chances. I answered every question put to me and engaged the interviewers in discussions through them. I felt that I showed a genuine interest and an eagerness to learn and succeed. They seemed to see the same.
That day finally ended.
A couple weeks went by and I still hadn’t heard anything from this company, so I finally called them.
The woman I spoke to loudly fumbled some papers into the phone, and said, “Oh yes, here you are, Mr. Weber. Congratulations…I see that you scored in the top three of all examinees!” I felt the excitement building and I could barely speak.
But she continued. “However, it has been determined that you are not a good fit for this program.” Silence on the phone – on both ends.
I heard myself stutter out, “Why not?”
She cleared her throat several times and laid it down, SO matter-of-factly…
“I’m afraid that you are not the right color we needed to fulfill our quota requirements.”
“Wait! What? You just said I scored one of the top three highest scores! What does that mean? Not the right color? You mean that even though I out-tested twenty-three other people, I’m being rejected because I’m white?”
Silence again on the phone – and still on both ends.
“What color do I have to be???”
“I think you know THAT Mr. Weber. Is there anything else I can help you with today?”
I was stunned. I can still feel that stab.
More to the point, I was crushed.
Still, it never occurred to me to scream and spit and bitch about it. Yeah, I was furious at the slight, but I never directed it out at anyone. The way things have been the past several years, maybe I should have. But I didn’t.
Still being a kid, I angrily switched gears and moved on.
It never occurred to me to blame everyone else.
It never occurred to me to the blame black people that took the test…or the one that got the golden ticket.
It didn’t even occur to me to blame the company that did it to me.
No, I was indignantly furious toward the idea that I was played just to keep numbers on board for the government…so that the company could prove a diverse application process.
I was a number, nothing more. I was furious that this was even a law.
Thankfully, back then, the whole debacle had not yet been smeared with the letter people agenda. I can only imagine what THAT quagmire would have meant.
Forgive me if I turn away from anyone (mostly college-aged white kids) that screams and spits and bitches and marches for the ‘need’ for DEI these days. You are full of shit.
Forgive me if I turn away from anyone that tries to scream ‘white privilege’ in my face because I’m white.
Fuck you.
Don’t waste the oxygen talking to me about eliminating racism. You’re only shifting lanes.
It has always existed and sadly, it continues to exist.
It just changes name and form so it’s not so easy to root out.
What should have mattered was my final exam score.
What should have mattered was my ranking in the top three of the twenty-five applicants.
What should have mattered was my performance in my interviews.
But all that mattered was that I was white and the company needed more black skin to fill their quota. Looking back now, I think the woman that told me this said it to me this way for a reason.
If you ignore actual skill and ability – both of which I proved to possess without doubt – for skin color, that is racism.
If you ignore all test results just to fill a government quota for skin color and keep dollars flowing, that is racism. Racism with a price tag.
It was cold, cut-and-dry racism, operating in reverse, under the moniker of ‘affirmative action’.
Insert DEI as needed.
If I had been outperformed, I could accept that. I don’t give a shit if it was a black man, woman or child that beat me out, I could accept that.
If I had been cut from the running because it came down to me and another person with comparably close – and still very high – scores, I could accept that.
Not everyone deserves a trophy for participation.
Only the winner of the game deserves the trophy.
And I can accept even that because I understand that if I want to win, I have to kill myself working to get it. I understand that nothing should be doled out like this.
“Just get out there and flop around. You’ll get a trophy no matter how you do. They owe it to you. You are special.”
I have to call bullshit on that one. No one is special.
When I apply for a job, I expect that the best possible fit for the job is hired.
That’s how I viewed the process for over thirty years of interviewing and hiring as I did it.
I don’t believe anyone owes me anything for my time.
I guess that’s the real problem these days…Too many people believe that their own personal views and the worlds they live in entitle them to whatever they want – whether they can do the job or not doesn’t matter. And if they don’t get their way, they’ll scream about it until they get their way…just like the entitled, spoiled brat-children that they are.
It makes absolutely NO difference to me what anyone else’s skin color or faith or nationality or heritage is, if they are best suited for the job then THEY should get it.
No one should ever be boosted along to make someone feel better about themselves without having to earn it.
And before anyone starts spouting-off about how I’m a racist and I don’t understand anything because of my ‘white privilege’ I say this:
If that’s truly the case and these programs – affirmative action or DEI or whatever it’s called next – are truly necessary to change the world as it IS, then WHY hasn’t anything changed in the past fifty years? No racism has been stamped out, it’s only been transferred to someone else to worry about. WHY is it that the ONLY thing that changes is the name of the movement and agenda? Is ANYONE in this world better served by preventing people from EARNING what they get and instead just HANDING it to them?
Not a fucking soul.