"D.E.I."

Last night, I went to a dance show.  It was my favorite group, Dimensions Dance Theater of Miami.  The style is based on ballet, and it's mixed with some modern dance.

The special feature of last night's show was that there were four choreographers, and they were all women.  DDTM usually uses a combination of choreographers, and most of them are usually men.  Last night's show, and the dance pieces, were fabulous.  One of the choreographers was one of DDTM's regular dancers.

Tonight, I went to a show called "American Patchwork Quartet."  The leader of the group was a typical Caucasian man, from S Carolina, and he played guitar and sang.  The bass player was from Japan.  The drummer was African American and came from the mid-west.  The other member of the quartet was a woman from India, and she sang.  The leader and the Indian woman appeared to have founded this group, and they talked about how they wanted to blend and incorporate styles.  At one point, the Indian woman sang what she said was a very well known raga (sort of spiritual song), and it was 3000 years old.  The leader mentioned "D.E.I."  The fact is that the only styles of music that were originally and uniquely American are blues, country, and jazz, all of which were begun by African Americans.

Tomorrow night, I'm going to a concert of classical Indian music in Broward County.

This raises the question of what "D.E.I." means.  This country used to call itself a "melting pot," so we had no resistance to mixing things, including the people who were here.  We have been diverse, our own Constitution guarantees equity, or equality (which we increased and perfected by making African Americans and women equal to Caucasian men), and we include anyone.  We accepted from France a Statue of Liberty that symbolizes D.E.I., and we ourselves added to it a poem by Emma Lazarus, making our D.E.I. position unambiguous.

One of the peculiar characteristics of the people who complain about D.E.I. is that they say either that unqualified people who are diverse are given positions for which they are not fit, or that this country is somehow supposed to be Caucasian male-centric.  The latter despite the clear and contradicting language of our own Constitution.  (Unless some people are literal and concrete enough to think "all men are created equal" only refers to males.)  And people are not given positions for which they are not fit.  The only complaint anyone could try to make is that given more applicants than positions, under D.E.I., the applicant who is not a Caucasian male would preferentially be given the position.

But none of those people complained about what they think is unfairness when only Caucasian males were given positions.  So they're being selfish, dishonest, or both.

But that has to be their problem.  We do try to address our mistakes and imperfections, and we will continue.  In the meantime, on a small scale, I went to a wonderful show last night, another tonight, and I have been to enough classical Indian music shows to know tomorrow night's show will be purely pleasing, too