Another victory for virtue-signalling, and a defeat for logic and good results

Political correctness always produces bad results.  And it's getting worse.  But sometimes those results are subtle and not always apparent.  Example: 

Portland, Oregon, has a serious problem with drug addiction--specifically to heroin, meth, and opioids.  It's been a problem for decades but has gotten a lot worse in the last few years.

To try to formulate an approach to reducing addiction a good-government citizens' group--the City Club of Portland--convened a committee of civilian volunteers to research addiction and possible ways to reduce it.  Anyone in the club could volunteer to serve on the committee.

 

Not one person of color applied to serve on the addiction-research committee.

The committee met twice a week for six months, interviewing numerous experts and reviewing over a hundred published studies.  Toward the end of July the committee submitted a draft report to the officers of the club.

By October, the club's officers hadn't approved or commented on the report, so one of the members of the research committee asked the club's president what the problem was.

The president said that the club's board of governors would not release the report--because all the members of the research committee were...white.

The fact that no non-white had volunteered to serve on the volunteer committee was ignored.

Also, the committee had been meeting for six months.  At any point the board of governors could have dissolved the committee and saved everyone's time.  But they didn't.

So...thousands of volunteer man-hours were wasted, thrown away because of an official's fear of appearing to be politically incorrect. 

So if Portland ever decides what to do about the ocean of misery caused by drug addiction and addicts, it'll take 'em another year to figure it out--if indeed they ever do.  Because my guess is that all the members who had the time, education and inclination to volunteer to spend over six months doing the research already volunteered--only to have their work trashed.  

How many of those people do you think will be eager to sign up for more fun like that?

Sacrificing competence and unbiased conclusions to virtue-signalling and political correctness can't possibly have a good result.  But snowflakes haven't learned that, and won't until too late.

You surely know people like this:  They'll eagerly swear that 2 plus 2 equals 5 if they think that's the popular thing to do.  They are a curse and a cancer on a sane society.

Of course big swaths of the U.S. no longer fit this definition.