In the latest twist in the DEI scandal that’s rocked the Federal Aviation Administration’s air traffic controller testing, a diversity activist was allegedly caught in a recorded message promising answers to a behavioral examination for prospective controllers — but only if they were minorities or women.
While rumors of the answers being leaked to the National Black Coalition of Federal Aviation Employees have been in the public domain since well before the DEI scandal burst following a collision between a jetliner and a military helicopter on the approach to Ronald Reagan National Airport outside Washington, D.C., in January, the recording of Shelton Snow — a major figure in the NBCFAE — obtained by the U.K.’s Daily Mail seems to confirm those rumors.
“There are some valuable pieces of information that I have taken a screenshot of and I am going to send that to you via email,” Snow said in the message, first published Wednesday.
“I am about 99.99 percent sure that it is exactly how you need to answer each question,” he added.
“Washington Suburban associate members, brothers, and sisters … I know that each of you are eager, very eager to apply for this job vacancy … and trust that after tonight, you will be able to do so,” he said.
“I am asking that you … allow me to provide you with an email that will be extremely crucial in the opening stages of this hiring process,” he added.
“There is some valuable pieces of information that I have taken a screenshot of, and I’m going to send that to you via email. Trust and believe it will be something that you will appreciate to the utmost. Keep in mind, we are trying to maximize your opportunities.”
As the Daily Mail noted, the message came in 2014, after the Obama-era FAA “had controversially replaced its peer-reviewed cognitive exam with a ‘biographical’ quiz asking things like ‘how would you describe your ideal job’ and ‘classmates would remember me as humble or dominant?’
“Critics say the quixotic blend of multiple-choice questions was designed to screen out elite, mostly white students from FAA-accredited college courses who excelled in traditional aptitude tests,” the outlet noted. “Nonetheless, it was proving incredibly tricky for anyone to pass — with a 90 percent failure rate — when Snow decided to intervene.”
A Jan. 15, 2014 email from Snow, who was then president of the Washington Suburban chapter of the NBCFAE, laid out ways to stand out from the rest — including “buzz words” to be incorporated into applications.
“These buzzwords will flag your resume, thereby giving you the advantage over thousands of resumes that may flood the system,” he said.
Meanwhile, an agenda Snow set for a December 2013 “powwow” encouraged members to share that they were with the NBCFAE.
“This is for us to know who our people are in the case that we have one of our own on the board,” the agenda read.
Delusions of Adequacy 