Luis Herrera

Guys, we need to have an honest conversation about DEI. And some fellow conservatives aren’t going to like this. My son attends @ERAU_Daytona, arguably the top flight school in the world. He earned a 4.0 GPA last semester and just scored a 97 on his commercial pilot exam. He’s 6’3”, confident, and has sailed with me through ocean storms so violent I probably should have been arrested for bringing him aboard. We’ve hiked deep into the wilderness for days with nothing but backpacks. I don’t say this to brag. I say it because the kid is a rock star. He’s exactly the kind of young man you’d want to see at the end of the jetway. Now let’s talk about the tragic Learjet crash that killed nine people. The captain was Jeff Gregory, 55, a white man with decades of experience and the gray hair and seasoned appearance that inspire confidence. His copilot was Nathalia Gadelha Filgueiras, a 20-year-old woman. And immediately people started screaming DEI. That makes my blood boil. I’m DEAD set against DEI quotas. I believe cockpit seats should be earned through competence, judgment, and merit. Not race or gender. But if you look at a female pilot and automatically assume she’s a DEI hire, YOU ARE DOING EXACTLY WHAT YOU CLAIM TO OPPOSE. Consider this: My son is 20. She was 20. My son has hundreds of flight hours. She reportedly had over 1,300. My son is working on his commercial certificate. She earned hers as a teenager. My son flies single-engine piston aircraft. She was flying a JET the military uses. Put it in baseball terms: My son is the college phenom with every Major League scout in the stands, watching his every move and predicting a brilliant future. But she? At the same age, she was already batting cleanup for the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre RailRiders, the New York Yankees’ Triple-A team. A the same age, she was operating at an entirely different level of professional aviation. Was she a great pilot? YES. You don’t move up that fast if you suck. The testing is just too hard. Bringing DEI into this is just wrong. YES there are DEI pilots. YES some airlines have pushed mediocre women too fast and too far. But Nathalia wasn’t one of them. I’ve discussed this extensively with @JavonPrice. I’m a proud dues-paying member of the Organization of Black Maritime Graduates. What I love about them is they don’t give a damn about your skin color when it comes to joining or getting a scholarship. They want outstanding mariners. Yet whenever I promote an exceptional Black graduate, someone inevitably says: “We don’t need another DEI hire.” Or, “Don’t tell me to hire him because he’s Black.” I’M NOT. I’m telling you to hire him because he’s a damn good mariner. Here’s what conservatives need to understand: You cannot demand a meritocracy while refusing to recognize merit because liberals have rigged the game. You cannot condemn identity politics and then judge someone by their identity. You have to be color blind but also make absolutely certain you give everyone a fair assessment and don’t swing the other way. And if your first thought when you see a woman or minority is “DEI hire,” that does NOT make you racist. DEI has created legitimate concerns about merit. But it DOES mean you have a bias and it’s YOUR responsibility to recognize it, challenge it, and judge the individual on merit. Do not compensate by giving the person extra points on their job interview but 💯 DO spend a little more time digging into their resume to see if they are a rockstar. As a ship captain, I don’t care whether the officer standing watch beside me is Black, white, male, or female. I care whether they can do the damn job. ONE STANDARD. FOR EVERYONE. Nine people died in that crash. Their families deserve answers, not political accusations. The ocean doesn’t care who you are. Gravity doesn’t care who you voted for. If we’re going to fight for meritocracy, we’d damn well better defend merit wherever we find it.