If anything should have all red-blooded Americans patting ourselves on our collective back it is our push for diversity. As with any social change, there is still much to be done before we can declare total integration and the word “diversity” becomes a mere question on the SAT vocabulary exam.

But it is hard to dismiss the great strides we have made in including, as equals, a group that, heretofore, was so marginalized it was never referenced by name in important government reports. It doesn’t even have a bathroom of its own, lest its members be outed at times of pressing personal need.

The Incompetents.

As many have noted, the past few months represent a watershed moment for the future of Incompetents, something that should come as good news to the one percent of all college students in America whose biggest accomplishment is making the top 99 percent of their graduating classes possible.

For example, the New York Times recently published a story about Marissa Mayer, the former CEO of Yahoo. In her five years at the helm, Mayer took Yahoo from a pioneering, but struggling, internet company  to the corporate equivalent of Florence Foster Jenkins. When Verizon gobbled up Yahoo in June, it did so at bargain prices. In the coming months, some 4,000 Yahoo employees will lose their jobs.

In recognition of this extraordinary feat, Mayer was paid $900,000 a week. This is only an approximation and may be off by a few dollars because the figure came from Yahoo, where apparently keeping track of money is not as important as it is to the rest of us.

Mayer will undoubtedly get a book deal out of this affair, a tell-all story in which she will explain how the Yahoo crash-and-burn was caused by—and if you have a son or daughter in college they need to know this—other people. You might think that this is an indication of how far we have to go, that Incompetents still find their accomplishments surrounded by a deep sense of shame.

But allow me to offer a different hypothesis.

Hundreds of thousands of words have been written and spoken about how Mayer raised three children and still found the time to look stylish and elegant everywhere she went. This should indicate to any person with an IQ larger than the average dry-cleaning bill that she was simply not putting in enough time at her job.

Had she been a truly competent Incompetent, Yahoo would have been on the block a solid two or three years ago.

What has this country come to when, even at $900,000 a week, it’s hard to find Incompetents who are good at what they do? We are at a teachable moment here. Successful incompetency requires education, hard work, and commitment.

Where do we start?

The experiences of those who have lived through periods of great social change, including the Civil Rights marches, the War on Poverty, and the merger of the AFL and NFL all point to the same conclusion: the road to incompetency must begin at home.

Please, please do not wait for colleges and universities to instill these hopes in your children. Remind your little loved ones that while they could always do better, there really is no point to it.

How do you begin such a dialogue?

I’m no expert, but if your kids tell you that they want to grow up to be president, that might be a good place to start.