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Hey am I crazy or an asshole because I want people to be judged on the content of their character not the color of their skin?
Without DEI, racist employers will only hire white men, just like they did before DEI was implemented to force fair treatment of minorities. Obviously.
There are 8 black fortune 500 CEOs. Obviously the "policy" isn't working. But hey at least you feel good about it. For those of you who like math that is .016 or 1.6%
And why are there any at all?
Obviously the policy worked, because racists were prevented from knocking them below a glass ceiling.
I also think your selling minorities short here, it's low key kinda racist to insist the only reason they succeed was a diversity program. Honestly yuck.
Nope, that's how fascism tries to turn diversity on its head.
Without diversity programs, racist bosses were free to prevent minorities from rising to the levels they deserved. Those diversity programs enabled freedom to finally begin ringing.
Sure buddy if we just maintain this course everything will be cool about a million years after the sun explodes.
No one is hiring on the content of anyone's character. I get the sentiment here but it doesn't work. No one is stopping them from hiring two people aside from greed. Stop blaming the worker and start blaming the employer that had to be forced to even look at people outside of straight white men.
A company that didn't hire the best employees would suffer and fail. Their competition would hire these people then put them out of business. Go capitalism and the indivisible hand?
This only works if you assume that a company can only be successful with the best talent, and that simply isn't true. Disney is massively profitable but its ranks are filled with nepo-hires, idiots, whatever - all kinds of "not the best." We like to pretend that business is a purely pragmatic and as such integrity will automatically occur based on the profit motive.... but that just isn't reality, at all. In reality business is personal, and crony, and human-driven, and so many other things that keep it miles away from being the pragmatism you're implying.
This is why businesses are full of unskilled nephews, old business school friends, etc.
So framing this as "DEI" vs "merit-based" is flawed as fuck because "merit-based" was never actually on the table.
Right, I’m sure my company did an exhaustive search and just so happened to be a coincidence that all the most qualified talent has the same last name. Weird.
And would dei policies stop this from occuring? Fuck no!
Yes, this is literally what DEI program at least stifle, as now you can't just stack the deck with all your cronies. And yes, there will still be nepo-babies, but 60% nepo-baby crony executives is still an improvement over 90-100%. Life isn't all or nothing, it's frustratingly incremental.
What's it like living on sunshine mountain what flavors are the lollipop flowers? "Maybe in a million years things will get better if we just stay this course " -Vespair.
Show me where I discouraged you for any genuine efforts towards betterment, for any severity or speed. I'll wait.
So why fight for "DEI"? fight for merit based. Fully fund education across the country. Make it illegal to ask things like photo,sex, race, age,name, access to social media, requiring drug test on the application for being hired. Fight to Increase workers rights. But instead you are wasting all this energy into what? Another way to divide Americans and the rich owners of capital laugh and cheer.
I work for a university department, and our programs strive to make "DEI" and "merit" literally the same thing. We want the best and the brightest, so we try to overcome the barriers that keep them down, such as family history and economic circumstances. Those factors disproportionately affect people from minority groups because of historical reality, and that's the only reason that race even enters into it. Many of the people in our programs are white people from poorer backgrounds. We don't control the admissions process, we just try to get the best people to apply.
Put another way, the people with the family and cultural background (i.e. money, knowledge, and connections) to get into grad school are not always the same people with the best scientific minds.
Put yet another way, if the result of your hiring process is all weathier, white men, that's prima facie proof that the hiring metric was not merit.
Let's establish some frameworks here.
First, I want to clarify that I am not "fighting for DEI." Instead, I am dismissing the narrative that frames the current situation as a conflict between DEI and merit. This perspective is not only misleading but also fundamentally incorrect.
It's important to recognize that the existence of one initiative does not preclude the existence of others. For example, free school lunch programs do not conflict with disaster relief efforts. Similarly, DEI initiatives do not conflict with other movements aimed at creating a more merit-based system.
In terms of my personal opinion, if pressed, I would find it challenging to label DEI as simply a "good" thing, likely for reasons similar to your own. Life is complex and nuanced, and we rarely encounter straightforward solutions. However, I do see DEI as a significantly "better" approach, which brings me to why others might "fight for DEI" as you say.
Life is inherently complicated and often an uphill battle. When starting in the muck, seeking a solution that keeps your boots clean is unrealistic. While we may desire perfect solutions and easily identify them, implementing those solutions is a different challenge. The powers that be often resist change because they benefit from the status quo. Therefore, when pursuing progress, we sometimes need to consider compromise for the sake of achieving meaningful impact.
So, we are not discussing merit versus DEI; we are comparing the status quo to DEI. In this comparison, DEI represents greater opportunities for a lot of individuals who have been unfairly excluded. Yes, this does not solve the greater problem nor does it address it in an equally or means-based way and yes this potentially introduces additional disparties; these things are true. DEI does not solve social inequity nor does it suddenly represent a "fair" system. But it pretty objectively is an improvement on the deep cronyism and gatekeeping of the existing status quo. It's not good, and it's not fair. But it's BETTER, and it's MORE FAIR.
We may not be reaching the summit of the mountain with DEI, but we are certainly elevating our position.
I hope this provides some clarity. However, you may find a more passionate advocate for DEI can offer a more satisfying answer.
The point of DEI stuff is basically when you have multiple equally qualified people, you choose the one that brings more diversity to your work force. Diversity is very useful. People from different backgrounds will come up with different solutions to problems. You may get a solution that wouldn't have been thought of otherwise.
DEI is usually not hiring under-qualified people. That'd be stupid.
(I'm a straight white man. I'm not saying this from a position of benefiting from it.)
You can want it all you like, but history has shown that that only works on paper.
Maybe someday that'll no longer be the case, but that day isn't today.
So you don't have a dream.
Using MLK to uphold fascism, interesting choice
Twisting his vision into a warped deformed hollow shell. Interesting choice. God I wish he was here today.
So do I.
"I think America must see that riots do not develop out of thin air. Certain conditions continue to exist in our society which must be condemned as vigorously as we condemn riots. But in the final analysis, a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it that America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the plight of the Negro poor has worsened over the last few years. It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice, equality, and humanity. And so in a real sense our nation’s summers of riots are caused by our nation’s winters of delay. And as long as America postpones justice, we stand in the position of having these recurrences of violence and riots over and over again. Social justice and progress are the absolute guarantors of riot prevention."
“Let us say boldly that if the violations of law by the white man in the slums over the years were calculated and compared with the law-breaking of a few days of riots, the hardened criminal would be the white man. These are often difficult things to say but I have come to see more and more that it is necessary to utter the truth in order to deal with the great problems that we face in our society.”
Assholes to saints in every color.