I think it's important to distinguish between diversity, equity, and inclusion as CONCEPTS and DEI as an organization and initiative.
It is possible to be pro- diversity, equity, and inclusion and be opposed to mismanaged efforts in DEI as a PROGRAM.
This post assumes that DEI as a government initiative is working perfectly and has no downsides, presenting it in a way that closes it off to criticism.
Does every system have to be perfect? Of course not. It's better to have a system pushing for good that's imperfect than none at all, but framing it like this is gaslighting and hurts discussion on both sides.
It's even worse in the corporate world. That acronym is usually attached to consultants who would extort huge fees and not really do much of anything towards actual inclusion, equity, or diversity. It would let the company check a box for PR, though.
I think diversity and inclusion is a net benefit to society, I don't think government is capable to enforce diversity and inclusion in private spaces in any real way. Over time I think market forces will result in that diversity naturally as the companies who hire the best qualified people incisively do better than those who prioritize traits that don't create better outcomes
I'm not sure what equity is in the context of government enforcement but I'm 100% for equality if opportunity. Maybe someone can help me understand equity in the context of these programs: for instance, what equity programs was Biden promoting for the previous for years?
They deny that there is/was inequality so they claim that pushing equality gives an unfair advantage.
They say that any perceived inequality is the lack in the sum of experience and expertise.
They say that forced inclusion is unfair on the meritocracy of others.
They also tend to think that racism and sexism are overblown because they are incapable of believing (or it is otherwise too inconvenient for them to believe) that other people actually have problems if they don't themselves experience them.
A friend of mine used to do food runs for his office, where about 40% of the employees were black. The team voted on what they wanted, and they almost always chose Wing Stop because it was popular. Despite this, he was called into a meeting and accused of racial profiling for bringing "fried chicken" to a mostly black workplace. This experience reflects the way DEI programs often operate. They focus almost excessively on race, and identity, and thrive on controversy.
Originally, these initiatives created programs where people who came to companies did so to fix the issues and leave. Apparently that didn't work./ Instead, they’ve become permanent fixtures in workplaces, incentivized to perpetuate problems rather than solve them. With their continued presence, they encourage reporting and policing of behavior, creating a culture of fear and compliance rather than genuine inclusion.
DEI initiatives have failed. They've been in place for several years, yet we always hear constant rhetoric that racism and discrimination is becoming more of a problem? Instead, these programs have probably radicalized more people than any fringe political group. Many now define their views in opposition to their perceived opponents rather than on principles.
Ironically, DEI encourages prejudice. I’ve personally been told to create a bias in favor of minorities to combat existing bias, which only results in a new form of discrimination; it doesn't eliminate the existing biases. The approach based on "privilege" encouraged me to assume all black people are disadvantaged and all white people are privileged and implicitly biased. Guilt and shame are used as tools to enforce conformity, pressuring people to adopt a specific moral stance while condemning those who don’t. People are praised for being sanctimonious. It's become popular to call out others while simultaneously making self-righteous shows of one's own behavior.
That's not what DEI even is. Ironically DEI and affirmative action was used in only a few select places that were historically so opposed to anyone from a minority group that they HAD to have some others be put in order to allow people with qualifications and aren't white to enter.
If you want to know the reality of a what a world without DEI looks like, look at what Trump and the republicans have been doing for the past 20 years. They aren't concerned with qualifications or 'meritocracy' despite their ceaseless whining about it. They are the ones actually pulling an actual agenda and will only hire people willing to push it, even if they do so very badly.
If you think Pete Hegseth is qualified as secretary of defense, then you aren't concerned with qualifications.
It's just like the anti work stuff, being against artifa, etc. They are openly signaling their intention and the fact they won't just say they are fascists is childish.
I don't like DEI cause I think human rights, equality and equal opportunity should come default nowardays, rather than be a thing people need to rally behind and hope it gets passed as law in a few decades.
If an demented felon child diddler trans woman and an african nazi with mental defeciencies can run a country, why can't a trans black woman write some code?
Because the felon child diddler and african nazi with mental defeciencies (using your spelling) are the ones who have always been in charge and are simply the ones who want to make sure that only child diddlers and nazis who also look like them are in charge.
Every good capitalist country has a socialist democracy that provides an ample safety net.
Just cause you want a reasonable society where people don't need to get lifelong debt for things that have been proven can be free, doesn't mean you're some tankie communist who wants to holodomor
You really thought you ate with that one, huh? Nationalists are people who are pro ethnic cleansing in support of an ethno state. See also: White Nationalists, Christian Nationalists. I hate Nazis and Nationalists.
Government should not be efficient, at least not in what the business class calls "efficiency".
Government is the entity that performs those tasks that need to be done, but nobody wants to do. If those essential tasks can be done "efficiently", everyone is going to want to get paid for doing them.
As someone outside of the US, all I can see is people fighting over who has a right to a job and who doesn't, while the rich hoard wealth. DEI wouldn't be an issue if there was a safety net, maybe with UBI based on the minimum liveable wage, public housing, public education, public healthcare and government grants to start small business ventures.
Europe is top of the world despite seeing communism first hand. Once you get rid of the ethnic cleansing, genocide, authoritarianism and planned economy, there's a lot of social policies that work great and are cheaper than american style.
This post attempts to frame opposition to DEI as opposition to the literal meanings of the words rather than the policies built around them. That’s a false dilemma. One can oppose DEI initiatives that sacrifice meritocracy and individual achievement without rejecting the values of diversity, equity, and inclusion in their purest forms. A system that prioritizes individual ability, effort, and competence over group identity is the foundation of real progress and innovation.
We need to be fighting nepotism, not implementing DEI policies that replace one form of favoritism with another. Nepotism undermines meritocracy by prioritizing personal connections over competence, but DEI hiring, when based on demographic factors rather than qualifications, does the same by shifting the bias to identity. The goal should be a system that rewards individual ability, effort, and achievement—ensuring opportunities are earned, not granted based on who you know or what group you belong to. True fairness comes from eliminating favoritism altogether, not redistributing it.
It seems we are forgetting the folly of the greater good.
That being said, everything I’ve read about companies that implement DEI—aside from some questionable journalism in the gaming industry—suggests that they are actually about 27% to 30% more profitable than those that don’t.
I just don’t like this post in general; it seems like one large logical fallacy.
"We need to be fighting nepotism, not implementing DEI policies that replace one form of favoritism with another"
Sure, except no DEI policy worth its salt ever does that. Day 1 on the job in actual DEI, the difference between tokenism and inclusion is taught, and a policy or practice where unqualified people are put in positions solely because of their identity are not DEI policies.
It's about giving equal access and opportunity to equally qualified diverse candidates that, because of systemic biases and obstacles, they wouldn't have had access to.
Saying "we need a guy on a wheelchair in the legal team, to look good, so hire this guy without a law degree" is dumb tokenism.
Saying "hey now that we don't do 'jog-and-talk' interviews on the 14th floor of a building without an elevator, we were able to interview and hire Joe, a great lawyer in a wheelchair" is implementing a basic DEI change.
Decently done DEI is about making it easier to select the most qualified talent from a qualified, talented and diverse slate of candidates.
NOTE: I don't think you seemed to disagree with the above, it was just funny to me that you started highlighting the false dilemma, then articulated another one :)
DAO was very inclusive. It went as far as implementing implicit bias in NPCs. It allowed you to experience racism the way it's experienced usually. Which sometimes led to wondering whether or not an NPC hated your elf for being an elf, or just hated everybody. Where a kid, not knowing better asks if you're really an elf. And explains that his dad said that elves were mean, but your character was nicer than anyone in the refugee camp. Context behind it is that the boy belonged to a family of farmers and may have run into hostile Dalish elves. Or simply bigotry. You never get to know.
It was no stranger to sexism either, and gave a fascinating perspective from female characters who took advantage of it. Both Morrigan and Liliana. One being aware, and the other less so. And another female companion was literally a walking rock. Who honestly didn't care about her being a woman before she became a golem. There was gender non-comformity there before and after she turned into a walking statue. Before people heard of GNC. But she did worry about if the crystals made her look fat. A good jab at feminine insecurities in a light hearted way.
It poked fun at Alistair for being an immature man. Which through experiences would change in the story. He'd either stay the same, or learn how harsh life can be and that people look after themselves first. That no one owed him anything. He had to let go of the knightly stories, and grow up to take the lead.
It was not above describing and talking about awful treatment of women either. Not that they were all victims and life sucked, but some men in power took women they wanted for fun. As the targets were elves and therefore not protected by law enforcement either. Rape is a theme not-lightly touched up on in one of the origin stories. While also describing women fighting back and failing/winning depending on the gender of the PC.
DA Veilguard didn't fail due to incusivity. If failed to greed.
The primary issue with those games is that they sucked fundamentally as games.
The politics in those games not withstanding if they were actually good games they would have done fine even if the fantasy dragon lady living in a world of magic and polymorph is "nonbinary"
'Diversity hire' is the old derogatory term that implies someone is unqualified and only hired because of their skin color or genitals, so they already openly hate diversity.
They don't know what equity means. They probably think it means equality, and they hate that too because in their minds equality requires giving up their relative standing in society.
They hate inclusion because they hate diversity.
The meme is though provoking for someone who already understands the concepts and is useful for bringing awareness to 3rd parties who are otherwise apathetic. It won't make the person who is put on the spot reconsider their opinion, but that's because they are morons who fell for the anti-DEI propaganda.
"WELL I DON'T LIKE IT WHEN THEY WON'T HIRE WHITE PEOPLE WHO ARE MORE QUALIFIED"
They genuinely believe that white men are at a significant disadvantage in the workforce because DEI hires. No amount of memes or conversation will convince them how ridiculous that is.
“WELL I DON’T LIKE IT WHEN THEY WON’T HIRE WHITE PEOPLE WHO ARE MORE QUALIFIED”
The whole premise of equity is that there is a desired demography of people in a given position, and that positive action should be taken to approach or maintain the desired demography and that qualification, ability and merit are secondary to that. Meaning it doesn't matter who is better, so long as someone is good enough and the right race or sex they should have preference. Don't hire the best person, hire the best black person or woman or whatever the desired demographic is.
Most of the people who are angry about "DEI" would be fine with things like blind hiring that exclude race/sex from the process entirely but whether or not blind hiring is a valid DEI approach depends on the result - for example a public works department in Australia tried blind hiring to eliminate gender imbalance and killed that project because they found that not knowing the sex of applicants actually reduced the number of women hired which was opposed to the goal (because the goal wasn't to remove discrimination but rather to hire more women).
They genuinely believe that white men are at a significant disadvantage in the workforce because DEI hires.
We first note that out of 36 possible outcomes, 23 favour females, as indicated by callback gender ratios > 1. This is interesting, but due to the small sample for each occupation within each country, most of these outcomes are not significant by conventional standards (see right-hand column). In Germany, we find statistically significant hiring discrimination against male applicants for receptionist and store assistant jobs, with callback ratios of 1.4 and 1.9, respectively. In the Netherlands, we find evidence of hiring discrimination against male applicants for store assistant jobs, with a callback ratio of 2.2. In Spain, we find clear evidence of hiring discrimination of males in two occupations, with callback ratios of 1.9 (payroll clerk) and 4.5 (receptionist). In the United Kingdom, we find strong evidence of hiring discrimination against males in payroll clerk jobs (callback ratio of 4.8, the highest of all). Interestingly, in the data, we find no evidence of gender discrimination in hiring in Norway or the United States. Thus, the evidence shows hiring discrimination against male, not female, job applicants in 1–3 occupations within four of the six countries.
Based on country-specific regression models, Figure 1 (and Supplementary Table S2) shows the probability of receiving a callback separately for each country. According to these estimates, we find evidence of hiring discrimination against male applicants in United Kingdom, Spain, Germany, and the Netherlands. The gender differences range from 0 per cent in the US to 9 percentage points in Germany. Thus, we observe gender discrimination in hiring against men in four out of six countries.
So funny story, my department had an employee survey and one of the questions that triggered a need for "team discussion" was:
"Do all people, regardless of race and gender, have good opportunities in our workplace?"
Evidently one person in the department said "no, they do not". So I'm sitting there wondering "oh crap, we are a bunch of white men except one woman and one black guy, which of those two have felt screwed over due to race or gender". But no, an older white guy proudly spoke up saying there's no room for white men at the workplace, that white men are disadvantaged. In a place that's like 90% white men...
Because they already believe that you are better because you are white. So two people with equal qualifications, the white is more qualified in their eyes.
They believe that they’re struggling financially, and statistically many of them are. The better argument is to show them abolishing DEI doesn’t even give them a better chance, and there are better ways to make opportunities for everyone.
It does bother me if people are hired because of the colour of their skin or because of their gender and not because they were the best candidate. This is why "blind" hiring is a good idea in the situations where it can be implemented.
Same thing as when old people said they were against Antifa or antifa was causing violence. Anti Fascist. You don't support the Anti Fascists. Are you ok with the Fascists then? Shuts the boomers up because they remember daddy fought the Fascists even if their lead addled brains can't remember what that is
I mean, branding doesn't always accurately describe a group. It does in this case, antifa is indeed anti-fascist, but people love to say the National Socialist party were socialists because "it's right there in the name!" You know, despite "First they came for the socialists..."
Like, if you really dislike Biden, just say "Fuck Joe Biden.". I have zero issue saying "Fuck Trump," because, fuck trump.
Locally in Illinois there were also these signs everywhere that said "Pritzker Sucks" in huge letters, then at the bottom in tiny print "the life out of small business."
Like seriously, I am less disgusted by your stance, than I am about your pussy ass lack of conviction.
People don't have a problem saying they oppose dei or the full phrase and will happily explain that they do not like workplace policy designed around diversity equity and inclusion.
Dei is absolutely something that should be considered but the right managed to absolutely annihilate it with their fake news propaganda campaign. When its brought back it needs to be packaged different. I think having every corporation parrot the phrase over and over doesn't not help.
I think people vastly overestimate the impact of DEI anyway. Where I have worked it's basically you can't discriminate against women or minorities.
There were no extra points for hiring or promotion. HR had their diversity goals, but it was really out of their hands other than targeted advertising.
The elephant in the room that the anti DEI folk dance around is simply "But we want to discriminate!"
Simple: It's diversity. They hate diversity and would rather live their lives only interacting with people like themselves and never having their world view challenged.
It's racism and there's a shocking amount of folks who will just straight up tell you that they are racist if it's not in public where it could affect their jobs. There's also plenty of losers who don't care and are just openly racist, but they don't tend to have careers on the line.
At a place I used to work, they didn't hire people specifically because of their skin colour. OTOH, they did arrange for people who were visible minorities to sometimes get a second chance at interviews if they were on the bubble. As a result, sometimes someone did well in their second set of interviews and was hired.
The thing is, we're all biased. It's not just overt racism, it's often subtle things like liking a candidate more when they're easy to talk to, and sometimes they're easy to talk to because they come from a similar background and have similar experiences and interests.
Does that mean that sometimes a straight, white, male candidate had a bad day, messed up his interviews, didn't get a second chance, and didn't get hired? Yep. I'm sure there were occasionally times where the 100% most qualified candidate wasn't the one who got the job. But, the idea was to try to slightly tilt the playing field to account for unconscious bias. In the end, nobody was hired who didn't meet a very high bar.
As an aside though, some of the best people I worked with were at a previous job before that. They were much more diverse than the people at the bigger company I worked at later that did that second-round stuff. I wasn't ever part of the hiring process at that first place, but however they did it, they brought in people from really diverse backgrounds who were really great. These same people wouldn't have even been given an interview at the second place because they didn't have some of the right things on their resumes.
I manage a team of about 50. I've been in management for about the past decade. Prior to that, I was a technical lead heavily involved in hiring. I've also run multiple intern programs that hire by the dozen each summer. I've hired hundreds and been in thousands of interviews.
Ive never once seen someone hired because of the color of their skin.
I do however aggressively look for people from different backgrounds to be in my candidate pools when hiring. That can really mean anything. Mono culture is a huge detriment to the org because then everyone ends up thinking the same way. I look for people willing to challenge the status quo and bring unique perspectives while still being a great teammate.
There are probably people I've hired who normally wouldn't have gotten an interview based on their background but then were the best candidate. When I've had candidates that are equal, I've occasionally hired the one who is most dissimilar in skills/thought process/goals to my current team because that helps us grow. The decision was never someone's skin color, but their background certainly could have influenced the items I chose as my hiring decisions.
DEI is not just hiring. DEI is creating a culture where people of different backgrounds can succeed. There are so many different ways to be successful at the vast majority of the roles I hire. It's my job to make sure my org is setup so that people can be successful through as many approaches as possible. This is the part I see most often missed. If your culture only allows the loud, brash to lead, I would have missed many of my best hires over the years who led in varied ways.
I have been a part of interviews (at a computer repair shop, mostly men) where my boss said we had to hire the only woman interviewee because it looked bad to not to, and we needed diversity, even though she wasn't very qualified. So we hired her instead of the person who had excelled in the interview.
At my next job we had some diversity hires. It was pre-DEI, but we had a diversity intern program. We hired a guy because he was black, he was qualified and was amazing. Later we hired a person who was also black and wasn't very qualified, they struggled for months and eventually quit - we had hired them based on skin color too.
Not saying I'm for or against, but I've seen situations where diversity became more important than qualifications. I've also seen where both were equally important, and that was preferred.
Tbh, being labeled as hired in a "diversity program" sounds humiliating. You'll have to work twice as hard to prove you're actually capable of doing the job.
My company (major conglomerate) keeps track of demographics like this, at every level. Even as specific KPIs like "women in semior executive roles." While ive never actually seen any written plans or anyone admitting they hired someone for a role to meet a metric, there are a handful of things that do stick out as fishy.
There have been roles that have been upgraded in title but not scope when a non white male has taken over, and there are certainly a few people who you look at and think, "how the hell did you get this job." That said, there is one person who is in charge of almost all my questionable experiences, and hes the kind of person who would do that to meet a metric because HR told him he had to, not because he sees value in it.
Most of our other managers approach it much differently. We try to widen our recruiting pool by going different places and by consciously making sure our recruiter team is diverse
So three scenarios come up when I think of my experiences on selecting candidates.
One time, we had a woman apply. Which was almost unheard of, it was the first time I could ever remember a woman applicant. The thing was, she was also by far the best candidate. In a round of applicants that otherwise I'm sure we wouldn't have bothered hiring, she nailed it. Retroactively, they declared the white guy that was interviewed the previous day the one to hire, who was kind of the best of the worst. Something vague about him having more years in the industry, but I overheard a concern that they didn't trust one of our employees to behave himself in front of a very attractive hire, and that it was best for everyone to head off the sexual harassment by keeping him away from her. In which case a DEI policy would have actually been nice to counter the really bad behavior going on.
Another time, different company, we were about to do the interviews and then suddenly they were all canceled. Why? Management picked the person to fill the spot, and decided to skip all technical assessment. Because this time another woman actually applied and that was it, they needed a woman to make numbers. The person was about as well as you can expect for accepting the first person to come along. This was a position intended for an experienced industry veteran, but instead we got someone with zero experience and their education wasn't even consistent with the work needed.
A third time, it was a hiring position where only black people were even allowed to apply. I don't have complaints about the results here, because we got one of the best employees we've ever had out of it. But I can't pretend that the specific hiring practice was fair. However the place is still, after all this, like 90% white men, so it's not like white guys aren't getting their chances.
I was put in a team as a "care lead" because I was Polish and the team was Polish too. Weren't allowed to be the actual teamleader, that was given to a dude from the US. He was absent like 99% of the time, made like two one hour meetings to "transfer knowledge" over 6 months. Then he came back, started getting pissy that people treated me as the teamlead instead of him, went to his manager and got me "transferred" out. Also, all of the scrummasters (like 8 different teams) were black, went through the company "academy" (basically a 3 month bootcamp) without any prior IT / programming experience, with completely incomprehensible accents. Some of them were later fired for security issues (one took a company laptop with medical software and client data, hardcore HIPAA shit, to Africa, without disclosing it, getting it cleared / secured), incompetence or bad fit. I think three were left after a year I was there.
I like the word conformity, because that's really what they want. They're afraid of anybody who acts different, or who has different viewpoints. They want a world where nobody ever makes them feel uncomfortable. If they enjoy making racist jokes, they want a world where everybody finds racist jokes funny, not one where they can be made to feel bad, or feel like their boss might get mad for telling a racist joke.
Patronage isn't the exact opposite of equity. Equity in this context is about impartiality and fairness. But, I think Patronage fits because it describes the kind of system you get when there is no effort whatsoever to give every candidate a fair shot. Instead you get good-old-boys networks, you get nepotism, etc.
Segregation is pretty good for the last one, but I like exclusion a bit more. To me, segregation implies that there might be an alternative place for someone that's "separate but equal", but the reality is they don't care if that other place exists. The key thing is to be able to exclude them from their own workplaces, sports, etc.
This is also why "woke" becoming a common word was bad for both sides. Not only is it nonspecific, but it starts to mean different things to different people and diverges over time. It's easier to demonize something with a nonspecific meaning for exactly that reason.
There's a meme that says "everything I don't like is woke", and while it's funny, that's literally the process that happens when such terms become catchalls -- what they catch depends on what any individual speaker wants out of using it.
With DEI, the process has been the same. I wouldn't be surprised if there are many people who believe it's bad (because they were told that and lack critical thinking skills) and may not even know what the acronym stands for.
Reminds me of that time (as if it was only once) a depressing amount of people, mostly conservatives, didn't know that the ACA and "Obamacare" mean the same thing.
Conservative politics depend heavily on placing labels on everything because it's a built-in way of telling the rubes what they should think and feel.
More like Democracy (Jan 6), Elections (Voter-Roll Purges, and other forms of Voter Suppression), and International Cooperation (Paris Agreement Withdrawl)
You know what, let's give it a shot. 3 things I dislike.
Equity based on gender or skin color. So many people pretend that somehow one average working class person should be put ahead in line compared to another, if the other person has the same skin color as some unrelated asshole slaver whose descendants still profit from their riches.
Most of you would probably agree that a world where the majority are exploited by a few billionaires is not equitable just because the billionaires are diverse. So why push policies that pretend all is equitable as long as you give a few minorities preferential treatment.
Not only does it not make any real sense, but more importantly, it is divisive. No person struggling in this f**ked up economy wants to hear they should be even worse of, because they have the same skin color as the billionaires exploiting them and they should feel ashamed for that. I would not be surprised if these ideas are intentionally pushed by the rich to divide the working class people and turn them on each other.
Bringing people down in the name of Equity. Equity is definitely what we should strive for, but by lifting disadvantaged people up, not tearing "privileged" people down. The whole message that you should be ashamed for not being disadvantaged is ridiculous to me. Maybe you should be ashamed if you are in a privileged position and you refuse to use it to help the disadvantaged, but just be ashamed of privilege period is a wild take to me. We should be aiming to make everyone privileged enough that they don't have to fear being shot every time they see a cop, that they can make a living wage, ...
If your movements/policies are hostile towards the very people whose support can help you most, then no wonder you can't make any progress and radicals like Trump take advantage of the divisiveness.
Low quality diversity in media. Adding diverse characters to media should ideally be like adding trees. You add them when it makes sense without even thinking about it and don't add them when it doesn't make sense. We should work slowly and carefully towards that goal. Unfortunately, so many movies, shows and games have tried to awkwardly add diversity with no regard for how it negatively affects the enjoyability of the product. So your goal presumably was to make diverse people feel included and to normalize diversity in peoples mind. But the result for minorities often is that they repeatedly see character like them being badly and lazily written, either by having no proper character beyond being diverse or conversely feel like straight cis white character that just happens to mention they are diverse. On the other hand, the majority just sees these poorly made products and associate diversity and DEI with bad products. So failure on both goals. The answer is of course quality over quantity. It may take a while to get where we want to be, but it will get there without making things even worse with good intentions.
By the way, there of course are great examples of well made diverse shows, but they are drowned out by the slop. My favorite example is the Owl house. The plot of the first episode is literally about being captured and placed into "the conformatorium" for being different and then escaping and dismantling the place. And it did this so smoothly I did not even realize there was any messaging in it until long after seeing it.
So how do you account for the fact that, in many instances where a white person and a black person have the exact same qualifications, the white person will be far more likely to be hired?
How do you account for the fact that many people who are racial minorities aren't born into families that can afford things like living in a house that doesn't have leaded paint on the walls, meaning that a black person who has the exact same qualifications as a white person has had to work a lot harder to overcome their disadvantages to get those qualifications?
How do you account for the fact that diverse teams of individuals simply produce better results in the free market than homogeneous ones as a result of their more varied viewpoints?
There are so many reasons why "equity based on gender or skin color" for hiring and college applications and so on is absolutely necessary to address the inequities in our society, and why the baby steps that we've made since the civil rights movement haven't been nearly enough to address the problems that they were meant to address. Frankly we should be talking about reparations in the form of just straight up giving large swathes of land and fat stacks of cash to certain groups, especially African Americans and American Indians, not these piddly little affirmative action programs that only kind of exist in colleges but everyone assumes exist everywhere else too.
2
Nobody is brought down in the name of equity. What is brought down are the systems that privilege certain people based on aspects of themselves that they cannot control. If you think that tearing down white supremacy and patriarchy is the same as tearing down white people and men, then you need to ask yourself why you think that those groups of people are inseparable from their privileges
3
No argument here, Hollywood has always had lazy and awful shit and their attempts at lazy and awful inclusion are bad. Often the very groups that Hollywood directors purport to represent come out hard against bad representation too - like that french trans cartel leader film that just came out where the director said he didn't bother researching Mexico or Mexican culture before making a film that takes place there and where everyone speaks Spanish really badly.
So how do you account for the fact that, in many instances where a white person and a black person have the exact same qualifications, the white person will be far more likely to be hired?
By making policies to prevent that. Color blind policies. Just don't swing all the way to racist in the other direction.
How do you account for the fact that many people who are racial minorities aren't born into families that can afford things like living in a house that doesn't
already have leaded paint on the walls, meaning that a black person who has the exact same qualifications as a white person has had to work a lot harder to overcome their disadvantages to get those qualifications?
I answered this question in my original comment. By helping people based on their situation, not skin color. There are rich black people. There are poor white people. Extremely poor people need support, rich people don't. Skin color is irrelevant.
There are so many reasons why "equity based on gender or skin color" for hiring and college applications and so on is absolutely necessary to address the inequities in our society, and why the baby steps that we've made since the civil rights movement haven't been nearly enough to address the problems that they were meant to address.
Sure, baby steps are slow. Cheating with this "affirmative action discrimination" hides the underlying issues while making them significantly worse. The white people they discriminate against are largely not the same people who profiteered on slavery and discrimination. You are just creating a new group of disadvantaged and oppressed people and push them towards raising up against your policies and to hate the people who benefit on their expense. This is what Trump took advantage of to win despite most people knowing what a shitty person he is.
Frankly we should be talking about reparations in the form of just straight up giving large swathes of land and fat stacks of cash to certain groups, especially African Americans and American Indians, not these piddly little affirmative action programs that only kind of exist in colleges but everyone assumes exist everywhere else too.
You are not entirely wrong, but there is a reason statues of limitations exist. Good luck finding the people who perpetuated and profited from racism and slavery or the people that were directly hurt. And making random rich white people, or even worse working people pay for it will cause so many more issues than it solves. I think it is too late to do this.
Nobody is brought down in the name of equity.
Maybe you don't do that, which, good for you. Many people do that. I don't like people who do that. If you don't do that, why are you so defensive?
What is brought down are the systems that privilege certain people based on aspects of themselves that they cannot control.
I explicitly wrote we should do that.
No argument here, Hollywood has always had lazy and awful shit and their attempts at lazy and awful inclusion are bad. Often the very groups that Hollywood directors purport to represent come out hard against bad representation too - like that french trans cartel leader film that just came out where the director said he didn't bother researching Mexico or Mexican culture before making a film that takes place there and where everyone speaks Spanish really badly.
I appreciate your comment. I feel that DEI in its current form has a lot of things to hate about it. However I usually don't say anything because I'm worried someone will just call me a Nazi or something.
I'm a Jewish democrat, but as a white man I feel like I'm basically guilty of original sin in these types of conversations.
I know what you mean. The whole being incredibly hostile to like minded people over minor disagreements is it's own massive issue, but let's only open one can of worms at a time.
This is my sad hill to die on, I guess, despite my personal feelings on why anti-discrimination across all aspects is important for society. But after reading some informed perspectives, I think I get where some of the DEI pushback is coming from.
It’s not about diversity, equity or inclusion individually, but DEI as a concept, ie as an actionable form of some underlying ideology. It doesn’t matter if the practitioners of DEI may not subscribe to any underlying ideology, the fact is that DEI opponents are unconvinced about the allegiances of DEI practitioners in special contexts, like the military.
I personally don’t care about having DEI in corporate or education contexts, but i think the concern there is that if the public thinks one way, then it will question why the military/govt doesn’t want to. So, I think I get why they removed DEI/CRT from corporate and education as well.
Per my understanding, the pushback is coming jointly from the military, and the main point of contention was the CRT-derived idea of “inherent racism” or “whites as oppressors”. For example,
CRT scholars argue that the social and legal construction of race advances the interests of white people[9][12] at the expense of people of color,[13][14] and that the liberal notion of U.S. law as "neutral" plays a significant role in maintaining a racially unjust social order,[15] where formally color-blind laws continue to have racially discriminatory outcomes.[16]
Here’s an article which says why DEI was necessarily started (the writer is an academic)
DEI policies and practices were created to rectify the government-sanctioned discrimination that existed and systemic oppression that persists in the United States.
You have to appreciate why some part of the American armed forces pushes back on these ideas when your CO may be white, and you a minority. There are practical considerations to having such ideas in the back of your mind when you’re supposed to act without question and as a unit.
Edit to clarify, I am not saying that we shouldn’t have anti-discrimination policies across different aspects of being a person. I am saying this is why some people don’t like/want DEI or CRT (which are distinct and separate from the existing anti-discrimination policies). And yes, I know the military has issues regarding race and sex discrimination. But I think people can address those without DEI or CRT.
DEI opponents are unconvinced about the allegiances of DEI practitioners
The purest of projection and arguing in bad faith, as usual. Every time one of the administration slime balls describes how things will be based on merit and nothing else, they are lying. Either that, or the definition of “merit” now includes genetic information.
Segregation and hate raise crime, wealth disparity, and breed unhappiness. The best way to dispell racism is through education and integration of all the people's. That is what DEI is about. Slowly they all learn they are not much different and they blend together until all is forgot. So why does someone want it gone when it will cause only problems long term one may ask? Because it is easier to divide and conqueur using hate than education. CRT is taught to lawyers in college, anyone who thinks it is being taught to their kids has been fed lies and likely doesn't know what it is. So someone divides the population by blaming all problems on a specific people, keeps repeating everything being their fault, and you build hate. Block efficiency in the current government, blame the peoples struggles on the chosen group of hate. Keep blowing in those flames and spread the hatred far and wide until the hate for those people means more to the majority than their own wants. Once you have that majority vote and get in then your sink your anchor, and have 2 options. Unite the people by using a war with a foreign power and in the midst use executive powers during the state of emergency to make the presidency all powerful with no intention of giving up that power, or option 2, strain the economy and stoke the hatred until a civil war breaks out, and declare the emergency powers the same. Either way the reason to attack DEI was always the same, to gain power without reguard to how many people get hurt along the way. Racism and sexism are weapons being weilded by politicians manipulating the people's priorities. They control the media, the Treasury, the military, they bought the judges and now we go the way of Turkey and Russia. A dictatorship is being born, the question left is just what will be the state of emergency used to grab the rest of the power to ensure the legislative branch s is powerless to take the powers back after 90 days
Either way the reason to attack DEI was always the same, to gain power without reguard to how many people get hurt along the way.
I think one of the issues which comes up are mandates. If there are underemployed minorities in society, then we have a problem. If that happens, then DEI should be brought back. I agree that some people are racist, and that life creates situations which kill individual potential.
That’s why it’s important to have these ideas be part of social discourse. I don’t agree with CRT (that legal and social systems help white people only), or that DEI addresses the core issues with bad luck creating uneven conditions for individuals. The core issue is that people of all races and cultures experience bad luck. Most people are not going to be rich enough to afford even an upper middle class lifestyle. So, if there is a policy which seems to favor only a certain type of people, it will only create resentment or jealousy, and divisions. Poor whites consistently vote republican because they don’t get the kind of help they need from democrats either. We need the Nordic model in the US.
I personally think education is the best option we have to counter the effect of bad luck on people’s lives and their outcomes. So, the ire that people are putting towards USAID or DEI going away should be firmly focused at ensuring that the Dept of Education remains intact for serving the most people.
Edit the danger, I think, is in thinking that just because someone is X they are moral or ethical. I think the inverse of that is that just because someone is not X, then they are immoral and unethical. The kind of reduction of personhood to arbitrary characteristics which forms the basis of predictive policing algorithms, so I can’t support that.
Despite earning literal millions for my employer(maybe billions, I didn't do the full math and got really upset when I realized it was at least millions) I was not included in any promotions while women that had done a quarter of the earning I had, if that, were promoted above me. I wasn't included and left to rot. Promoting, hiring, and giving awards to people because they belong to a minority is borderline retarded in the purest medical sense. Promoting someone that is a hard worker, intelligent, or a cornerstone to the business despite them belonging to a minority is how it should be, but neglecting people because of their skin color and gender is how we got here, simply doing it to the other gender or ethnicity doesn't solve anything.
Let's lay this out for you. Who remembers Rick Flairs Retirement Pay Per View(PPV) Event a few years back? A certain cable operator was going to lose the right to have it on their service due to MAJOR problems with the PPV service showing incorrect prices. Regularly prices for live events were $4.99, 6.99, and 7.99, for events meant to be $69.99, that's about 90% loss of income or more. Rick Flairs team was about to pull the plug and go to Netflix, this was his last hurrah, this had to make him money, now this cable operator, let's call them "Cable Town" had a single engineer that had been working on this issue, and had very good success with no event that they worked the data ever having a pricing issue. This engineer saved the day for Rick Flair and Cable Towns relationship, but Cable Town promoted a woman over the engineer, a woman that had improved a system for contracting out to third party cable providers, that had yet to turn a profit due to just starting out. The engineer that was consistently fixing the PPV events pricing data walked the hell out. Now, where did Mike Tyson's most recent fight air? Netflix. Not Cable Town. D.E.I. is dumb, and doesn't work. The best and brightest regardless of their ethnicity, gender, or anything else unique to them should be promoted and paid in step with their contributions to the income of the organization, otherwise you risk losing MAJOR clients to an internet startup that takes things like profit seriously.
I think for the"normal" people who aren't frothing at the mouth racists, it's specifically about the HR enforced corporate perversion of diversity, equity and inclusion that they hate. Patronising lecturers and dehumanising metrics often leave a sour taste in peoples mouths, even if the cause is a good one
TBH, as a poor white kid from coal country, DEI based scholarships were quite unfair to me. Busting my ass to survive while these kids who were already better off than me from the start got a free ride. Nonsense.
I don't have a great answer, but the extreme implementations of these programs and now the extreme removal of them are both wrong.
It should, but America hates poor people. I absolutely feel like this is intentional to deepen the divides, to pit one person against another so we're so busy with fighting each other they can pick all of our pockets without being noticed.
It was interesting that there was this program my kid qualified for that was DEI oriented. Which I found strange because we are relatively well off and could easily pay for what this program covered.
To their credit, you might have been qualified too, since this program also accepted people under a household income threshold, and as a result had quite a few white boys in it too.
This anecdote ignores what the broader statistics prove, though. There will always be outliers. But in general, there are groups that are not white kids that are more likely to be disenfranchised and excluded at large scale.
This isn't a good argument in general--you can call anything anything, even if it doesn't fit what it actually is. This would be like accusing someone of being anti-democracy for opposing the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea), or anti-life for opposing the "pro-life" movement.
Whether the label is accurate in any given circumstance doesn't change the fact.
As far as I understand, DEI as a policy in a university or workplace means giving place to a candidate because not of their merits or test scores, but because of their race or background.
DEI is having a job fair at a school for the deaf, it's having unisex bathroom stalls, it's allowing religious/traditional holiday celebrations, it's training against racism. Every person hired is still qualified, but the company expands their hiring practice and their culture.
Often times merit is viewed differently. If 2 students both have a 4.0 GPA and 1 has more extra curriculars, and the other had to work instead because they come from a poorer family and needed to help support the family, which has more merit? If being able to stay after every day for practice and afford travel expenses for such means you have more merit, then the rich will always have the advantage to appear with more merit. I would say the person who worked 30 hours a week while maintaining a 4.0 GPA has worked harder and overcome higher odds.
There is more to merit than just numbers in my opinion. Some of it does appear like racism from the outside because if the average black family has less opportunities and you try to give more opportunities to new generations to help close the wealth gap, then you are being called racist by your initial definition.
There are valid points on both sides. DEI in my opinion helps integrate races, sexes, cultures, religions together which provides long term benefits and disincentivizes hatred. If you never come in contact with someone, it is easier to hate them. Easier to commit crimes against them. Ultimately a big portion of DEI is about educating the population to get along with and accept those who may appear or act differently than you do. It may appear easier for an African American to get into Harvard, but they are still less than 7% of the population there while being over 12% of the U.S. population total. There are other factors always at play standing in the way of comparing 2 people just off a single number.
opportunities to new generations to help close the wealth gap
So... New age trickle down economics instead of making stronger labor law and helping workers take part of the wealth stolen by the rich?
Thank you for the explanation. It was informative, even if some of it sounds... irrelevant?
It may appear easier for an African American to get into Harvard, but they are still less than 7% of the population there while being over 12% of the U.S. population total.
It's harder for African American folks to go to Harvard because of wealth disparity as you explained, but the suggestion there should be a proportional number of races in Harvard is (benevolently) racist.
The biggest issue with this take is that merit/test score is still the biggest factor. For example, a law firm is not passing over well-qualified white candidates to hire unqualified black candidates, they're just trying to hire more well-qualified black candidates because they're currently an all-white firm. Nobody is ever getting a job as an act of charity, and typically it just helps to avoid implicit hiring bias. To go back to the example, why has the law firm become all white? Well the first two partners were white, and even if they aren't offensively racist they still have enough internal bias that they only hired other white workers. Like in this example, most DEI initiatives are about reducing existing internal biases.
As far as I understand, DEI as a policy in a university or workplace means giving place to a candidate because not of their merits or test scores, but because of their race or background.
Isn’t that racism?
This is the distorted mudslinging version. It may not be what you intended, but it's what you've learned via right wing propaganda.
Some of these biases come from people actually being bigots, but some of them come from "that's just how we've always done it" or even just simple unconscious bias that we all have.
Some of the shitty outcomes are from the fact that in the early, early foundational days of many aspects of US government and law, the country was by and large run by people who weren't too unhappy about lynchings of black people or even participated themselves, and those attitudes found their way overtly and subtly into many practices and regulations that remain in place to this day.
It's a complicated topic deeply interwoven with our history, our geography, and our culture.
DEI initiatives aren't perfect, and like anything else you have individuals who may misapply or overzealously apply their principles, causing a different sort of problem.
But the Republican/Conservative objections to them are, like the Conservative assessments of literally any topic I can think of, based at best upon a shallow, incomplete understanding of cherrypicked details, (see comment from @[email protected] below) and at worst based on exactly the bigotry and racism they shout about not having in their hearts despite their every action proving how untrue that is.
Edited to add - DEI isn't limited to racism, and racism isn't limited to black people. There is of course sexism, homophobia, etc in there as well. But this is a comment on a forum, not a research paper, and the more dimensions we try to add to the discussion here, the more complicated it will get. So I focused on racism against black folks because it's an easily visible, and sadly, familiar topic.
Diversity refers to the presence of variety within the organizational workforce, such as in identity and identity politics. It includes gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, disability, age, culture, class, religion, or opinion.
Equity refers to concepts of fairness and justice, such as fair compensation and substantive equality. More specifically, equity usually also includes a focus on societal disparities and allocating resources and "decision making authority to groups that have historically been disadvantaged", and taking "into consideration a person's unique circumstances, adjusting treatment accordingly so that the end result is equal."
Finally, inclusion refers to creating an organizational culture that creates an experience where "all employees feel their voices will be heard", and a sense of belonging and integration.
US (and many other nations) corporate and education systems have long given preferential treatment/selection to white employees and students, to the point where the more qualified candidate was passed by due to their ethnicity. There's further issues that stem from the same sources, such as banks refusing to loan to Afro-Americans at a disproportionate rate, even with high wages and a more stable income, being refused even an interview because your name doesn't sound white enough despite being the most qualified applicant, etc etc etc.
DEI being implemented in a way that chooses non-white, women, differently abled, or LGBTQ+ simply to check a box and have diversity to point to is a real issue, but these places weren't ever really interested in leveling the playing field. They were concerned about optics. Like the 90s movie/tv cliché of the group of popular pretty girls having the one "fat and ugly" friend in the group to show that they're inclusive, to make themselves look and feel better.
DEI if implemented properly strips the unconscious and systemic bias in American (and other countries) systems to overlook better candidates for white, straight men.
There is a manifesto that is literally titled the "The Post-Meritocracy Manifesto" which a lot of people unironically agreed with, at least when those were hot topics a few years ago.
So any attempt at pretending that there isn't an anti-meritocracy angle to this would be disingenuous to say the least.
That same person behind the manifesto is a primary figure in introducing CoC's to software projects btw.
So any attempt at pretending that there isn’t an anti-meritocracy angle to this would be disingenuous to say the least.
DEI initiatives aren’t perfect, and like anything else you have individuals who may misapply or overzealously apply their principles, causing a different sort of problem.
To deny that, or to pretend that such misapplication is the typical mainstream application of DEI principles, would be equally disingenuous.
Exactly, I dislike DEI practices because they are often fake, performative and discriminatory. The intentions are good, but the execution is crap or outright malicious.
Well, if the intentions are good, but the outcomes are terribly flawed, at what point does it become necessary to re-evaluate or do away with the entire concept?
The execution should be called out, then - the specific cases. Hating on the concept because bad actors are able to use it in their own interest is not very thought out.
oh snap! I know this doesn't really contribute to the conversation but.. I know Jive! he's a real good dude. went to school with my older brothers. love to see him still spreading positivity. big ups, daft purk!
That's a stupid take tbh. Nobody is against those things. What people have a problem with is the side effects. Very obvious to see in the entertainment sector where entire historic events and facts are ignored for the sake of DEI. Saw that with the cleopatra movie and is currently a big problem with assassins creed shadows which is literally insulting large parts of japanese culture just so they can put their western morals into it.
That's a stupid take tbh. The entertainment sector has whitewashed and sugar-coated history so badly people believe that's what actually happened. The truth of long historic events would never be accurately portrayed as it would contain almost exclusively rape and slave exploitation. The entertainment industry already portrays history as complete fiction so why not make it entertaining to more than just the groups who caused the rapes and exploitations.
The truth of long historic events would never be accurately portrayed as it would contain almost exclusively rape and slave exploitation
I know that american history isn't that long so there's a lot of that in it, but I can assure you that there are a lot of historic events in the history of other countries that are more than that.
already portrays history as complete fiction so why not make it entertaining to more
That's not what happens - games and movies are claiming to be "as historically accurate as possible" just to have blatant mistakes all over it for the sake of diversity.
That's not DEI as far as I understand it though. DEI would be hiring people of different abilities and backgrounds in the other parts of film making such as costume, music etc. The Cleopatra mockumentary was a piece of propaganda trash based on fan fiction.
They would unironically say those out loud if they didn’t think people would judge them, maybe not in so many words though.
If you’re lucky enough to grow up in a heavily conservative family that has a 4th of July weeklong party with all of the extended family parking their RVs and tents on the lawn, then you would also know this as a fact
Affirmative action is just an attempt to counter the existing systemic bias against minorities and women. It doesn't bypass any requirements, it just makes it so that fewer hiring/accepting decisions are "just hire a white guy" because that is literally how many hiring decisions are made.
A white kid born to rich parents that can afford all the extra curriculars and who had personal tutors and was able to do an unpaid internship and has connections has an advantage on paper even without knowing the color of their skin. Affirmative action just means that someone who is far less likely to have those advantages but otherwise meets the minimum criteria gets a chance too.
I don't see affirmative action as fundamentally bad. Applied correctly and not too heavy-handedly, the privileged will still have equal opportunity to enroll or get the job, per amount of effort they put in, etc. And even if it is a bit too strong, their privilege will most likely make up for it in other ways.
In practice though, it's highly susceptible to backfire effects and is usually on the wrong side of "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure". You can't expect someone who grew up malnourished, undereducated and generally mistreated by society to suddenly bounce back and become a "model citizen" when they get a good job or scholarship, statistically speaking.
I think qualified people should be hired. May the best person for the job be hired, without even considering race, or anything other than skill. DEI is veiled discrimination.
Shenanigans. We're not hiring unqualified people. It's capitalism afterall. There's no tolerance for throwing out money.
DEI is about making sure you interview people you normally wouldn't for whatever reason. If they suck, they suck and don't get the job. It's not a quota.
I mostly like DEI. But I'm concerned that it is running cover for corporations. DEI is not about expanding opportunities to people evenly. DEI is about expanding opportunities to people that make the company more money. DEI alone is not enough for a fair and equitable society.
Counterpoint: the phrase first proposed by Serj Tankian, an armenian biblical scholar, reading 'When Angels deserve to DEI', implies that even the God's very servants strive to have DEI programs used in their hiring and career proposals.
Why are you snorting blood my friend, did I say something wrong?
I don't believe in "Equity", I believe in "Equality". The difference is that with Equality, everyone gets the same opportunities. They don't just get opportunities because of their skin color, despite lack of qualifications.
I oppose the existing "DEI" as it exists today because it's openly racist. It's openly racist to the people it basically purports to help.
The real world is calling, wants you to come back to it some time. Plenty of examples in this EXACT thread where people detail DEI hiring someone because of their skin color.
That's racism.
Sure, it's the racist that YOU deem acceptable, but it's still racist.
How about they just pay for seats? The stands clearly are accommodating for everyone. And it isn't 'equity' either.
This graphic has been used for too long because of its emotional aspect. Equality is them buying seats and watching the game without boxes at all. In itself, it's a fallacy because they clearly have accommodations for all of them, and they've decided to stand behind a fence.
And, since WHEN do skin colors need special accommodations ANYWAYS?
Dividing people by skin color is the first way the corporate elite divide our nation - so that we fight amongst ourselves against the real discrimination, class-based discrimination.
They don't like any of them, because those are the concepts that defeated the Nazis.
They were defeated by a group of countries (diversity), which allowed anyone to join (inclusivity) and didn't think they were better than others (equity).
If only DEI was that literal. Instead, it allowed companies to discriminate based on race, but to those with left-leaning beliefs, that's okay as long as it only negatively affects white people, because they deserve it!
Somehow "diversity" doesn't seem to mean diversity of thinking, but of skin color, so you have a room full of left-wing minorities that all think the same way and have the same beliefs.
It's like when Reddit mods say that their subreddit is all about "inclusion" and "diversity", and then right below that they say Trump supporters or voters aren't allowed. The irony is crazy. I hope this platform is less of an echo-chamber but I expect downvotes because apparently you can't support open source decentralized platforms without being a leftist?
If only DEI was that literal. Instead, it allowed companies to discriminate based on race, but to those with left-leaning beliefs, that’s okay as long as it only negatively affects white people, because they deserve it!
That's a lot of talking with very little to back it up.
I'd like some actual instances of companies that have specifically not hired a qualified candidate because they were white.
And "those with left-leaning beliefs". That's me, hand in the air and proud of it. "as it only negatively affects white people, because they deserve it" You're chatting shit mate. That's not what I or any of my "left leaning" friends believe.
Sounds like you're a normal lefty. Nice! Maybe I'm spending too much time on Reddit because the political opinions there are very extreme, it's probably giving me a more negative view of the left
that’s okay as long as it only negatively affects white people, because they deserve it!
As a white guy, I didn't know that black people were getting the jobs that I deserved based on the color of my skin. Please do go on about how someone else who is also qualified took my potential job that was supposed to go a white guy.
It's like when Reddit mods say that their subreddit is all about "inclusion" and "diversity", and then right below that they say Trump supporters or voters aren't allowed.
Right, but I would argue Trump voters by default aren't "intolerant". Over half the country voted for him, and I don't think half the country is intolerant. I think there are extremes on both the left and right that are a vocal minority, and most normal people fall on either the left or right but aren't extreme or hateful about their beliefs.
I oppose not hiring air traffic controllers because of their race, especially when the towers are already understaffed. But I guess a few deaths is worth it, am I right?
Did you know that you can give whatever name you want to something? Even a name that isn't an accurate description of what it is? I was shocked when I found out!
Oh yeah, I've also heard you can make up an imaginary version of something and give it attributes you don't like to justify your hate. Wild stuff, this.
Why, it's almost as if people discussing politics often debate in bad faith, performing for spectators who already agree with them rather than trying to convince or even understand the person they're debating.