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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.
Probably why they latch on to “woke” to and they never fully explain what’s so woke about the subject
You know what, let’s give it a shot. 3 things I dislike.
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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.
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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.
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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 equate 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.
1
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.
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.
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Don, Eric, Ivanka
DEI
Can also use “Elon” for the E.
Trump can’t remember his name anyway
When Enlong goes to Mars, can you believe it? They said on Twitter, well, now it’s X but you still tweet. They banned me before Lonnie bought it. They said, “When Eenlin goes to mars, which is a planet by the way. Like Earth but orange. Orange, don’t get me started. They say I’m orange. Do I look orange? Maybe the radical left will call me Marsolini. You people are beautiful. But mars is a planet and Erod is gonna take us there folks. I’ll be the president of mars if you can believe that. Kennedy wanted to go to the moon. Ellen wants to go to mars. Very smart people, with the rockets. They can land them now. Rockets is very powerful stuff. My uncle, very smart, good genes, he said, “Donald, rockets is very powerful stuff.” I always thought that, but who knew? Now everybody is talking about it.
Lmao, I was thinking about Eric but this is way better.
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]
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_race_theory
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.
Here’s some context for reading https://starrs.us/dei-how-to-have-the-conversation/
Here’s another perspective from a Stanford professor, https://amgreatness.com/2024/03/25/will-dei-end-america-or-america-end-dei/
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.
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
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.
Isn’t that racism?
Be gentle, am not USian.
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.
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.
DEI seeks to correct biases that have been inherent in US hiring practices for years - things as fundamental as “if your name sounds too black you don’t get called for interviews as often, even with the same qualifications”. (Linked literally the first article I found about it, but there are plenty more, and this is just an easy example.)
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, 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.
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.
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.
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.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diversity,_equity,_and_inclusion
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.
I was going to say this sounds a lot like the conservative strawman that postmodernism means the total rejection of objective reality.
Then I read the post-meritocracy manifesto and wow some of those “our values” bullet points are facepalm worthy.
Donald Elon Intercourse
That explains Trump’s problem with it. He can’t stand the idea he’d be the bottom.
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
Unfortunately, they’ll just claim it’s a “newspeak” term…
It’s not civil rights, it’s woke
It’s not anti intellectualism, it’s anti woke.
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…”
I Oppose Deathcamps, Extermination, and Invasion (aka: the nazi f’ Elon and the Felon’s policies)
The alternatives to DEI are:
Conformity Inequity Exclusion
Rearrange the letters to I, C, and E, and they are fully in support.
Are you sure it’s not Democrats, Education and Immigrants?
More like Democracy (Jan 6), Elections (Voter-Roll Purges, and other forms of Voter Suppression), and International Cooperation (Paris Agreement Withdrawl)
Reminds me of the “Lets Go Brandon” crap.
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.
That wasn’t the point of the “Let’s Go Brandon” crap. At all.
Then yeah the Pritzker Sucks…the life out of small businesses is a simple double-play, a cheeky “gotcha”. Not a lack of conviction at all.
What was the point?
From another answer the user provided in this thread, it sounds like the point was saying “Fuck Joe Biden” while self-censoring themselves because they felt like the reporter who said the NASCAR fans yelling “Fuck Joe Biden” said they were saying “Let’s Go Brandon” as an act of censorship.
So pretty much the point is saying “Fuck Joe Biden” without actually saying the words, which is what we all thought they were doing, while adding some sort of ironic anti-censorship tweak to it by censoring it.
Sounds like a long way to go when they could have just said “Fuck Joe Biden.”
It’s the equivalent of children thinking they are clever for speaking in pig latin
But I would probably try to backpedal if I said that stupid shit too
…no… Still not the story behind Let’s Go Brandon. It’s a constant call to attention that a reporter tried to lie about a crowd of young men yelling “Fuck Joe Biden” at a NASCAR race. Insisting they were instead chanting, “Let’s Go Brandon”.
So much like the Pritzker signs with dual meaning, when they were saying Let’s Go Brandon, it’s not only saying Fuck Joe Biden, but also fuck the people censoring speech.
I’m sure the people who midlessly chant that know the etymology of the phrase and aren’t just screaming fuck joe biden in pig latin
Or you could ask them if they know what DEI stands for.
Spoiler Alert: They don’t.
They love hating acronyms and nicknames repeated by their media sources that they know literally nothing about.
They know what it stands before, but if you ask them to drop the mask they’ll start saying racial slurs.
I oppose affirmative action. Change my mind (if you disagree and want to)
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.
