Good point. It’s not unreasonable to consider things like “Would I enjoy working with this person?” or “Would I get along well with this person?” when hiring, but that could easily shade into “Is this person like me?”
Exactly.
And the whole point of DEI training is not to substitute the other way, which is the default thought process for about half of humanity: Using “Is this person like me?” as a proxy for “Is this a person I would enjoy being around?” Those sorts of people will always prefer a monoculture even if they don’t recognize that fact about themselves.
DEI is all about recognizing the non-zero amount of preference for monoculture in (almost) all of us, and the massive preference for monoculture in about half of us. And then actively looking for, seeing, recognizing, and consciously discarding that default personal behavior in ourselves before it becomes organizational behavior.
Besides the points that other posters have made in response to this, about why DEI is more than just “covering views”, there’s the important issue of what Biden himself said in the above quote:
There’s a strong case to be made that plain old demographic representation matters a lot in national governance, even more than it does in business, media, etc. We don’t want our leaders to be a demographic “aristocracy class”, cut off from the experiences and needs of huge numbers of ordinary Americans because they simply have no knowledge of what our lives are like.
Of course, that “aristocracy class” does exist in our government, in the form of a socioeconomic elite more than (although by no means to the exclusion of) gender or racial elites. The vast majority of elected national leaders, and even their most influential unelected appointees, are far, far wealthier than the average American. And that hurts us as a society.
It’s not good to have an American government that socioeconomically looks so different from America, and it would be even worse to push our government even further into its elite bubble by ignoring the importance of racial, gender, etc. diversity representation in leadership.
I’m not sure. I’d figure an opponent of DEI would jab an accusatory finger at the following:
“Tell me about Candidate #1.”
“Graduated first in his class at Harvard.”
“Okay, and Candidate #2?”
“Graduated ninth in his class at Harvard.”
“Candidate #3?”
“Graduated dead last in his class.”
“…at Harvard?”
“No.”
“At a college I’ve heard of?”
“No.”
“Candidate #4?”
“Flunked out of college.”
“Talk to me about ethnicity.”
“For all four?”
“No, just the first three.”
“One of them would fill a demographic quota.”
“Hire that one.”
But can one make a blip in American politics without throwing money around and schmoozing with “aristocrats” and elites? (“Ethnic” candidates can do that too, of course, it’s just much more difficult.)
I read somewhere amongst the whiny Internet trolls that DEI stands for “Didn’t Earn It.”. Never mind that most if not all top level hires from minority backgrounds most certainly did earn their positions. You don’t reach those heights without working your ass off, and it’s still harder to advance in society for women and people of color.
Yeah, Maga troll, if it weren’t for DEI policies, it would’ve been YOU running for president. Get over yourself.
Actually, the DEI trainers I know would jab a finger too at that too. That is not DEI.
exactly, they have to be more qualified let alone “didn’t earn it”
“If you think the woman of color got where she is based only on her race and gender, and the guy whose daddy gave him $400 million pulled himself up by his bootstraps, you might be an idiot.”