Of course, it is inherent that the levels of acceptance of DEI by the left are ignored /s.
What is not acceptable is for the FAA to cheat in the name of diversity. Nor is acceptable for the right and some moderates that ignore that what Trump and Musk are doing is to mix cheating for diversity, AA, EEO and DEI as if they are the same.
I read this Matt Yglesias article again yesterday after he retweeted it, and I think the changes he proposes are a much better answer than the suggestion in the OP that using different language will somehow change people’s attitudes to existing DEI policies:
Apart from falsely claiming that the left is more identity focused (we’re constantly talking about white people eating dogs and being “low IQ”), what changes is he proposing? I didn’t find much practical suggestions there.
That post is from a blog series that’s more about guiding principles than concrete proposals, but a couple things that stand out are focusing more on programs that help people based on their needs as individuals (rather than on belonging to a group perceived to have those needs), and not presuming that disparate impact is necessarily a sign of discrimination.
Interestingly, I was having a similar conversation with my dad (in his 80s) the other about DEI. He’s retired and by and large a reasonably progressive person. But his interpretation of DEI is that it’s mostly about mandatory hiring quotas.
Anyhow, he was telling me about a number of his peers who got let go from big corporations for being too “handsy” or continuing to use terms like “sweetie” with female cowrokers.
Not like I’m Joe Social Justice or anything, but I explained to DEI is also about training so old dudes who may be used to spending their careers in all-male environments don’t get fired for treating their female co-workers like little girls or prostitutes.
But the main argument against DEI isn’t about ignorance. It’s about power. From my experience, people who find themselves in a position of privilege often feel very entitled and superior by their position (regardless of how absurd the path that got them there might be). So they will tend to reject any attempts at equality, usually though ridicule.
That reminds me of the olden times when bosses had secretaries. When they were sent candidates, they’d sometimes complain that none of them were qualified. But they weren’t complaining about their low typing speed and poor filing accuracy. Rather, the qualifications they felt were most important were being a young, attractive, single female.
A lot of times when I hear someone complaining that they aren’t getting enough qualified candidates because of DEI, I think it’s something similar. I figure the qualifications they consider most important are things like white and American.
One of the things that many do miss is that DEI is mostly about how to deal with the diversity that is already in a company or organization.
Making it even more suspicions because Trump and co. are hot to equating it with the FFA scandal. And then Trump demonstrates that is about something else when then he goes after the EEO.
I am curious if those arguing against DEI think that Hegseth has a point. Do you his removal was justified?
Hegseth had previously taken aim at Brown. “First of all, you gotta fire, you know, you gotta fire the chairman of Joint Chiefs,” he said flatly in a podcast in November. And in one of his books, he questioned whether Brown got the job because he was Black.
“Was it because of his skin color? Or his skill? We’ll never know, but always doubt — which on its face seems unfair to CQ. But since he has made the race card one of his biggest calling cards, it doesn’t really much matter,” Hegseth wrote.
Kind of ironic that Trump and Elon used rush to judgment justifications against DEI and now a judge told them that they are overreaching.
I don’t know enough about the military or Brown’s career to judge whether there was any merit-based reason to fire him, but based on what we’ve seen with everyone else Trump has fired, I assume there wasn’t.
I don’t think I’d count his appointment as an example of DEI, though.
Not justified, clearly the ones against DEI think it is all peachy keen, one has to realize why discrimination comes from prejudice. And that is indeed “an unfair judgment or attitude formed before knowing someone or something”
From the link you made:
An Army veteran who rose to the rank of major and served in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan, Hegseth, 44, says he believes that standards have declined and that efforts to expand diversity, equity and inclusion have driven white men away.
He complains in his latest book that “woke” generals and the leaders of the elite service academies have left the military dangerously weak and “effeminate” by promoting DEI. He says, “the next commander in chief will need to clean house.”
It is not surprising that someone that just asked for his rights and showed to be capable is the one that is dismissed by the current bigots in power.
As he awaits a historic Senate confirmation vote to become the first black Air Force chief of staff, Gen. Charles “CQ” Brown spoke out about a life in which he has tried just to fit in as an African American man in everyday life, as well as in uniform.
“I’m thinking about how full I am with emotion, not just for George Floyd, but the many African Americans that have suffered the same fate as George Floyd,” said Brown, currently the head of Pacific Air Forces, in a passionate video posted on social media Friday.
Brown described his military experience as “living in two worlds,” with some questioning whether he even belonged in the ranks.
“I’m thinking about my Air Force career, where I was often the only African American in my squadron, or as a senior officer, the only African American in the room,” he said in the video. "I’m thinking about wearing the same flight suit with the same wings on my chest as my peers, and then being questioned by another military member, ‘Are you a pilot?’
And yes, he was back then voted in by the Senate. As the reactions from the current Republican senate shows, they are not just happy to drop the power of the purse that they suppose to have, but also drop their support for what they voted for. Embracing bigotry is not cool at all.
I wasn’t talking about the cheating, though obviously turning a blind eye to that was very bad, but about the Biographical Questionnaire itself - designed to create a more demographically equal pool by eliminating applicants essentially at random before having them do the aptitude test. (Reducing the pool in this way will result in lower average scores for those hired, without technically lowering standards.)
The left created a whole system of classifying people according to a long list of demographic traits, it labels groups as oppressors or oppressed accordingly, and justifies treating them differently on that basis.
Yes. Disparate impact law is commonly seen as the biggest legal issue in this area by smarter conservatives. It puts the onus on employers to prove they are not discriminating unfairly, rather than on prosecutors to prove they are. It ironically results in pressure on employers to actually break the law in order not to be investigated for purportedly breaking it.
Same. The fact he was appointed by Biden would be reason enough for Trump and co to fire him.
The accusation that you were making was that I was withholding judgement inconsistently.
But I cited myself withholding judgement in both cases, repeatedly. So now it becomes a very specific focus on the test itself, because I did say it looked like a standard personality questionnaire to me.
Firstly note that this is still withholding judgement.
But secondly, do you even disagree with this? Are you making the claim that the questions themselves are designed to favour particular groups? As I understand it, the case is only about the reasons for bringing the test in, and possible cheating and overweighting the significance of the test.
What the fuck?
In a country that had three centuries of race-based chattel slavery followed by a century before full civil rights (in principle anyway), it was the left that invented the idea of classifying people?
And I note the deflection from talking about which side of the political spectrum in America today is most focused on attacking groups on the basis of identity.
Haven’t we been over this enough times already? The questions seem normal, the scoring does not. Maybe they always intended to allow cheating, maybe the questions were designed to favour certain groups (although I doubt this was enough to make much difference) or maybe it was simply an excuse to reduce the number of candidates in order to create their ‘balanced pool’.
In America, today? Hard to say. For the last 10 or 20 years? The left has been obsessively categorising and defining people by identity, justifying treating them differently based on these semi-arbitrary identity groups, has abandoned the idea of colour blindness and equality as goals, and made designated privileged groups acceptable targets for blame and disparagement. Just as predicted, this has led to a backlash with open racism, sexism, and other kinds of bigotry becoming far more common and tolerated. 
The test is not used since 2018 and there is no evidence to show it was organized by DEI trainers or orgs.
DEI also advises giving individualized tools and support for disabled people. Of Course, cads like Trump and his minions dislike them too.
General Brown’s confirmation on a 83-11 vote, months after President Joe Biden nominated him for the post,
Gee, first time I see that most Republicans in the senate then were for DEI /s
Of course they were not, but they did not see Brown as incapable.
One alleged wrong by the left and one clearly gross wrong by the right. Yep. Two wrongs don’t make a right.
(It is actually more like a few wrongs from the left, and 10,000 wrongs from the right)
Speaking of backlash, it is really ugly to ignore that a lot of the efforts to make things more equitable comes from a very needed backlash against the people that did use racism and bigotry to prevent the advancement of minorities, women and the disabled.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/1arikm8/emory_hospital_rejection_letter/#lightbox
(Emory’s 1959 rejection letter to a young black student, he was rejected because he was black. Yes, that was just a generation or two in the past)
Also, things like DEI came because affirmative action was accused to rely on quotas, not the whole truth, nor it took place in most cases; but regardless, DEI was in reality a bit of a defanged way to increase help to minorities, women and the disabled in the office. It was in the end training and strong recommendation for people with prejudices to drop theirs, but…
It did hurt their feelings (and the feelings of too many CEOs), so it had to be tarred like with any efforts to deal with injustice in the past.
The questions were a pretext to enable them to favor particular groups by giving them the answers. It wasn’t a genuine personality/biographical test, it was a puzzle disguised as a test. The favoring part came in when they selectively gave the puzzle’s solution to members of the groups they wanted to hire.
It’s clear from looking at the answer key that the test wasn’t intended to filter candidates based on merit. In order to pass, candidates had to give answers that were contradictory and weren’t indicative of any skills related to the job.
Well you took exception to the fact that some questions had zero marks, but again that’s not untoward in a questionnaire vs an exam.
Secondly, more importantly, unless your point is that those weightings in themselves help black people I fail to see the relevance.
No it’s not hard to say.
One side is doing Nazi salutes* and calling anyone who is black in a position of power “low IQ” or a “DEI hire”**. Let alone how black people are depicted in RW memes.
And any youtube video on any topic seems to have people jump in with “You don’t even know the difference between a man and a woman”.
What happened today for example? The highest ranking military officer in America, who happens to be a black man, got fired and replaced by someone far less qualified. We’ll never know the reason for doing this, except that Hegseth had previously called him a DEI hire, and a few years ago General Brown wrote a wonderful essay on George Floyd. [ETA: Also, how qualified is Hegseth?!]
Versus on the left, what? All I ever hear is people claiming things that the left has said, like mandating that everyone acknowledge 37 genders, that I simply have never heard anyone on the left say.
I’ll leave who has been more identity-focused in the past for now, because, frankly, if we can’t agree on what we’re seeing around us today then we’re unlikely to make much ground on that.
* It was pretty silly how much of the media has been speculating on whether Musk and Bannon’s salutes consititute a nazi salute. Because, although their salute isn’t exactly the same as the original Nazis did it, it is identical to the way modern white supremacist groups do it, including the hitting the chest first.
** And once again, I know people will say that DEI is the cause of the problem here, because it throws doubt on all black or female people in senior roles. However, I would just repeat that if DEI didn’t exist, then there would be another phrase or term that bigots would have latched on to. Put it this way: when was it the case that black people in senior roles faced no prejudice about how they obtained that position?
I think you’re not following the back-and-forth between me and DemonTree. Which is understandable, it’s gone too far and to be honest into increasing irrelevance.