An argument against DEI

Great Debates
323

Of course. It wouldn’t work as a pretext if it were obvious to the rest of the applicants.

Yes, I think that’s what we’ve both been telling you. Except “cheating” makes it sound like the applicants were the ones who did something unethical, when in fact this whole scheme was cooked up by the FAA in order to discriminate, not by the applicants in order to gain an advantage.

Let’s try a thought experiment…

Suppose I’m a hiring manager at a company. I need to fill 10 open positions… and I want to hire as many of my sorority sisters as possible. :smiling_imp:

The company is worried about the potential appearance of nepotism or bias, so I design this hiring process to reassure them:

  • I won’t interview anyone in person.
  • Instead, I’ll write down my interview questions. HR will review them to make sure I’m not sneaking bias in there somehow.
  • Each candidate will get a copy of the same questions, and submit their written answers as part of their application.
  • Once all the candidates are done, HR can review their answers to make sure they haven’t identified themselves. Then they’ll give me copies of everyone’s answers, with any names or personal identifiers removed.
  • Finally, I’ll decide who to hire based on their answers.

They agree to it.

Obviously, I need to work around these rules somehow. So I come up with a plan:

  1. I’ll write an innocuous set of interview questions: “Why do you want to work here?”, “Describe a time you had to resolve a conflict with a coworker.”, “What are your salary expectations?”, etc. HR approves.
  2. As soon as I get home, I’ll email the entire sorority and say:

    Need a job? I got you covered! Go apply at XYZ.
    Very important! Make sure you use all of these words in your answers: radiate, initial, mischief, hamper, lucrative

  3. When I decide who to hire, I’ll just look for the candidates who used those words in their answers and hire them first. Other than looking for the words, I’ll ignore the content of their answers.

Sure enough, after going through dozens of applications and throwing out all the ones that don’t use the secret words, I’m able to fill all 10 positions with my sorority sisters. HR gets suspicious, but after reviewing my questions and the candidates’ answers, they decide it all seems pretty normal.

So… in that situation, would you say that whatever problems there may have been with the company’s hiring process, it would be in the reason for writing the application, and the way it was used, but not in the application itself? Is that still a meaningful distinction?

Would you describe that situation as cheating, rather than nepotism?

324

As I pointed before, there could had been cheating, of course the point is now moot, or not gone to the courts, one should wait for the courts on this one.

Of course, even though there was something valid in a criticism, the problem is the way the right wing convinces a lot of people to destroy things that benefit minorities. So they report endlessly and make a mountain of a molehill as it was done in the way James O’Keefe did against ACORN, he recorded a very apparent unjust thing going on, and then declared that all of ACORN was like that.

ACORN started to fire the workers involved, only to find that many did report later to the police the apparent human smuggling that an undercover James O’keefe pretended to be.

Of course, before settlements and judgements were made, it was too late. Congress defunded ACORN because many moderates then did fall for the ruse of the right wing.

325

Yes good point. And, to emphasize further; they reported it to the police and included in their statements that they pretended to go along with what O’Keefe was saying in the moment to not cause a confrontation with an obvious criminal. IOW no actual wrongdoing happened.

And this is a good example to reiterate what I was saying: that any program that benefits minorities in any way will come under attack. It’s a red herring to suggest all we need to do is get rid of the concept of DEI and put in “common sense” programs because they’ll also be attacked. Anything of net benefit to minorities will be toxic eventually; if DEI disappears they’ll be something next on the list.

326

@Ms2001 I don’t know what you want me to say. I’ve been very clear and consistent: if there was unethical hiring policy by the FAA – call it whatever noun you like – then that should have civil and/or criminal consequences.

What else do you want here?

Are you still trying to get me to say DEI is bad because an institution is accused of doing something unethical which has nothing to do with DEI? In which case, can you respond to my analogous situation of whether we should condemn high school athletics if there’s a school that gives student PEDs?

327

I also listed specific questions where the scoring made no sense, and the fact that extremely relevant questions were worth 0 points, while irrelevant ones had large scores. It’s not just the fact most questions were worth zero points, but the overall way the test is scored is extremely suspicious.

I think I do disagree with @Ms2001 that the primary purpose of this was to enable cheating, however. They may also have intended this, but the major issue for the FAA was disparate impact from their aptitude test, the AT-SAT, on which some groups did better than others. The test had been validated as predicting ability/success on the job, so they didn’t want to stop using it. But it would have been illegal to use a quota and take the highest scoring from each race and gender in order to diversify their workforce. By randomly eliminating 85% of applicants, they reduced their candidate pool enough that jobs could no longer be mostly filled by those who scored as ‘highly qualified’ on the AT-SAT, and they had to take the more diverse but lower scoring ‘qualified’ ones. I’m not sure why they didn’t just eliminate the ‘highly qualified’ band and choose randomly from everyone who passed, though. Maybe it really was to enable cheating.

I’m not going to argue about identity politics here, but I will say that this is the same bad argument Israel’s defenders make. The fact that some antisemitism would exist regardless of Israel’s actions doesn’t mean Israel’s actions have no effect on attitudes. The same applies here. Some people would be racist and sexist, and distrust minorities and women in senior roles regardless, but announcing that you are hiring people on account of their race and sex greatly increases such suspicion.

328

Again, that is not DEI.

DEI is a practice, not a person. There is no such thing as a “DEI hire” or “diversity hire.” Saying this is the same as saying, “a non-white male hire.” What inherently made white men better than everyone else? Newsflash: white men are neither better nor worse than any other identity group. All identity groups have their superstars and low performers. DEI simply uncovers talent that was previously excluded.

DEI levels a playing field that was never fair from the beginning. And done well, white men fit into the DEI picture, too. Top performers from ALL identity groups deserve a seat at the table.

Let’s get away from this zero-sum game mentality. DEI is about people. ALL people. And we ALL benefit when it’s done right.

Victoria Mattingly, PhD

Workplace Learning & Inclusion Expert

329

…in your view. I don’t see anything particularly suspicious about the weightings, and don’t think it’s a productive direction to take this.

Obviously there’s a big danger of a tangent here, so I will just point out that I have condemned unethical behaviour, what is it, four times now? Whereas apologists for wrongdoing will just try to deflect with “Well, cheating / civilian deaths / corruption happens everywhere”.

And do you dispute that without DEI there would be some other minority program to receive the wrath of conservative media? ACORN, CRT, AA…they’re all evil, apparently. There never will be a program that won’t be attacked.

Also, I’ve given several ways that identity politics is much more an issue on the right than left, with some recent examples. Are you going to condemn any of those examples, or provide similar examples on the left to support the idea that the left has a comparable problem?

330

If you refuse to recognise the obvious, there’s nothing more to say.

Okay, but I think what the FAA did (pulling the rug from under the graduates of the college programs) was unethical in itself, even without the cheating aspect, and they potentially made flying less safe, which is also bad.

DOGE is quite likely to have a worse result, thought. :frowning:

If the program involves discriminating against people by race, then yes. A referendum to allow using race in hiring and college admissions failed to pass in reliably-Democratic California, never mind expecting Republicans to endorse it. Similar if it involves teaching that some groups are automatically oppressors and others automatically oppressed on the basis of immutable characteristics. Not only are such policies seen as morally wrong by many on the right; they aren’t popular in general and it’s an easy win to oppose them.

A majority of Americans probably do support programs to encourage more minorities to apply, and otherwise trying to help without discriminating against the majority. I would guess a decent majority of Republicans support the civil rights act in general and think racial discrimination should be illegal, but I couldn’t find any recent surveys.

I get the impression many on the left just don’t understand some of the policies they support aren’t popular, and assume opposition must be due to some kind of conspiracy or media misrepresentation. The OP seems to fall into this pattern.

The two aren’t really analogous. The American left has no cult of personality figure like Trump; Bernie is probably the closest, and he’s never going to be president. The left is now the party of the establishment; they want to embed their ideas in institutions, while the right is trying to destroy institutions and weaken the government. The claims of DOGE making savings and going after DEI are just a pretext for this. IMO Nazi salutes are a(n admittedly horrible and ominous) way to distract the media and Democrats from the blizzard of EOs and other actions of Trump and the people he has handed power to. The speed of change is also designed to prevent the liberal media and Democratic party from responding effectively to any one policy.

To me the threat to democratic norms tends to overshadow identity concerns on the right. I see the seriously identity obsessed as a fairly small constituency among R voters, with most of it being a backlash against the left, but I guess that could change.

We’ve got somewhat off topic at this point, so I’m not sure there is much more to say.

331

I think it’s pretty interesting that our anti-DEI posters are rather quiet about a well qualified Black man getting fired for an underqualified White guy.

In this case they aren’t “sure” it was justified, but they seem quite certain that the Black people hired by Google and FAA were unqualified.

332

Well you could go into your reasoning…but yes this is getting ridiculous.
Your claim was that I was being inconsistent in only withholding judgement in one case. Can you admit now that that wasn’t the case? Or are we going to dig ever further down to try to find some thing unethical that I am supposedly defending?

It depends. Organizations can change their hiring policies whenever they like. If it was based on a single exam before, then became exam + personality test then, in itself, that’s not wrongdoing, any more than adding an interview stage would be.
If they were putting the personality test over actually being qualified then obviously yes, that’s unethical.

And this depends how we’re defining discrimination in this context. All hiring choices involve personal discretion, and it’s not an exact science hence the existence of interviews. So a program that attempts to take into account gender, race, etc representation after shortlisting for merit I don’t see as inherently unfair. And I think this is the crux of the issue where we should probably be focusing.

I think it is in society’s interest that this happens to some extent, otherwise there is a vicious circle than keeps rates of minority hiring for top roles low.

They are unpopular because they get demonized every time. Would you concede that ACORN was not an inherently corrupt institution despite millions of Americans being convinced it is? Would you concede that BLM was not actually aimed at “hating america” or hating the flag etc, and that maybe Kapernick should not have been black-balled?

And of course BLM is another example of a demonized black organization and of course it has nothing to do with hiring. This always happens and always will happen.

Your common-sense idea of “programs to encourage more minorities to apply, and otherwise trying to help” would eventually get a name like Diversity Encouragement and then you’d get a whole lot of bollocks said about the horrors of DE and how it’s crowding out applications from “real” americans etc.

Well one thing which could be said is any acknowledgement of identity politics on the right.
Your long paragraph of the left trying to “embed their ideas” doesn’t give any specific examples of the left exhibiting race or cis hatred anything like the race and trans hatred that is the core of the RW message right now.

ETA: plus as @zoobi reminds us, the firing of General Brown and replacement with a less qualified white guy. No concern about that.

Instead you just said that the nazi salutes are a distraction, and we’re supposed to pretend you’ve addressed RW identity politics now.

333

Even with the misrepresentation, it is not accurate to say that DEI is unpopular, not as it was before, but still there is still more that supports it.

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/americans-sour-some-trumps-early-moves-reutersipsos-poll-finds-2025-01-28/

A new Reuters/Ipsos poll found a similar 44% in favor of closing all federal government DEI offices and firing federal employees working on the issue, with 51% opposed.

And then there are more sour news for Trump and the Republican minions. Most Americans are indeed in favor of the Federal Government hiring more women and minorities.

Ending federal efforts to hire women and racial minorities:

Support (ending the hiring): 37% … Oppose (ending the hiring of women and racial minorities): 59%.

334

Yes, it is. And I wish you would say whether you believe such programs have existed in America in the last few years, and how common you think they are. Because I feel like I have wasted a lot of time and pixels in this thread trying to convince you that something you personally support and endorse is actually happening.

335

Perhaps it is because a lot of the misleading propaganda from the right does percolate a lot to many middle of the road guys.

336

I guess from “such programs” you mean inherently unfair ones?

Well, I would say that in a country the size of the US, sure, there probably are some badly-implemented DEI policies. That doesn’t change my opinion on whether DEI is a good idea any more than the (three times ignored) analogy I gave about high school athletics.

So, I’ve answered your question. Any thoughts on General Brown being fired? Can you acknowledge how much more identity-focused the right currently is, in america? Or that any program that is seen to be beneficial to minorities will be demonized given the history of all of them being demonized?

337

I mean the kind you described in the paragraph I was replying to, the ones you said you don’t see as inherently unfair (though other people may indeed disagree); programs that take race, gender, or other identities into account during hiring that you think are well implemented. How widespread do you think those are in the US?

338

A lot. For example, of the Fortune 500 companies, 485 of them had some kind of diversity initiatives. Then, remember the context of RW media making up or highly embellishing several DEI anecdotes. This leads me to suspect that the great majority are pretty benign.

Now, are you going to break the radio silence on RW identity politics? You were happy to condemn the left about this, but when the point has been put to you repeatedly that, in America, the right is far more engaged in identity politics, you’re pretending to not see the questions.

339

If there were as many high-profile cases of high school coaches giving their students drugs to improve their standing as there have been of companies breaking the law to improve their diversity numbers, then yeah, I think it’d be reasonable to say something’s probably wrong with the concept of high school athletics.

If coaches, parents, and/or students are placing more value on the school’s athletic record more than on the students’ health and fair competition, that suggests someone has the wrong incentives, and we should adjust the incentive structure so they aren’t rewarded for doing that. Maybe there’s a way to keep competitive high school athletics while eliminating the incentive to juice, or maybe getting rid of them is the only way.

Similarly, if companies are placing more value on their diversity numbers than they are on complying with civil rights and labor laws, that suggests they have the wrong incentives, and we should stop rewarding them for doing that. That certainly doesn’t have to mean getting rid of everything that falls under the DEI umbrella. But, if the main incentive is “appeasing critics who demand more minority hiring”, then it means the company should stop being influenced by those critics. If the main incentive is “getting grants that are tied to employee diversity”, then the terms of those grants should be changed. Etc.

This goes even if it’s nowhere near a majority of companies doing it, just like PEDs in high school sports are worth tackling even if there are only a few high-profile cases: others facing the same incentives are likely to find the same solution. Ignoring the problem until a majority of athletes are juicing would be a terrible idea.

340

I think it’s pretty interesting that in nearly every one of your posts here, you’ve insinuated that people who disagree with you are racists. Do you think that adds anything to the conversation?

A few points in response:

  1. This “answer me right now or else you’re a racist!” tactic of yours is cheap and deplorable. We’re not obligated to comment on every topic you bring up, especially when you’re obviously fishing for a “gotcha” to back up what you’ve thus far been implying about our moral characters.
  2. Nevertheless, I did comment on it up here, and I said it probably wasn’t justified. You’re misrepresenting what I said. Trump has fired a lot of (presumably qualified) senior people in the executive branch since taking office, and replaced them with unqualified stooges, for reasons having nothing to do with race—alarming, “staging a coup and preempting any check on his power” kind of reasons, but this isn’t the thread for that—and I see no reason to think this firing was any different.
  3. I didn’t say the minorities hired by either Google or the FAA were unqualified. Once again, you’re misrepresenting what I said. I don’t think Google hires unqualified people; what I am quite certain of, because they wrote it down in emails that have become public, is that they rejected non-minority candidates in order to meet diversity goals.
341

So you’re claiming that illegal actions surrounding DEI are common? Let’s see the cite.

Because, as I say, some 485 out of 500 fortune 500 companies have some kind of DEI policy. Yet the maga right seems to struggle for examples to stoke outrage.

Which is a straw man. Who has said we should ignore criminal behaviour?
The point is simply PEDs ≠ college athletics, giving out test answers ≠ DEI

342

I am shocked that you think high school sports should be shut down just because of a few inequities in the system!