What were you THINKING?

The BBQ Pit
1981

What were you thinking?

We were talking about equity: the E in DEI. And specifically, the distinction between equity and equality and whether equity should be considered a goal in its own right. This is a hard shift from the ideas of the Enlightenment and the founding principles of the US, which are based on equality.

Women, minorities, and so on are absolutely not all on board with equity as a goal, and it’s sexist and racist of you to think that they would all abandon their principles because doing so might conceivably benefit them.

Of course, many equity-based ideas are not just bigoted, but actively work to harm the people they aim to protect. For instance, it was thought that eliminating standardized testing would help to increase diversity. Oops: it did nothing of the sort, and if anything reduced diversity. This should have been obvious to anyone that thought about it for 10 seconds, because even poor people can go to a public library to study for a test, whereas rich people can easily game the “holistic” admissions approach by sending their kids to Africa or getting them into dubious leadership positions or whatever. It’s actually the standardized tests that best level the playing field. Schools are starting to bring them back, thankfully.

So I totally reject your characterization and your attempt to project your ideas onto all women and minorities.

This was starting to get a little off-topic for that thread, but I also reject the idea that because people are generally supportive of DEI, it does not mean they support all of the specifics. To steal a joke from Steven Pinker: DEI is rather like the Holy Roman Empire, which famously was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire.

Americans largely disapprove considering race and ethnicity in college admissions:
Imgur

Just one example, of course. The point is that when you get to specific actions, especially those meant to increase equity, support tends to decrease.

How many people even know that the E means equity, and what the distinction is? I suspect that support would decrease if that was better known.

As for this:

Absurd. My sources are from the left. Most recently, I’ve been reading this book:

It rails into Trumpism, of course, but that’s frankly too easy at this point. It contains many well-cited examples of left-leaning people running amok with this stuff.

The author calls it Social Justice Fundamentalism–mainly just to have a new word that hasn’t been tainted yet in the discourse the way that “woke”, “CRT”, etc. have. But this is a Venn diagram with big overlaps.

The author is a progressive, or at least someone that used to be called a progressive. But then, Martin Luther King Jr. would be considered far right by modern standards because he favored equality.

1982

Said by ignoring how the US started regarding the rights of minorities and women. No, you still need to wonder why you are willfully ignoring that part.

And that was Affirmative action, shot down already by the supreme court and other legal moves. DEI is not that, you are again showing to all that you are still an ignorant about what DEI is.

And also seen before, not all what the left says is followed by all, and less the DEI proponents.

As for Martin Luther King, it is a common meme among the right to claim that he would support what you paint here.

As shown by a proponent of DEI Dr. Marcus Bright:

King’s work was about equity:

King’s work extended into the struggle for economic equity. He recognized that achieving true equality required intentional efforts to address the specific harms inflicted upon black people throughout the history of the United States. While advocating for equal access to opportunities, he also emphasized the need for justice in the form of compensation for the centuries of harm endured by black communities.

In his remarks during the March on Washington in 1963, King spoke metaphorically about a “check” owed to Black Americans. He used powerful imagery to illustrate how the United States had failed to fulfill its promises of equality, comparing it to a bad check marked ‘insufficient funds.’ This analogy highlighted the disparity between the rights and opportunities granted to white Americans and the ongoing systemic oppression faced by Black Americans.

King spoke again about a “check” in remarks about the Poor People’s Campaign that he was in the midst of organizing, saying that, “at the very same time that the government refused to give the Negro any land, through an act of Congress our government was giving away millions of acres of land in the West and the Midwest, which meant it was willing to undergird its white peasants from Europe with an economic floor,” King said. “But not only did they give the land, they built land-grant colleges with government money to teach them how to farm; not only that, they provided county agents to further their expertise in farming; not only that, they provided low interest rates in order that they could mechanize their farms; not only that, today, many of these people are receiving millions of dollars in federal subsidies not to farm and they are the very people telling the Black man that he ought to lift himself by his own bootstraps. And this is what we are faced with, and this is the reality. Now, when we come to Washington in this campaign, we are coming to get our check.”

Drawing attention to blatant disparities, King emphasized that Black Americans were not asking for special treatment, rather they were seeking equitable compensation for the historical and ongoing injustices they had endured and the systematic denial of the tools and opportunities necessary for economic advancement.

King’s call for a “check” was a demand for redress and corrective action to rectify the economic harm inflicted on Black Americans over centuries. His words point toward a belief that achieving economic equity required more than just equal access to opportunities; it required acknowledging and compensating for past wrongs.

1983

Also, to show why DEI is not Affirmative Action:

Really, DEI training is only like an advisor role to teach people about how bias can crop up and prevent minorities, women and the disabled to get jobs or to progress in their careers. It only shows how many racists are trying to twist what DEI is so as to remove even just a way to teach others about how to deal with diversity issues in the workplace and institutions.

1984

Do you two want a GD/Pit thread? It seems like there’s genuine disagreement here.

~Max

1985

Well, not much to see with a disagreement that is more like willful ignorance vs the facts.

1986

Willfully ignoring what part? That the US has violated its own principles from the start? Of course we have. Proponents of equality have been shouting this forever. This is not a fault of the principles, but of our adherence to them.

Pursuing equity is a violation of those principles. Your insinuation that all women and minorities should go along with this is bigotry.

DEI is, in part, affirmative action writ large. AA was explicitly about addressing equity. DEI expands the scope outside of university admissions. Rejection of AA is a rejection of equity as a component of that process.

Again, as long as the terms are kept so vague as to be meaningless, you can find all kinds of support for things. Of course people support “diversity” as some fluffy concept. It’s when you start asking specific questions, like whether universities should be able to discriminate against certain races in order to increase equity, that support starts to evaporate. AA is one tiny example of that.

That he also had some equity-based beliefs does not invalidate the point. Having any equality-based beliefs is enough to get you rejected from some positions.

The idea that DEI is simply about “training” is absurd. Hardly anyone cares about that except to make fun of it. With one big exception: when people are coerced into signing pledges to support principles they don’t uphold (like equity over equality).

The bigger issue is when DEI starts imposing quotas, etc. to maintain equity.

I’m not going to defend Florida’s stupid laws or DeSantis’ performative nonsense. But a stupid person opposing a thing does not make the thing smart.

1987

It begins to be clear that you are trying to claim that I would not follow equality, again: “An equity-first mindset leads to equality for all.” as the DEI trainer Mary-Frances Winters said. This is once again a big serving from ignorance from your part.

Take that ignorance to the conservative Florida Supreme court.

1988

And… more ignorance, cite for DEI imposing quotas? Or be branded as a willful and ignorant poster.

This effort of your is sadder when taking into account that you came on that thread to defend the other willful ignorant Sam_Stone.

1989

It’s blatantly self-contradictory. You can’t possibly have equality for all if you are discriminating against some.

Equity is very explicitly about putting your thumb on the scale until you get the desired equal outcomes. That means preferring some at the expense of others.

We shall have to see how much any of this proves unconstitutional.

The book has many examples. Here’s one:

First up, I care deeply about building teams that represent the communities we work in and the people we serve,” Friedl said in a tweet explaining details about a new job opening. “I also deeply care about equity in hiring. Therefore, I choose to prioritize folks in our BIPOC and URM communities.

1990

No wonder that was from a blogessor, nowhere it is mentioned where DEI is in that case. That does sound more like Affirmative Action, and BTW, I do have a bit of a problem with it as CRT proponents are usually against that too, (or you were ignorant about that too?)

So, so far that source of info, that was not an expert on what we are discussing, has failed there to show that DEI is what you claim, try again you ignoramus.

1991

Did you see the word “equity” in there? I saw the word equity.

Whether she was an “expert” in DEI is irrelevant. What matters is how this stuff is practiced in reality, not whether some expert can define away the problem.

This wasn’t some random tweeter; it was a hiring manager at Dropbox. At least you acknowledge that this sort of thing is a problem.

1992

From the sidelines, my understanding of diversity, equity, and inclusion is that it refers to employer policies designed to reduce liability in potential EEOC/discrimination suits. In fact I’m not familiar with the term being used in any other context.

If a company imposes a racial quota - outside of legally sanctioned affirmative action, where it exists - that seems like misapplication of DEI since it actually increases liability.

~Max

1993

That is a component of it. There are several different things that are meant by DEI. One of them is the employer policies you mention, which are at least in part meant to reduce liability. As you say, that tweet does a very poor job at that since it is probably illegal.

Businesses have a fine line to walk. On one hand, they could face lawsuits if their employee breakdown is too unequal. On the other hand, it’s blatantly illegal to discriminate in the hiring process. And there’s only so much to be done on the supply side (like having more job fairs at universities that might have a different ratio of minority groups).

It’s hard to talk about all of this clearly since there is no one specific name to use. DEI is used in a more general sense, but those anti-DEI laws are targeted at departments of big organizations. At any rate, this conversation started with the distinction between equity vs. equality. Whether we’re talking about that as a component of a DEI effort or something else isn’t too relevant to me.

1994

Not my problem that there is no evidence there that the executive was using DEI for this, stop with the arguments from ignorance.

1995

Yeah, we know already that women and the disabled are irrelevant to you.

1996

Don’t be an asshole. You know I never said anything of the sort.

That not all women or minorities support equity should be obvious even to you.

1997

There is that, but as a homework. I will only mention this to see what posters are the ones that try to gain knowledge or follow ignorance: Are you aware that corporations are not dumb and besides protecting against liability DEI also points in their training about independent research that shows that companies that mind diversity, equity and inclusion usually perform better than the ones that do not?

Links, that should not be hard to find, except for the wilful ignorant, to follow later.

1998

That is not my problem but yours, continuing to ignore a big part of what DEI is about, shows that it is not then the sources that you use, but that you are willfully failing at this. Again, you used affirmative action in the polls you pointed out, not DEI. That not all women or minorities support DEI, is the true irrelevant point here.

1999

Could both of you take this to a new thread please.

2000

Will do. Or at least not continue here…