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This isn’t hard… I don’t like DEI.
But also, I do like diversity, equity, and inclusion.
There is a difference. Understand that, and you’ve leveled up.
I think it’s important to distinguish between diversity, equity, and inclusion as CONCEPTS and DEI as an organization and initiative.
It is possible to be pro- diversity, equity, and inclusion and be opposed to mismanaged efforts in DEI as a PROGRAM.
This post assumes that DEI as a government initiative is working perfectly and has no downsides, presenting it in a way that closes it off to criticism.
Does every system have to be perfect? Of course not. It’s better to have a system pushing for good that’s imperfect than none at all, but framing it like this is gaslighting and hurts discussion on both sides.
That’s not what this post assumes. This post is aimed at those using DEI as a dog whistle for their disgusting bigotry. Present all the nuance you want but if you’re missing that then you’re turning a blind eye to the blatant racism gaining power and leverage in the US gov today.
to mismanaged efforts in DEI
such as?
Most people who are against DEI are against the “E”.
They believe that equality is the end goal, not equity.
Equality = equal opportunity
Equity = equal outcome
Equity = something you made up?
Equity literally means fairness and impartiality.
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.
Especially true in gaming. Look at Concord or DA Veilguard.
Are we just going to ignore games that did well and have DEI. What about all the games without DEI that failed. Your logic is flawed.
It was an example of “DEI first, story second”. The games that failed wouldn’t be saved by adding DEI. The games that did well was also not because of DEI.
Unless you have proof that’s an assumption. Because it can also be said that the DEI games that failed did so because they were bad games, not DEI.
To be honest, I don’t think there is proof for either, so let’s agree to disagree :)
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.
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, (see comment from @[email protected] below) 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.
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.
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.
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.
So any attempt at pretending that there isn’t an anti-meritocracy angle to this would be disingenuous to say the least.
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.
To deny that, or to pretend that such misapplication is the typical mainstream application of DEI principles, would be equally disingenuous.
I don’t believe in “Equity”, I believe in “Equality”. The difference is that with Equality, everyone gets the same opportunities. They don’t just get opportunities because of their skin color, despite lack of qualifications.
I oppose the existing “DEI” as it exists today because it’s openly racist. It’s openly racist to the people it basically purports to help.
Here you go bud, hope it helps.
How about they just pay for seats? The stands clearly are accommodating for everyone. And it isn’t ‘equity’ either.
This graphic has been used for too long because of its emotional aspect. Equality is them buying seats and watching the game without boxes at all. In itself, it’s a fallacy because they clearly have accommodations for all of them, and they’ve decided to stand behind a fence.
And, since WHEN do skin colors need special accommodations ANYWAYS?
Dividing people by skin color is the first way the corporate elite divide our nation - so that we fight amongst ourselves against the real discrimination, class-based discrimination.
How about they just pay for seats?
This misses the point. It could be a baseball stadium, a tree with apples, etc. It doesn’t fucking matter what the goal is or how accommodating the stadium is due to the whim of artist filling the seats with blotches of color. None of that is the point.
The only explicitly shown resources available for the characters is 3 boxes. That’s it. And the correct utilization of those 3 boxes is 0 for the blue shirt, 1 for the red shirt, and two for the purple shirt. Any other utilization is a failure for the goal of everyone seeing the game.
This graphic has been used for too long
And despite that it’s meaning is still lost on you.
because of its emotional aspect.
What emotional aspect?
Equality is them buying seats and watching the game without boxes at all.
No, equality is giving everyone equal resources and pretending that there aren’t earlier prerequisites that aren’t equal, with an end result of not everyone getting an equal end result. Equality is materially worse than equity, and leaves society worse off. You’ve fundamentally missed the point.
they clearly have accommodations for all of them, and they’ve decided to stand behind a fence.
Now you’re just making shit up. There is no story telling you that. It’s a cartoon depicting the allocation of resources and its effects.
And, since WHEN do skin colors need special accommodations ANYWAYS?
This is a strawman.
‘Diversity hire’ is the old derogatory term that implies someone is unqualified and only hired because of their skin color or genitals, so they already openly hate diversity.
They don’t know what equity means. They probably think it means equality, and they hate that too because in their minds equality requires giving up their relative standing in society.
They hate inclusion because they hate diversity.
The meme is though provoking for someone who already understands the concepts and is useful for bringing awareness to 3rd parties who are otherwise apathetic. It won’t make the person who is put on the spot reconsider their opinion, but that’s because they are morons who fell for the anti-DEI propaganda.
“WELL I DON’T LIKE IT WHEN THEY WON’T HIRE WHITE PEOPLE WHO ARE MORE QUALIFIED”
They genuinely believe that white men are at a significant disadvantage in the workforce because DEI hires. No amount of memes or conversation will convince them how ridiculous that is.
“WELL I DON’T LIKE IT WHEN THEY WON’T HIRE WHITE PEOPLE WHO ARE MORE QUALIFIED”
The whole premise of equity is that there is a desired demography of people in a given position, and that positive action should be taken to approach or maintain the desired demography and that qualification, ability and merit are secondary to that. Meaning it doesn’t matter who is better, so long as someone is good enough and the right race or sex they should have preference. Don’t hire the best person, hire the best black person or woman or whatever the desired demographic is (sometimes these will be the same person either way, but not always).
Most of the people who are angry about “DEI” would be fine with things like blind hiring that exclude race/sex from the process entirely but whether or not blind hiring is a valid DEI approach depends on the result - for example a public works department in Australia tried blind hiring to eliminate gender imbalance and killed that project because they found that not knowing the sex of applicants actually reduced the number of women hired which was opposed to the goal (because the goal wasn’t to remove discrimination but rather to hire more women).
They genuinely believe that white men are at a significant disadvantage in the workforce because DEI hires.
https://academic.oup.com/esr/article/38/3/337/6412759?login=false
We first note that out of 36 possible outcomes, 23 favour females, as indicated by callback gender ratios > 1. This is interesting, but due to the small sample for each occupation within each country, most of these outcomes are not significant by conventional standards (see right-hand column). In Germany, we find statistically significant hiring discrimination against male applicants for receptionist and store assistant jobs, with callback ratios of 1.4 and 1.9, respectively. In the Netherlands, we find evidence of hiring discrimination against male applicants for store assistant jobs, with a callback ratio of 2.2. In Spain, we find clear evidence of hiring discrimination of males in two occupations, with callback ratios of 1.9 (payroll clerk) and 4.5 (receptionist). In the United Kingdom, we find strong evidence of hiring discrimination against males in payroll clerk jobs (callback ratio of 4.8, the highest of all). Interestingly, in the data, we find no evidence of gender discrimination in hiring in Norway or the United States. Thus, the evidence shows hiring discrimination against male, not female, job applicants in 1–3 occupations within four of the six countries.
Based on country-specific regression models, Figure 1 (and Supplementary Table S2) shows the probability of receiving a callback separately for each country. According to these estimates, we find evidence of hiring discrimination against male applicants in United Kingdom, Spain, Germany, and the Netherlands. The gender differences range from 0 per cent in the US to 9 percentage points in Germany. Thus, we observe gender discrimination in hiring against men in four out of six countries.
