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Which part of DEI do you hate?

270 comments
  • This is also why "woke" becoming a common word was bad for both sides. Not only is it nonspecific, but it starts to mean different things to different people and diverges over time. It's easier to demonize something with a nonspecific meaning for exactly that reason.

    There's a meme that says "everything I don't like is woke", and while it's funny, that's literally the process that happens when such terms become catchalls -- what they catch depends on what any individual speaker wants out of using it.

    With DEI, the process has been the same. I wouldn't be surprised if there are many people who believe it's bad (because they were told that and lack critical thinking skills) and may not even know what the acronym stands for.

    • Reminds me of that time (as if it was only once) a depressing amount of people, mostly conservatives, didn't know that the ACA and "Obamacare" mean the same thing.

      Conservative politics depend heavily on placing labels on everything because it's a built-in way of telling the rubes what they should think and feel.

  • You know what, let's give it a shot. 3 things I dislike.

    1. Equity based on gender or skin color. So many people pretend that somehow one average working class person should be put ahead in line compared to another, if the other person has the same skin color as some unrelated asshole slaver whose descendants still profit from their riches.Most of you would probably agree that a world where the majority are exploited by a few billionaires is not equitable just because the billionaires are diverse. So why push policies that pretend all is equitable as long as you give a few minorities preferential treatment.Not only does it not make any real sense, but more importantly, it is divisive. No person struggling in this f**ked up economy wants to hear they should be even worse of, because they have the same skin color as the billionaires exploiting them and they should feel ashamed for that. I would not be surprised if these ideas are intentionally pushed by the rich to divide the working class people and turn them on each other.
    2. Bringing people down in the name of Equity. Equity is definitely what we should strive for, but by lifting disadvantaged people up, not tearing "privileged" people down. The whole message that you should be ashamed for not being disadvantaged is ridiculous to me. Maybe you should be ashamed if you are in a privileged position and you refuse to use it to help the disadvantaged, but just be ashamed of privilege period is a wild take to me. We should be aiming to make everyone privileged enough that they don't have to fear being shot every time they see a cop, that they can make a living wage, ...If your movements/policies are hostile towards the very people whose support can help you most, then no wonder you can't make any progress and radicals like Trump take advantage of the divisiveness.
    3. Low quality diversity in media. Adding diverse characters to media should ideally be like adding trees. You add them when it makes sense without even thinking about it and don't add them when it doesn't make sense. We should work slowly and carefully towards that goal. Unfortunately, so many movies, shows and games have tried to awkwardly add diversity with no regard for how it negatively affects the enjoyability of the product. So your goal presumably was to make diverse people feel included and to normalize diversity in peoples mind. But the result for minorities often is that they repeatedly see character like them being badly and lazily written, either by having no proper character beyond being diverse or conversely feel like straight cis white character that just happens to mention they are diverse. On the other hand, the majority just sees these poorly made products and associate diversity and DEI with bad products. So failure on both goals. The answer is of course quality over quantity. It may take a while to get where we want to be, but it will get there without making things even worse with good intentions.By the way, there of course are great examples of well made diverse shows, but they are drowned out by the slop. My favorite example is the Owl house. The plot of the first episode is literally about being captured and placed into "the conformatorium" for being different and then escaping and dismantling the place. And it did this so smoothly I did not even realize there was any messaging in it until long after seeing it.
    • 1

      So how do you account for the fact that, in many instances where a white person and a black person have the exact same qualifications, the white person will be far more likely to be hired?

      How do you account for the fact that many people who are racial minorities aren't born into families that can afford things like living in a house that doesn't have leaded paint on the walls, meaning that a black person who has the exact same qualifications as a white person has had to work a lot harder to overcome their disadvantages to get those qualifications?

      How do you account for the fact that diverse teams of individuals simply produce better results in the free market than homogeneous ones as a result of their more varied viewpoints?

      There are so many reasons why "equity based on gender or skin color" for hiring and college applications and so on is absolutely necessary to address the inequities in our society, and why the baby steps that we've made since the civil rights movement haven't been nearly enough to address the problems that they were meant to address. Frankly we should be talking about reparations in the form of just straight up giving large swathes of land and fat stacks of cash to certain groups, especially African Americans and American Indians, not these piddly little affirmative action programs that only kind of exist in colleges but everyone assumes exist everywhere else too.

      2

      Nobody is brought down in the name of equity. What is brought down are the systems that privilege certain people based on aspects of themselves that they cannot control. If you think that tearing down white supremacy and patriarchy is the same as tearing down white people and men, then you need to ask yourself why you think that those groups of people are inseparable from their privileges

      3

      No argument here, Hollywood has always had lazy and awful shit and their attempts at lazy and awful inclusion are bad. Often the very groups that Hollywood directors purport to represent come out hard against bad representation too - like that french trans cartel leader film that just came out where the director said he didn't bother researching Mexico or Mexican culture before making a film that takes place there and where everyone speaks Spanish really badly.

      • Nobody is brought down in the name of equity. What is brought down are the systems that privilege certain people based on aspects of themselves that they cannot control.

        I'm not sure if this is a "DEI" issue or not, but businesses are bringing people down in the name of equity. A lot of colleges are charging $200k+ for tuition now, and they have programs where if your family's income is low enough they (supposedly) will waive a lot of it, but if your family is middle class you have to pay full tuition, which is something many of them cannot afford. Meanwhile this is not a barrier for wealthy people, so it's effectively making most people equally poor and barely able to afford CoL while the rich get richer rather than actually fixing the problem. I've heard that other businesses are starting to use similar tactics as well.

      • So how do you account for the fact that, in many instances where a white person and a black person have the exact same qualifications, the white person will be far more likely to be hired?

        By making policies to prevent that. Color blind policies. Just don't swing all the way to racist in the other direction.

        How do you account for the fact that many people who are racial minorities aren't born into families that can afford things like living in a house that doesn't already have leaded paint on the walls, meaning that a black person who has the exact same qualifications as a white person has had to work a lot harder to overcome their disadvantages to get those qualifications?

        I answered this question in my original comment. By helping people based on their situation, not skin color. There are rich black people. There are poor white people. Extremely poor people need support, rich people don't. Skin color is irrelevant.

        There are so many reasons why "equity based on gender or skin color" for hiring and college applications and so on is absolutely necessary to address the inequities in our society, and why the baby steps that we've made since the civil rights movement haven't been nearly enough to address the problems that they were meant to address.

        Sure, baby steps are slow. Cheating with this "affirmative action discrimination" hides the underlying issues while making them significantly worse. The white people they discriminate against are largely not the same people who profiteered on slavery and discrimination. You are just creating a new group of disadvantaged and oppressed people and push them towards raising up against your policies and to hate the people who benefit on their expense. This is what Trump took advantage of to win despite most people knowing what a shitty person he is.

        Frankly we should be talking about reparations in the form of just straight up giving large swathes of land and fat stacks of cash to certain groups, especially African Americans and American Indians, not these piddly little affirmative action programs that only kind of exist in colleges but everyone assumes exist everywhere else too.

        You are not entirely wrong, but there is a reason statues of limitations exist. Good luck finding the people who perpetuated and profited from racism and slavery or the people that were directly hurt. And making random rich white people, or even worse working people pay for it will cause so many more issues than it solves. I think it is too late to do this.

        Nobody is brought down in the name of equity.

        Maybe you don't do that, which, good for you. Many people do that. I don't like people who do that. If you don't do that, why are you so defensive?

        What is brought down are the systems that privilege certain people based on aspects of themselves that they cannot control.

        I explicitly wrote we should do that.

        No argument here, Hollywood has always had lazy and awful shit and their attempts at lazy and awful inclusion are bad. Often the very groups that Hollywood directors purport to represent come out hard against bad representation too - like that french trans cartel leader film that just came out where the director said he didn't bother researching Mexico or Mexican culture before making a film that takes place there and where everyone speaks Spanish really badly.

        👍

    • I appreciate your comment. I feel that DEI in its current form has a lot of things to hate about it. However I usually don't say anything because I'm worried someone will just call me a Nazi or something.

      I'm a Jewish democrat, but as a white man I feel like I'm basically guilty of original sin in these types of conversations.

  • This is my sad hill to die on, I guess, despite my personal feelings on why anti-discrimination across all aspects is important for society. But after reading some informed perspectives, I think I get where some of the DEI pushback is coming from.

    It’s not about diversity, equity or inclusion individually, but DEI as a concept, ie as an actionable form of some underlying ideology. It doesn’t matter if the practitioners of DEI may not subscribe to any underlying ideology, the fact is that DEI opponents are unconvinced about the allegiances of DEI practitioners in special contexts, like the military.

    I personally don’t care about having DEI in corporate or education contexts, but i think the concern there is that if the public thinks one way, then it will question why the military/govt doesn’t want to. So, I think I get why they removed DEI/CRT from corporate and education as well.

    Per my understanding, the pushback is coming jointly from the military, and the main point of contention was the CRT-derived idea of “inherent racism” or “whites as oppressors”. For example,

    CRT scholars argue that the social and legal construction of race advances the interests of white people[9][12] at the expense of people of color,[13][14] and that the liberal notion of U.S. law as "neutral" plays a significant role in maintaining a racially unjust social order,[15] where formally color-blind laws continue to have racially discriminatory outcomes.[16]

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_race_theory

    Here’s an article which says why DEI was necessarily started (the writer is an academic)

    DEI policies and practices were created to rectify the government-sanctioned discrimination that existed and systemic oppression that persists in the United States.

    https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/beyond-the-cubicle/202411/what-we-get-wrong-about-the-dei-backlash-narrative

    You have to appreciate why some part of the American armed forces pushes back on these ideas when your CO may be white, and you a minority. There are practical considerations to having such ideas in the back of your mind when you’re supposed to act without question and as a unit.

    Here’s some context for reading https://starrs.us/dei-how-to-have-the-conversation/

    Here’s another perspective from a Stanford professor, https://amgreatness.com/2024/03/25/will-dei-end-america-or-america-end-dei/

    Edit to clarify, I am not saying that we shouldn’t have anti-discrimination policies across different aspects of being a person. I am saying this is why some people don’t like/want DEI or CRT (which are distinct and separate from the existing anti-discrimination policies). And yes, I know the military has issues regarding race and sex discrimination. But I think people can address those without DEI or CRT.

    • DEI opponents are unconvinced about the allegiances of DEI practitioners

      The purest of projection and arguing in bad faith, as usual. Every time one of the administration slime balls describes how things will be based on merit and nothing else, they are lying. Either that, or the definition of “merit” now includes genetic information.

      • I don’t think all people have good intentions towards others, they most definitely do not, but CRT and it’s related concepts only create divisiveness.

    • Segregation and hate raise crime, wealth disparity, and breed unhappiness. The best way to dispell racism is through education and integration of all the people's. That is what DEI is about. Slowly they all learn they are not much different and they blend together until all is forgot. So why does someone want it gone when it will cause only problems long term one may ask? Because it is easier to divide and conqueur using hate than education. CRT is taught to lawyers in college, anyone who thinks it is being taught to their kids has been fed lies and likely doesn't know what it is. So someone divides the population by blaming all problems on a specific people, keeps repeating everything being their fault, and you build hate. Block efficiency in the current government, blame the peoples struggles on the chosen group of hate. Keep blowing in those flames and spread the hatred far and wide until the hate for those people means more to the majority than their own wants. Once you have that majority vote and get in then your sink your anchor, and have 2 options. Unite the people by using a war with a foreign power and in the midst use executive powers during the state of emergency to make the presidency all powerful with no intention of giving up that power, or option 2, strain the economy and stoke the hatred until a civil war breaks out, and declare the emergency powers the same. Either way the reason to attack DEI was always the same, to gain power without reguard to how many people get hurt along the way. Racism and sexism are weapons being weilded by politicians manipulating the people's priorities. They control the media, the Treasury, the military, they bought the judges and now we go the way of Turkey and Russia. A dictatorship is being born, the question left is just what will be the state of emergency used to grab the rest of the power to ensure the legislative branch s is powerless to take the powers back after 90 days

      • Either way the reason to attack DEI was always the same, to gain power without reguard to how many people get hurt along the way.

        I think one of the issues which comes up are mandates. If there are underemployed minorities in society, then we have a problem. If that happens, then DEI should be brought back. I agree that some people are racist, and that life creates situations which kill individual potential.

        That’s why it’s important to have these ideas be part of social discourse. I don’t agree with CRT (that legal and social systems help white people only), or that DEI addresses the core issues with bad luck creating uneven conditions for individuals. The core issue is that people of all races and cultures experience bad luck. Most people are not going to be rich enough to afford even an upper middle class lifestyle. So, if there is a policy which seems to favor only a certain type of people, it will only create resentment or jealousy, and divisions. Poor whites consistently vote republican because they don’t get the kind of help they need from democrats either. We need the Nordic model in the US.

        I personally think education is the best option we have to counter the effect of bad luck on people’s lives and their outcomes. So, the ire that people are putting towards USAID or DEI going away should be firmly focused at ensuring that the Dept of Education remains intact for serving the most people.

        Edit the danger, I think, is in thinking that just because someone is X they are moral or ethical. I think the inverse of that is that just because someone is not X, then they are immoral and unethical. The kind of reduction of personhood to arbitrary characteristics which forms the basis of predictive policing algorithms, so I can’t support that.

  • I hate it empowering the face eating of itself: Or once again fascists benefiting from DEI to.....abolish DEI.

    Can we do anything with:

    Like we report Let's Encrypt+ISRG for being DEI!! Would their certs expire then? 😣

    Are  their Re-captchas having a cert issue?

    https://letsencrypt.org/

    press@letsencrypt.org

    548 Market St, PMB 77519, San Francisco, CA 94104-5401, USA Send all mail or inquiries to: PO Box 18666, Minneapolis, MN 55418-0666, USA

    https://www.abetterinternet.org/

    press@abetterinternet.org

    548 Market St, PMB 77519, San Francisco, California 94104-5401 Send all mail or inquiries to: PO Box 18666, Minneapolis, MN 55418-0666, USA

  • Counterpoint: the phrase first proposed by Serj Tankian, an armenian biblical scholar, reading 'When Angels deserve to DEI', implies that even the God's very servants strive to have DEI programs used in their hiring and career proposals.

    Why are you snorting blood my friend, did I say something wrong?

270 comments