• DreamlandLividity@lemmy.world
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    21 days ago

    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.

    • hesusingthespiritbomb@lemmy.world
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      21 days ago

      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.

      • DreamlandLividity@lemmy.world
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        21 days ago

        I know what you mean. The whole being incredibly hostile to like minded people over minor disagreements is it’s own massive issue, but let’s only open one can of worms at a time.

    • Carl@lemm.ee
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      21 days ago

      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.

      • DreamlandLividity@lemmy.world
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        21 days ago

        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.

        👍

        • Carl@lemm.ee
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          21 days ago

          Color blind policies.

          I don’t think you understand. A color blind policy will, by definition, be unable to address issues which are not color blind.

          • DreamlandLividity@lemmy.world
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            21 days ago

            Color blind hiring policies. We were talking about hiring.

            If there are issues not related to the hiring process that make disadvantaged people less qualified, you fix those issues at the source. Ignoring them at hiring just hides the issues making it less likely to be fixed while creating new issues I pointed out.

            Besides, what issue is actually not colorblind? Race is basically always a proxy for a different cause. You should not be lazy and identify the real cause, then solve it based on that to ensure people don’t fall through the cracks.

            • Semjaza@lemmynsfw.com
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              21 days ago

              France has always been officially colour blind, and they’re the most racist and racially i equal country in Western Europe.

              Colourblind policies don’t help as people in authority’s implicit biases get freer reign.

              • DreamlandLividity@lemmy.world
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                21 days ago

                “Badly implemented colorblind policies didn’t stop racism in this one country, so let’s have explicitly racist policies.”

                If they are still racist, they are not colorblind. Make stronger colorblind policies and enforce them. Color aware policies don’t do anything either if they are only on paper.

                Besides, you ignore the point of my criticism. Color aware policies don’t prevent inequity, they shift it elsewhere. They keep some places and aspects of life racist while having other be reverse racist. On individual level, the inequity increases, but people pat themselves on the back because when you only look at it based on color, it averages out. It is like saying we should increase the pay of Billionaires to increase average wages. The statistic looks better, but it did not help most people.

                • Semjaza@lemmynsfw.com
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                  21 days ago

                  I think we may be operating on different suppositions, so addressing that rather than wasting time clarifying details about France’s choice to never record demographic stats for things would be best.

                  Do you think systemic racism exists and is a large problem in the USA or France?

  • Ensrick@real.lemmy.fan
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    20 days ago

    A friend of mine used to do food runs for his office, where about 40% of the employees were black. The team voted on what they wanted, and they almost always chose Wing Stop because it was popular. Despite this, he was called into a meeting and accused of racial profiling for bringing “fried chicken” to a mostly black workplace. This experience reflects the way DEI programs often operate. They focus almost excessively on race, and identity, and thrive on controversy.

    Originally, these initiatives created programs where people who came to companies did so to fix the issues and leave. Apparently that didn’t work./ Instead, they’ve become permanent fixtures in workplaces, incentivized to perpetuate problems rather than solve them. With their continued presence, they encourage reporting and policing of behavior, creating a culture of fear and compliance rather than genuine inclusion.

    DEI initiatives have failed. They’ve been in place for several years, yet we always hear constant rhetoric that racism and discrimination is becoming more of a problem? Instead, these programs have probably radicalized more people than any fringe political group. Many now define their views in opposition to their perceived opponents rather than on principles.

    Ironically, DEI encourages prejudice. I’ve personally been told to create a bias in favor of minorities to combat existing bias, which only results in a new form of discrimination; it doesn’t eliminate the existing biases. The approach based on “privilege” encouraged me to assume all black people are disadvantaged and all white people are privileged and implicitly biased. Guilt and shame are used as tools to enforce conformity, pressuring people to adopt a specific moral stance while condemning those who don’t. People are praised for being sanctimonious. It’s become popular to call out others while simultaneously making self-righteous shows of one’s own behavior.

    • Scott_of_the_Arctic@lemmy.world
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      20 days ago

      Fried chicken and watermelon are southern food, not black food. My partner is from the south, white, and we often eat things like red beans and rice, gumbo and cornbread, etc. Her grandad often brought watermelon into work, because he grew them and wanted to share it with his colleagues. Food isn’t a racial thing it’s a regional thing. Pisses me off when people refer to black food or white food. I personally regard lamb vindaloo as the best savoury food that has ever been made. I’m not Indian. Sorry for going off topic.

    • Phoenicianpirate@lemm.ee
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      20 days ago

      That’s not what DEI even is. Ironically DEI and affirmative action was used in only a few select places that were historically so opposed to anyone from a minority group that they HAD to have some others be put in order to allow people with qualifications and aren’t white to enter.

      If you want to know the reality of a what a world without DEI looks like, look at what Trump and the republicans have been doing for the past 20 years. They aren’t concerned with qualifications or ‘meritocracy’ despite their ceaseless whining about it. They are the ones actually pulling an actual agenda and will only hire people willing to push it, even if they do so very badly.

      If you think Pete Hegseth is qualified as secretary of defense, then you aren’t concerned with qualifications.

  • underwire212@lemm.ee
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    19 days ago

    I mean I certainly don’t oppose getting rid of DEI but let’s not be haste in assuming what something is called is actually what it is.

    Is North Korea a Democracy? They are called the DPRK no? Democratic people’s republic?

    Edit: Meant to say I do oppose getting rid of DEI. English is hard

  • vga@sopuli.xyz
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    20 days ago

    Right. So I guess if you hate nazis, you hate socialists.

    • rocket_dragon@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      20 days ago

      You really thought you ate with that one, huh? Nationalists are people who are pro ethnic cleansing in support of an ethno state. See also: White Nationalists, Christian Nationalists. I hate Nazis and Nationalists.

    • endeavor@sopuli.xyz
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      20 days ago

      Every good capitalist country has a socialist democracy that provides an ample safety net. Just cause you want a reasonable society where people don’t need to get lifelong debt for things that have been proven can be free, doesn’t mean you’re some tankie communist who wants to holodomor

  • bluelander@lemmy.ml
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    21 days ago

    This 1000%. Stop separating your words from their meanings.

    Say what you mean and mean what you say.

  • Captain Howdy@lemm.ee
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    21 days ago

    Simple: It’s diversity. They hate diversity and would rather live their lives only interacting with people like themselves and never having their world view challenged.

    It’s racism and there’s a shocking amount of folks who will just straight up tell you that they are racist if it’s not in public where it could affect their jobs. There’s also plenty of losers who don’t care and are just openly racist, but they don’t tend to have careers on the line.

    • cuerdo@lemmy.world
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      21 days ago

      No, they are fine with diversity, the problem is inclusion.

      I heard it from racists: “I am not racists, I am just organized”

      They love a world where people with another skin tone are subordinated.

    • snooggums@lemmy.world
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      21 days ago

      Affirmative action is just an attempt to counter the existing systemic bias against minorities and women. It doesn’t bypass any requirements, it just makes it so that fewer hiring/accepting decisions are “just hire a white guy” because that is literally how many hiring decisions are made.

      A white kid born to rich parents that can afford all the extra curriculars and who had personal tutors and was able to do an unpaid internship and has connections has an advantage on paper even without knowing the color of their skin. Affirmative action just means that someone who is far less likely to have those advantages but otherwise meets the minimum criteria gets a chance too.

    • sus@programming.dev
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      21 days ago

      I don’t see affirmative action as fundamentally bad. Applied correctly and not too heavy-handedly, the privileged will still have equal opportunity to enroll or get the job, per amount of effort they put in, etc. And even if it is a bit too strong, their privilege will most likely make up for it in other ways.

      In practice though, it’s highly susceptible to backfire effects and is usually on the wrong side of “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure”. You can’t expect someone who grew up malnourished, undereducated and generally mistreated by society to suddenly bounce back and become a “model citizen” when they get a good job or scholarship, statistically speaking.

  • DarkFuture@lemmy.world
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    21 days ago

    Or you could ask them if they know what DEI stands for.

    Spoiler Alert: They don’t.

    They love hating acronyms and nicknames repeated by their media sources that they know literally nothing about.

        • theangryseal@lemmy.world
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          21 days ago

          When Enlong goes to Mars, can you believe it? They said on Twitter, well, now it’s X but you still tweet. They banned me before Lonnie bought it. They said, “When Eenlin goes to mars, which is a planet by the way. Like Earth but orange. Orange, don’t get me started. They say I’m orange. Do I look orange? Maybe the radical left will call me Marsolini. You people are beautiful. But mars is a planet and Erod is gonna take us there folks. I’ll be the president of mars if you can believe that. Kennedy wanted to go to the moon. Ellen wants to go to mars. Very smart people, with the rockets. They can land them now. Rockets is very powerful stuff. My uncle, very smart, good genes, he said, “Donald, rockets is very powerful stuff.” I always thought that, but who knew? Now everybody is talking about it.

  • RamenJunkie@midwest.social
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    21 days ago

    Reminds me of the “Lets Go Brandon” crap.

    Like, if you really dislike Biden, just say “Fuck Joe Biden.”. I have zero issue saying “Fuck Trump,” because, fuck trump.

    Locally in Illinois there were also these signs everywhere that said “Pritzker Sucks” in huge letters, then at the bottom in tiny print “the life out of small business.”

    Like seriously, I am less disgusted by your stance, than I am about your pussy ass lack of conviction.

    • CoffeeJunkie@lemmy.cafe
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      21 days ago

      That wasn’t the point of the “Let’s Go Brandon” crap. At all.

      Then yeah the Pritzker Sucks…the life out of small businesses is a simple double-play, a cheeky “gotcha”. Not a lack of conviction at all.

        • Schadrach@lemmy.sdf.org
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          21 days ago

          It’s a reaction to a reporter at a NASCAR event hearing the crowd yell “Fuck Joe Biden” and pretending they said “Let’s Go Brandon” - they basically just ran with it. The entire connection between the two is a reporter openly lying about what a crowd was audibly yelling. This resonates hard with the sort of people who believe the mainstream media (meaning all major news media except the largest cable news network, of course) is extremely deceitful at every turn to protect a Democrat agenda.

        • Oyml77@lemmy.today
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          21 days ago

          From another answer the user provided in this thread, it sounds like the point was saying “Fuck Joe Biden” while self-censoring themselves because they felt like the reporter who said the NASCAR fans yelling “Fuck Joe Biden” said they were saying “Let’s Go Brandon” as an act of censorship.

          So pretty much the point is saying “Fuck Joe Biden” without actually saying the words, which is what we all thought they were doing, while adding some sort of ironic anti-censorship tweak to it by censoring it.

          Sounds like a long way to go when they could have just said “Fuck Joe Biden.”

          • RamenJunkie@midwest.social
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            21 days ago

            Yeah, basically, exactly what I said.

            A bunch of pussy fucks who think “Fuck Joe Biden” is too naughty.

            Bunch if pansy coward.

      • SoftestSapphic@lemmy.world
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        21 days ago

        It’s the equivalent of children thinking they are clever for speaking in pig latin

        But I would probably try to backpedal if I said that stupid shit too

        • CoffeeJunkie@lemmy.cafe
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          21 days ago

          …no… Still not the story behind Let’s Go Brandon. It’s a constant call to attention that a reporter tried to lie about a crowd of young men yelling “Fuck Joe Biden” at a NASCAR race. Insisting they were instead chanting, “Let’s Go Brandon”.

          So much like the Pritzker signs with dual meaning, when they were saying Let’s Go Brandon, it’s not only saying Fuck Joe Biden, but also fuck the people censoring speech.

          • RamenJunkie@midwest.social
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            21 days ago

            I get the origin. I understand it.

            Thatbdoesn’t change that its a cop out for people to try to be edgy but think saying “Fuck” is a little too edgy.

          • SoftestSapphic@lemmy.world
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            21 days ago

            I’m sure the people who midlessly chant that know the etymology of the phrase and aren’t just screaming fuck joe biden in pig latin

  • ThirdConsul@lemmy.ml
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    21 days ago

    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.

    • djsoren19@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      21 days ago

      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.

    • badmin@lemm.ee
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      21 days ago

      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.

      • octopus_ink@lemmy.ml
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        21 days ago

        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.

    • Olgratin_Magmatoe@slrpnk.net
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      21 days ago

      Diversity refers to the presence of variety within the organizational workforce, such as in identity and identity politics. It includes gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, disability, age, culture, class, religion, or opinion.

      Equity refers to concepts of fairness and justice, such as fair compensation and substantive equality. More specifically, equity usually also includes a focus on societal disparities and allocating resources and “decision making authority to groups that have historically been disadvantaged”, and taking “into consideration a person’s unique circumstances, adjusting treatment accordingly so that the end result is equal.”

      Finally, inclusion refers to creating an organizational culture that creates an experience where “all employees feel their voices will be heard”, and a sense of belonging and integration.

      https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diversity,_equity,_and_inclusion

    • meliaesc@lemmy.world
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      21 days ago

      DEI is having a job fair at a school for the deaf, it’s having unisex bathroom stalls, it’s allowing religious/traditional holiday celebrations, it’s training against racism. Every person hired is still qualified, but the company expands their hiring practice and their culture.

    • LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      21 days ago

      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.

      • ThirdConsul@lemmy.ml
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        21 days ago

        opportunities to new generations to help close the wealth gap

        So… New age trickle down economics instead of making stronger labor law and helping workers take part of the wealth stolen by the rich?

        Thank you for the explanation. It was informative, even if some of it sounds… irrelevant?

        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.

        It’s harder for African American folks to go to Harvard because of wealth disparity as you explained, but the suggestion there should be a proportional number of races in Harvard is (benevolently) racist.

    • octopus_ink@lemmy.ml
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      21 days ago

      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 @badmin@lemm.ee 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.

    • Sturgist@lemmy.ca
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      21 days ago

      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.

  • nifty@lemmy.world
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    21 days ago

    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.

    • Zink@programming.dev
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      21 days ago

      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.

      • nifty@lemmy.world
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        20 days ago

        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.

    • LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      21 days ago

      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

      • nifty@lemmy.world
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        20 days ago

        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.

        • LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          20 days ago

          The wealth gap is 6:1 of White Americans : African Americans. Racism is rising and many people who weren’t acting racist 20 years ago are today. For the first time since the end of slavery the wealth gap is growing again instead of slowly balancing out. The number of people who hate migrants right now when they pay more in taxes and commit less crime is unbelievably high. It is all about using hatred as a tool. People complain about low birth rates, yet if you replace every migrant with a person born here crime would be higher and less taxes would be paid. So does that just mean people are pro crime? If so why are they using the lies about crime to get people to distrust and hate people the don’t know? Notice the claims of emptying their prisons and sending those bad people here. Yet those countries are demanding you don’t have them in handcuffs or treat the poorly when shipping them back. If they were dangerous people… They would want them in cuffs… Most every country in the Americas has extradition law/agreements. So if any of them had actually committed murder or rape in their home country before fleeing here, they would be shipped back under extradition. Yet they aren’t, because they didn’t do any of these claims that the media and politicians are using to blanket statement mass groups of people with. Hate sells and gets views. That’s how so many media stations make money. Yet it hurts the people. If we want a peaceful nation with low crime and a happier populous we need to fix the wealth distribution between the rich and the poor and make it so no one is experiencing hard times. Also fines for media outlets need to exceed their profits when they make claims about groups of people that are not verifyanly true. Spreading hate will never be the answer to a happy society.

          There is absolutely no reason everyone in this country shouldn’t have access to a climate controlled area to rest and food accessible so they don’t starve. Our health care costs are twice Canada’s and yet we have to pay out of pocket for all of it. Why is that? Because people have been told over and over to worry more about migrants, African Americans, Hispanics, Muslims, The middle East in general, and so on and used the hate to prioritize that hate over voting to have healthcare rights.

          You can pay less in taxes than you do right now and have free healthcare. Isn’t that just stupid? But pharmaceutical companies lobby politicians to keep you distracted with things that shouldn’t need to be concerns in our lives, and make us worried and keep that money flowing into their pockets.

          Also, Free healthcare isn’t Free. We are already paying for it, we just aren’t getting what we are paying for.

  • deaf_fish@lemm.ee
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    21 days ago

    I mostly like DEI. But I’m concerned that it is running cover for corporations. DEI is not about expanding opportunities to people evenly. DEI is about expanding opportunities to people that make the company more money. DEI alone is not enough for a fair and equitable society.

      • deaf_fish@lemm.ee
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        20 days ago

        How isn’t it? The company I’m working for is touting it as them being so progressive. Meanwhile, they’re only making changes that make them more money. None of the changes they’re making is adding any risk.

        • RegalPotoo@lemmy.world
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          20 days ago

          That’s what I mean - only doing DEI things only when there is a profit motive isn’t ideal, but it’s better than not doing DEI at all.

          In an ideal world, doing the right thing would either always be the profitable thing to do (either because customers are smart, or because laws punish you if you don’t), or companies would do the right thing regardless of profit simply because it’s the right thing, but clearly we don’t live in an ideal world.