DOE requires plans to promote diversity from grant applicants
science.org
science.org
Meanwhile, big tech is gentrifying Durham, people of color are being pushed out, and these companies keep plastering signs everywhere about how they stand for diversity and inclusion.
Science is science. Leave it the fuck alone. Give everyone equal opportunity, and train them to become the best damn scientists they can be. Then give out grants.
I remember about 5 years ago, Facebook issued a report about its diversity numbers, and it put partial blame on the pipeline problem, saying they basically couldn't hire enough qualified people of certain demographics, and the entire DEI community blew up with how incorrect that was. I specifically remember some ridiculous outrage over "How can you compare people to oil?!"
However, I've never really found any compelling arguments that the entire situation isn't a pipeline problem, and my own anecdotal experience is that there is definitely something amiss in the pipeline - in my "Intro to Programming" middle school class in the mid 90s, purely elective(you just check a box on a mail in form over the summer), the students were 24 white boys and 1 white girl, despite the school being 50/50 by sex, ~20% black and 15% latino.
I actually think it's a little more insidious than that. Large companies, already established in their respective industries, build what are competitive moats by employing the DEI industry. Scrappy start-up that has something intriguing to offer? Oh but you don't have a VP of Diversity and Inclusion (that you can't afford) and you don't have a plan for ... I don't know what, exactly. Well you're not part of the team then. Companies like Google, Amazon, and so on actually want this to continue because it stifles competition.
It's worse than that.
FB sent me and my cofounder a C&D for our side project, then wanted to hire me for their "black clique" in NYC to work on react ~2015 when i was working on brain computer interfaces at the time at a lab.
You know you are gonna get the "easy lay up", everyone there will know it too (I'm not the type to put much effort into studying for tech interviews and I have cheme background not compsi so i find the questions dull many times). And all of the "of color" people who play into it for their personal benefit just make it worse... (not to mention, even for a lot of these kinds of software jobs i had that weren't very interesting intellectually but paid alot, I pretty much vaped as much weed as I could just to make to lunch, and I would have played into all those sterotypes about black men as well...)
Fuck em.
Pointing to the (fairly obvious) impact of the pipeline issues goes against their dogma and the grift that goes with it.
This is actually fairly mainstream elite conservative opinion, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bell_Curve for instance.
Not all that satisfying an answer in my opinion, but I can't entirely discount it. I'd say the jury is still well out though.
Is concern for the consequences worth it to suppress the truth - being that some races are simply less intelligent than others (on average). If that is true, then there is no need to make any changes - each race has already assumed their proper place in our meritocratic society.
And taking off that hat, I agree with your thoughts and concerns. I will say that it's uncontroversial that there are IQ differences in race, but it's far from proven that those differences are purely genetic and can't be attributed to societal differences.
The search for objective truth isn't the main concern but rather the premise from which we jump to justifying prescriptive claims, which are by definition outside of the purview of the scientific method. In this case, using the idea that certain groups are more intelligent than average than others to push forward highly culturally specific modes of societal organization.
Yes and no - this explanation is partially correct, in that the impossibility of hiring the kind of demographic distribution DEI advocates want causally precedes any decision made by tech companies.
However, "pipeline problem" incorrectly implies that the reality of hiring demography is the result of some kind of process failure (e.g. in early schooling) rather than a natural outcome of culture, biology, etc. (which high-quality research is fairly unequivocal about, although most people would never know this as it violates core dogma of the American state-secular belief system).
Science is science? Okay then. Is tech tech? It seems that there are more white and Asian people in tech, and Apple is hiring in RDU. Should they not hire the best technologists? Should those technologists not have homes in the area?
By “gentrifying”, it seems you just mean white people moving for their jobs. Why isn’t that allowed in your book? Have black people claimed the Durham area as theirs forever? What nonsense.
Let’s just speak openly: you’re part of the problem. Neighborhoods can’t get claimed by any given race. People can move where they want. Successful businesses adding jobs to a historically poorer area is a good thing, and you shouldn’t use silly code words like “gentrification” to signal that you don’t want whites moving into your town.
I do worry about the long-term consequences of removing the "natural selection" factor. My best friend growing up was Korean. His parents were dirt-poor but he was still more academically successful than me and got a better job out of university than me. Because he worked the absolute shit out of himself. The idea someone would deny him an opportunity in order to give it to someone else because of their ethnicity who didn't work as hard nauseates me.
By “gentrifying”, it seems you just mean white people moving for their jobs. Why isn’t that allowed in your book? Have black people claimed the Durham area as theirs forever? What nonsense.
White people move in, it's gentrification. White people move out, it's white flight. Some arguments are doomed to intractability from the start.
This is because funding for upstream programs are ignored in these discussions about student loans, affirmative action, and now DOE grants.
K-12 public schools and literacy rates are shit in the US compared to much of the developed world, and we're sitting here yapping about diversity in applied physics research.
What the actual fuck?
Equal standards for every one. Every adult, child, race, and creed. Every ladder at every rung. Not all outcomes will be equal and any sort of do-gooder (and often do-badder) effort to “correct” for disparities will be worse than doing nothing at all.
Because the admission programs to the desirable schools at all levels utilize affirmative action to try to reach this end.
Source: went to private schools my entire life. Saw affirmative action at every admission level (1st grade, 6th, 9th, undergrad, and grad school). Have plenty of friends today working in some prestigious jobs/industries who were basically pushed to the next level undeservingly for the final ~6-8 years of their education. And even when they weren’t reaching the next rung undeservingly, they were attending a school that they didn’t have the test scores to get into on pure merit alone. And you better believe they displaced more deserving kids from the area.
>Surely everyone has the right to a good basic education regardless of where they come from?
The poster that I was replying to never made this claim, and I never rebuked it.
I don't think you're addressing what the OP was suggesting. We should be making public schools desirable to go to. If everyone can get a decent education, you might have a chance of not having an affirmative action problem.
For example in Australia, wealthy private schools over funded. But the parents are already well off, they can fund themselves. Meanwhile there are public schools that are under funded. All that money should be going to public schools and building a great public schools system. The US probably has problems with the public school system too.
Yes, you could say tough luck, kids: that's just life and people can move in and out. However, we can clearly see that gentrification is a real concept that people will fight to prevent with some justification and not just some social justice dog-whistle.
If people wish to maintain the racial makeup of their neighborhood then they should at least be honest about it. Don't use dogwhisles like neighborhood character when everyone knows it means race
Don't assume your own North American perspective maps to everything.
The second problem is intentional and unintentional prejudice and biases people have, there is no way around combating that actively. I don't mean giving someone an upper hand because of their color but focusing on schools and companies that admit and hire applicants in a way that deviates from meritocracy. What prevents someone from thinking "asians are smart" or the unconsciously think "asian CEOs aren't a thing"? (Just an example.)
There will always be a need to enforce meritocracy, use whateber name you like. If all this affirmatice action b.s. is to end the you better also support very agressive meritocracy enforcement and paying taxes to support communities you don't live in that were affected by historical racism and prejudice. If you live in a nice suburb and you don't want to pay taxes for inner city schools, parks,etc... (or rural) then you don't get to complain about bullshit affirmative action. Something gotta give.
I can’t help but notice that this is a bit self serving.
We throw a ton of money into the public school system, but the results are less than ideal. It is a system that has not changed much over time.
For reference what is actually required, have a look at this FOA, search for "Appendix 5": https://science.osti.gov/grants/FOAs/-/media/grants/pdf/foas...
For me, science is sacred and this initiative is a true sacrilege.
> Researchers seeking funding from the United States’s single biggest funder of the physical sciences will now have to think about how they can structure their own efforts to promote greater participation by researchers and students of color and from other underrepresented groups.
ie. If a well endowned university that was recieving DoE grants were to underwrite the expansion of education and scholarships programs at pre-K, elementary, and middle schools within their intake catchment areas to be more inclusive of people diverse in background,
then they can submit that activity as evidence of their efforts to expand the divisity of the researcher pool.
Granted it's an approach that takes years to bear fruit .. but it's the kind of approach that actually works and happens within the education sector of other countries that seek to lift all citizens access to education that matches their ability.
Of course, this smacks of five year (and ten year (and fifteen year)) planning .. so, communism | socialism. etc.
Brilliant.
Talent capable of pushing the boundaries of science is extremely scarce in humans, and it makes no sense to make it artificially scarcer.
It's funny, I almost ended there but realized: I didn't even make the point that it demeans the work itself, and the people who actually can do it. And that's tantamount to acknowledging non-minority people's rights, and that is socially very dangerous thing to do right now.
It's bad for the ones who would have achieved these things on merit, but it's evidently good enough for the rest of them that (as a voting bloc) they will reliably support people who push these kinds of policies.
I think it's hard to understand when you're not part of a group that interacts this way with the political system. There's no Asian Jim Clyburn.
We still care about the issue because it has a profound effect on mediocre software engineers of various ethnicities and with various genitals.
Well, but maybe you will. Because if you’re not “diverse enough”, some more “diverse enough” person, maybe less qualified, will take your place.
It’s frustrating to see, especially when somebody is discriminated against for e.g. being white, but fills “other” URM boxes that aren’t visible such as sexuality or gender identity. A well-off cis-het person with worse qualifications will be given higher priority at resume review stage than a destitute queer person just because they have the ethnicity the company is looking for.
> I believe that the vast majority of physicists—even the vast majority of white male physicists—want a more diverse and representative community
I think the trick with this statement is the white people who get screwed by the policy won’t be employable as physicists anymore due to lack of funding so they don’t count as not wanting this since they’re won’t ever become physicists. But sure the elite white physicists will talk about how fantastic this is so they can get invited to parties, it’s not like they will ever become victims of their own rhetoric. It’s obviously the people who will be most adversely affected whose opinions who matter most, and those are the B students, not the established physicists.
The other trick of course is that Asians are going to take the hit far more than Whites are but this isn’t talked about because Asians have more public sympathy. They aren’t thought of as a group with collective racial guilt to the same degree.
When the DEI people say “hey hire out of this HBCU, not out of this elite college with tons of legacy admissions which there is almost no pathway to from a school in a poor neighbourhood” that’s not all evil and terror.
But the DEI people went to the elite college with legacy admissions, and work there now. "DEI" is "more BIPOCs at elite colleges to which there's no pathway from a poor neighborhood."
I think there is some social good in equity at any cost just so society doesn’t devolve into race riots because of rightfully pissed off people whose families never got a fair shot to ever do things like grow generational wealth.
They fixed that inconsistency by redefining racism in terms of power/oppression rather than "discrimination based on skin color".
The racist stuff that matters is more how HR engages in ways to implement racial discrimination of questionable legality if it ever hit the highest court in the land but which has never been specifically tried against before and which is so unfamiliar that people don’t fully understand the implications. They engineer novel and creative means of racial discrimination in hiring to meet their quotas, things that would make any Hollywood accountant jealous. Since the law is practically internally contradictory (you can’t hire too many Whites and Asians but you can’t have a literal White and Asian quota) it leads to all manner of imagineering.
Even some talented people who did work for the Project got life-altering roadblocks later on such as Qian Xuesen.
Relevant quote:
As part of a new science and technology “risk matrix,” which has not been made public, the Department of Energy also said it would not fund joint research or support “sensitive country foreign nationals.”
Your sarcasm is hilariously misplaced because the person I cited was driven away by stubborn US officials only to become the leading light behind the Chinese nuclear program. All they had to do was leave him alone. So yes, what you are describing literally happened...
How do we end up with someone who was subject to the behaviour we want to avoid, coming up with a set of policies that can be gamed in the way we want to avoid?
For if the bomb that drops on you
Gets your friends and neighbors too
There'll be nobody left behind to grieve
And we will all go together when we go
What a comforting fact that is to know
Universal bereavement -
An inspiring achievement!
Yes, we all will go together when we goPersonally I think it's strange to force a rather arbitrary inclusivity metric into scientific research.
Seriously diversity is a mind virus at this point. North america is one the the most diverse, just equitable place that ever existed in the history of humanity.
The next owners can redo it if they care.
https://science.osti.gov/SW-DEI/DOE-Diversity-Equity-and-Inc... specifically includes "age, ... diversity of thought, technical expertise, and life experiences."
Still, Mason says, she’s encouraged by the initiative. “I’m an optimist,” she says. “I believe that the vast majority of physicists—even the vast majority of white male physicists—want a more diverse and representative community.”
I get it that some people's personal sacrifices can benefit humanity at large, but why are those who are supposedly most downtrodden have to sacrifice more? Helping people pick up a marketable skill is a good thing, and can be done on need and motivation bases rather than scrutinizing one's melanin levels. But pushing people into lower pay jobs than they could do just to feel enlightened is just cruel.
In any case, depending how you see it, /all/ phd students survive on government grants. Because that's how the work is funded. It's not hand outs.
So are they saying they need to spend some of their grant money on extra tutoring for whatever few black students they manage to find?
I haven't transitioned on paper yet, but may if it proves useful.
I have no respect for these processes, and feel no guilt about my responses.
I am gay. Prove me wrong.
p.s. there are doubtless plenty who are fr but there's a lot of bs too.
it does matter if people start getting advantages from it, though, and that's literally the subject of this thread. hell if it meant the difference between grant and no grant i'd claim it, what can they do?
https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2013/08/exemption-gay-m...
" If the psychological diagnosis confirms the individual’s homosexuality, an official, permanent exemption is issued for him. More often than not, a thorough rectal exam follows the mental evaluation. The physician’s observations providing proof of occurred same-sex intercourse is then written formally and submitted to the military. In some cases, further detail-oriented exams come into play, so the decision-makers can be certain of the applicant’s “queerness," making sure they are genuine, not a false pretense to escape the service. "
It's honestly a disgusting overreach whether you're trying to include or exclude people of whatever sexual proclivity. We can become like Iran, but for any ideology, given enough time and institutionalized dogmatism.
The weird thing about this is that you're relying on a clear sense of your own identity (that you are not gay, because if you were you wouldn't challenge someone to prove you wrong, you'd just say it) to deny the value of other people doing the same thing, but with a different answer.
To wit: you're yelling about your own sexuality in an argument about how we shouldn't have to hear about someone else's. You know how all those woke folk talk about "privilege"? That's what privilege is. Trans kids don't get to say stuff like that on the internet, only straight guys.
But it does and while it does, I shall claim I am gay.
[1] I mean, why not just say "I'm gay, and I this helps me even though it shouldn't"? It's because you don't want people to think you're actually gay, right? I find that really interesting.
And that's exactly my point: you KNOW he's not gay (because of his careful phrasing), and you find it "snide" to suggest that anyone think he is, when he's not. You agree with him (and me!) that his identity is important and worth respecting. And... isn't that exactly what diversity policies are intended to encourage?
I'm drawing attention to that fact, and the fact that the other upthread commenter and you seem to be likening the possibility that someone might think he was[1] as some kind of insult. And that's exactly why identity matters, even among people who claim it doesn't. It matters to you that people not confuse someone for being gay.
And I'm hoping maybe you take that to heart and realize that other people think the same way about their own identities. This seemed like a learning opportunity to me.
[1] Which, again, was the whole idea! He was going to claim he was gay to the DOE!
More generally, cynicism about diversity points doesn't automatically mean disagreeing with the validity of LGBT or non-LGBT identity, just the validity of the corporate approach to that identity.
No, all three of you are clearly bothered by the idea that someone would be incorrectly identified. Identity matters to all three of you. All I'm asking is that you recognize that it matters to other people too, like for example the DOE grant reviewers.
At no point have any of us indicated that we care about misidentification. The original comment had to imply he was straight in order for his point to make sense. His point being anyone can lie about their identity for personal gain if that opportunity presents itself. That is the only point that was being made.
I can obviously only speak for myself, but identity doesn’t matter to me one bit. If I need to lie and say I’m gay on a form to achieve something I otherwise wouldn’t, I will do so. I also don’t care if that means people actually think I’m gay. They might be shocked when they see me with my wife though.
Lol, trans kids get to say any ridiculous shit they want to. What internet are you on?
The ultimate issue is the cronyism of Science.
This reminds me of the fact that 80% of new hire professorships already come from only 20% of schools.
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2022/09/23/new-study-fin...
Anything that is regulated by the government tends towards cronyism instead of competence over time because they have an endless flow of taxpayer money so no competence is needed to keep the money flowing.
Easier said than done but pressure and needs lead to innovation.
Giving things to people who have been treated unfairly seems fair. But each individual in the group is different.
Do you want to help a member of this group because (X) they have been treated unfairly? Or because (Y) they are a member of the group?
- I have seen the same woman get invited to countless hiring panels, as hiring panels need to be "diverse". Hiring panels are multi-hour endeavors and take away from her productive time, but she is afraid to say no as she feels she'd be contributing to an inequitable workplace otherwise.
- I have seen a black woman invited to a hiring panel and when it came to ask the "DEI question" (to check for a commitment to DEI in an applicant), all of the eyes in the room were on her, her being the only "diverse" person in a room with people of four ethnicities.
- I have seen a white man close to retirement afraid to ask questions about the diversity initiatives as he was afraid to be labelled a certain way and was "not willing to take the risk of repercussion".
- I have seen DEI informally used to justify hires, as the hires had the right gender and/or skin color and supervisors get evaluated on their commitment to DEI on the yearly performance review.
- I have been asked to acknowledge my "white privilege" in a DEI seminar. Attendance to those seminars is not required. At the same time there is a minimum threshold for hours spent on DEI activities on the yearly performance review.
- I have heard of a case at another national lab where white male employees were asked to "[...] recite a series of "white privilege statements" and "male privilege statements." It concluded with its white male participants writing letters of apology to marginalized people whom they may have harmed" . After an employee protested, his protest was taken as a lack of commitment to DEI. This got picked up by right wing media and the Trump white house and was used to justify a, since retracted, executive order banning such trainings [1] [2].
- I personally have been asked to acknowledge that "Being antiracist is different for white people than it is for people of color. For white people, being antiracist evolves with their racial identity development. They must acknowledge and understand their privilege, work to change their internalized racism, and interrupt racism when they see it. For people of color, it means recognizing how race and racism have been internalized, and whether it has been applied to other people of color." [3]
- I have been called a "plantation owner" by a colleague because I did not support the DEI initiatives in the form that they were being taught.
- I have seen people victimizing themselves and ascribing behavior of colleagues towards them to their own gender or skin color. I had experienced similar behavior in my career as a white male and now attribute it to things I needed to learn when dealing with people.
I also believe that teaching people that how they are being treated is solely because of their skin color or gender leads to self-victimization, which takes away their power and agenda and leads to suboptimal outcomes for the individual.
There are a lot of assumptions being made about my person at my workplace. It is important for me to mention that I am an immigrant. I am white and I am male, but I did not grow up in this country. I constantly and repeatedly feel my lived experience being discredited. I am being shoved into a category based on my skin color by people that can not imagine that there might be differences in culture and worldview despite me being white, just so that they can feel morally superior. Please do apologize this emotional outburst after an overly long rant, but I an assure you that this is not some academic exercise to me.
[1] https://reason.com/2020/08/13/sandia-laboratory-nuclear-whit...
[2] https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2020/09/25/trump-execut...
Specifically it should not be possible to 'informally justify' a hire; at the very least this is a contract violation.
Our laws, public and private, should make no reference to gender, race, religion, or sexual preference. Hiring should be done on merit. And this is now the "racist" position!
The DEI narrative is angry, retributive. It says some groups have victimized others (especially whites enslaving blacks and men controlling women) for so long that mere equality under the law isn't enough. This seems taken as axiomatic, obvious, and just. But this is the outcome of a court case against white people, held in someone else's mind and the defendants had no say. This court's ruling is tantamount to a religious belief, because it cannot be challenged or appealed on any basis, and in fact all challenges are treated as further evidence in favor of the ruling, and evidence that the challenger deserves extra punishment, up to and including ostracism.
This trend must be fought by anyone who cares about justice and liberty. Musk called it a "woke mind virus" and he's right, and we need some antivirals, stat.
I don't think the Democrats get the same kind of flack from criticizing China without spelling out that they are referring to the government and policies.
How?