Good for him. DEI statements are insane zealotry.
You must consider an individual's race, gender, sexual preference, and other immutable factors in contexts that have absolutely no bearing upon the bigger matter at hand. That is racist and sexist, that is discrimination of the purest order.
And before someone accuses me of "white supremacy" or "patriarchy" or other buzzword nonsense: I'm Japanese-American, I'm Asian; I'm a "minority". I'm male, but more importantly a man as in mankind.
And no, do not dare call me a "POC". I'm an American man of Japanese heritage. Simple as that.
There is absolutely no reason why being White or Asian means they need to get inferior treatment and vice versa; there is absolutely no reason why men must be treated inferior to women and vice versa.
There is absolutely no reason why anyone must be treated inferior or superior to anyone else for reasons that do not concern their character or capabilities.
For generations it was literally illegal for one race of people to learn to read in the United States. This is unique in the world as well - an American innovation.
That type of structural oppression actually requires structural fixes as the problems are multigenerational.
You seem to be wholly rooted into a single generational mindset - eg “you”. We all exist within history, it’s not some bubble where what happened before your birth isn’t relevant.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-literacy_laws_in_the_Unit...
That is the concern of the parents, there is nothing preventing anyone from reading if they are so inclined today.
>We all exist within history, it’s not some bubble where what happened before your birth isn’t relevant.
Discrimination is not solved by discriminating harder.
Blaming the peoples of today for sins committed by the peoples of yesterday only breed resentment.
Judging the peoples of yesterday by the social, cultural, and judicial norms of today distorts and corrupts history, only breeding ignorance in the peoples of today.
I think you aren’t engaging with this logically and are being emotional. Please try to think clearly and critically. You seem angry.
Who is prohibiting who from reading what today? Unless you're going to get pedantic about restricted access to classified or erotic materials, anyone can read anything they want whenever they want.
>Please try to think clearly and critically. You seem angry.
Yes, I am thinking clearly and critically which is why I'm telling you that "diversity" is merely a front to engage in flagrant discrimination.
Yes, I am angry that I am being asked to be racist and sexist after being taught and raised to treat all men equally and fairly.
The goal is not to blame anyone, instead it is creating a plain level field. White people only need to compete amongst themselves, so I'm pretty sure that the best will survive.
What the fuck are you even talking about?
Except it absolutely has been. The civil rights movement was full of it. Look at the history that lead to forced busing. The efforts to correct schooling disparity had become such a quagmire that an even worse solution was enforced. How can we expect things to get better, when just ending discrimination led to the worst possible outcome that was attacked from both sides. They knew the problem, and all reverting to no discrimination did was let segregationists and concerned parties kick the can down the road for 17 years after Brown vs Board of Education.
Reverse discrimination certainly has its cons, but to call it just "discriminating harder" isn't realistic. Making systemic changes hurts and feels unfair, but it's far from the racism that motivated discrimination in our past.
> Blaming the peoples of today for sins committed by the peoples of yesterday only breed resentment.
Where does this idea come from? I can recognize the disparities of the present. I can make actions to undo those. This isn't some fault I need to feel guilt for, it's just a reasonable outcome of understanding the past that lead to the current present, and a desire to change that present. Just like it is not my fault that some people are blind to the past, and feel resentful. Lots of people have resent though, some of it comes from those sins in the past. Sitting on our thumbs continues to breed resent. I don't see a major problem with shifting resent around between traditionally favored and unfavored groups, particularly if net resent goes down.
I say this with understanding that efforts can go to far, but also that oscillating between 0 mph and 100 mph to achieve an average speed of 50 is a stupid way to travel at 50 mph. Current efforts deserve to be moderated, not destroyed.
Affirmative Action was struck down because it is racist.[1]
[1]: https://apnews.com/article/supreme-court-affirmative-action-...
>Making systemic changes hurts and feels unfair, but it's far from the racism that motivated discrimination in our past.
It is unfair when the "answer" is just turning the discrimination gears in reverse. The way to end discrimination is to, unsurprisingly, end discrimination and treat everyone equally and fairly.
You know what I feel if I'm barred from something because I dared to be born to Japanese blood? I feel anger and resentment towards the fools who judged me for the color of my skin rather than the quality of my character, for refusing to see me as just another American.
Sincerely screw discrimination with a rusty spork and may it die in a fire. Absolutely noone deserves to be treated better or worse than another for reasons not concerning their character or capabilities.
>Where does this idea come from? I can recognize the disparities of the present. I can make actions to undo those. This isn't some fault I need to feel guilt for, it's just a reasonable outcome of understanding the past that lead to the current present, and a desire to change that present
Children are born with no crimes or sins to their name. Whatever their ancestors might have done, that is of absolutely no liable consequence to them. If someone seriously tells me to apologize and pay amends for Pearl Harbor or Nanking or whatever else before my time because I'm Japanese, I am going to sincerely tell them to fuck off and pound sand.
The thrust of the training is that now treating people "equally" or "fairly" is now racist. If you treat people fairly or equally you are liable for HR punishments. The training then goes on to list various accusations for each major racial group (so and so are lazy, so and so are dirty, so and so are dishonest) and that you must now specifically go out of your way to think "oh yes, this person's race is considered to be sexually promiscuous! I must make sure I adjust my behaviour to address this." when you go into a planning meeting or performance review or something totally unrelated (and of course with that thought in your mind you cannot then unthink it). You cannot just treat everyone in the same professional manner, you must now think about and consider all of the racial stereotypes that apply to each person in everything that you do and adjust your behaviour to provide "equity" (not "equality"! That is now a dirty word!)
I simply could not believe it. This training was training me about racial stereotypes. It is teaching me new ways to stereotype people based on their race. Genuinely many of the things it was telling me were new to me and left me wondering "is this what people really think about foo? I had no idea! I am so naive!" before I caught myself.
Am I taking crazy pills? WTF is going on?!
I’ll +1 someone else’s recommendation of Tim Urban’s book “What’s Our Problem” - he dove into this rabbit hole and explained what he found, and it’s super approachable.
For a deeper dive, Bill Ackman very publicly sharing his own reckoning with this realization[1] and credits Christopher Rufo’s book “America’s Cultural Revolution” for helping him make sense of it[2].
I have a JD and passed the bar. I know that a “protected class” is for all people and all manifestations of a trait, not specific identity groups.
It was plain to me that DEI, HR, and Legal teams were not explaining the law, but rather using their position as experts-with power and good intentions-as a pretext to conduct activism through ambiguity and deniability that look virtuous to them and Orwellian to me. And that it was working, because my managers and teammates were positively convinced that “protected class” means exclusively “minority.”
I went through HR training that said “only a manager can discriminate under the law - anyone can engage in harassment.” This is insane as a statement of law, because harassment _is_ discrimination [1]. But it makes sense when they’re trying to get unwilling ICs to endure pervasive “anti-racist” discrimination that isn’t intended as harassment. Flag the misstatement to Legal and it’s “huh, we don’t know how that happened, we’ll look into it.” (Read: we already signed off on the risks of this wording.) Rinse and repeat every training cycle, where it’s a full rewrite of the module with no continuity.
One of my first questions in trying to make sense of seemingly-insane trainings was “wait, is this that ‘CRT’ thing I heard about that everyone says is just a right-wing bogeyman that doesn’t actually exist?”
And it sure is easier to just call it “CRT” and laugh it off than to argue whether it’s even a thing that happened.
If the corporate activists were transparent like Rufo, they’d say “hey, we think discrimination laws are behind the times, and we can’t just wait around for them to change. We need to combat demographic disparities by shifting our culture in hiring and conflict resolution. Here’s how we expect you to promote that, and we’re prepared to indemnify you and defend these values in court.” I expect many people would get behind that, and I would truly respect their honesty in it.
Instead they try to have it both ways, and polarize people with irreconcilable values into each thinking the company has their back.
If you’re on the receiving end of a discrimination suit and try to say you were following company policy, the lawyers will hang you out to dry: “That wasn’t company policy, it was a peer exercise with no managerial oversight or involvement. That wasn’t a required training, it just had an attendance goal (of 90%) and your manager wasn’t authorized in pushing it. As a ‘safe space,’ it wasn’t even recorded for us to know what went on there. It was led by an external contractor who is obviously not an agent of the company. Of course cis white men are a protected class, and anyone who treats them differently is illegally discriminating.”
[1] “Harassment is a form of employment discrimination” https://www.eeoc.gov/harassment