And they did it because they were pressured to "increase diversity".
On the demand side (where placement or acceptance or hiring is contingent upon qualifications) the "actual work to get more candidates from diverse backgrounds" cannot be done equitably.
Selective institutions are a reflection of the society from which they draw candidates. As society produces more kinds of qualified candidates, the makeup of selective organizations will change.
Change 'at the top' is a trailing indicator, it is the result of a process and not the start of one.
I don't even know what 'outreach' and 'financial support' mean in this context, but I disagree that societal attitudes must change more than they already are changing. In the US, people expect the most qualified candidates to get the job, and they (increasingly) reject discrimination on the basis of race and background. That is why they cry foul when systems and programs are put in place that discriminate against qualified applicants.
In this example, before it was CTI schools that were providing most of the candidates. There's a lot of potentially qualified minorities who absolutely have no clue such schools or opportunities even exist, and a few who even if they knew were so financially disadvantaged to take care of the opportunities. Outreach in this case, will be combing high schools and making more people aware of the opportunities, and providing financial assistance for those who may be qualified but are too poor.
None of them are “programs that discriminate against qualified applicants.”
The fundamental issue is that due to upstream inequalities (e.g. worse schools) there are downstream inequalities you can’t smooth out. There are literally fewer black people who know how to read or have graduated high school. So the correct solution is to concentrate resources upstream.
Diversity isn’t just about skin colour. Getting more women in expands opportunities for women, who still suffer pay gaps, and this would help close that.
Even black people who do have enough education suffer discrimination (conscious or not), so working to improve things is a net good.
That’s not to say the FAA did the right thing (it appears not) but it’s important to not just throw our hands up and keep saying it’s someone else’s problem!
Go to a predominantly black school/neighbourhood and hand out flyers with "hey, we have this great programme you should consider applying for!"
Provide financial support for candidates who cannot afford to go through the programme on their own means (which will be disproportionately, though not exclusively, from minority groups).
And generally, "most qualified candidate" doesn't really exist. Usually what you have is something like "50% clearly unqualified, 25% maybe, and 25% seems qualified" and that's it. Numbers vary and there are exceptions, but by and large, that's basically how it works. So you need a "tie-breaker", which is usually "person I got along with the best", which is just as biased as "person from $minority_group" as a tie-breaker.
Obviously things didn't go well at the FAA, but it really doesn't take that much imagination to come up with some basic measures that are reasonable and don't discriminate anyone.
No true Scotsman or appeal to purity is an informal fallacy in which one modifies a prior claim in response to a counterexample by asserting the counterexample is excluded by definition. Rather than admitting error or providing evidence to disprove the counterexample, the original claim is changed by using a non-substantive modifier such as "true", "pure", "genuine", "authentic", "real", or other similar terms.
At no point do I say these bad initiatives are not “DEI,” since they clearly fit under the umbrella of DEI. I simply say they’re bad initiatives. You might be confused by me saying “DEI isn’t the core of the problem,” but that’s not the same thing as saying “these bad things are not DEI.” I hope this clarifies things for you.
> At no point do I say these bad initiatives are not “DEI,”
I highlighted the relevant points where I addressed your criticism. I hope this helps but feel free to copy-paste from Wikipedia again.
From rich to poor I see as ethical, but there are current programs that are gated on race. This is taking from all to give to a chosen race, all DEI practices should be eliminated from government actions.
The problem cases are after that, when people get upset the numbers didn't change as much as they hoped, and decide to go do fiddle with the hiring process.
Does a government carry any moral responsibility to right its previous wrongs? If so, what sort of policies would that look like?
The current people and their representatives did not do those things, so acting as if you are doing the right thing by implementing policy that advances one group over another is immoral. It's just inventing a fictional justification, no better than dark skin being a mark of sin.
DEI has only one cause, and that is avoiding discrimination on non-germane axes, particulalry by subtle, non-obvious means, such as relying on biased funnels.
The last two places I've worked (one a university) had DEI goals of hiring the most qualified person for the job, without regard to race, etc. The whole point was to stress the "without regard to" part.
We do collect data and try to correct imbalances by making sure our candidate pools have good coverage (i.e. they aren't discriminatory). But every offer we extend goes to the most qualified candidate, without regard to race, etc., to the very best of our ability.
It's also more comprehensive than just hiring and race.
For example, one goal is that a student in the National Guard with a side job gets the same shot as one unemployed living with their parents. What can you do to help facilitate that without reducing the impact of the program?
There's evidence that spatial reasoning is important for learning Computer Science. There's evidence that men and women can both develop spatial reasoning skills. There's evidence that men in general get more practice than women in this regard, potentially putting women at a disadvantage in the program. What can you do to help level that playing field without weakening the material?
Lastly, coming out against DEI programs whose goal is to hire based solely on merit and not race or other factors... not a good look. So you might want to specify which kind of DEI you're really against.
The goal of the DEI program in my company was along the lines of:
"Last year, 20% of all PhDs in areas we hire for were women. Yet only 7% of our actual PhD hires were women. Why?"
Whether the actual implementation solved this problem is a different matter. The goal, however, was to reduce bias.
Yes, it’s lazy and stupid for the FAA to believe they can fix inequality by biasing hiring practices.
The fundamental problem is that the US has severe wealth inequality, which for historical reasons is correlated with race, and for structural reasons (property taxes fund schools, meaning poor kids get worse education) is made even worse.
All of the “wholistic evaluation” doublespeak and weird qualification exams in the world can’t fix that.
I said at the top of my thread that the refusal of people in power to engage with criticisms like this thoughtfully has allowed the far right to toxify these debates and I think the downvotes and responses to my comments are minor, but perfect, examples of my point. Instead of discussing the issues and how they should be fixed, the “debate” breaks down into “DEI bad” on your side and “saying DEI bad is racist/sexist/etc.” on the other side.
This is essentially a No True Scotsman fallacy. If it's DEI, it's bad so any good approach is, by definition, not part of DEI.
> DEI is predicated on outcome diversity, rather than treating applicants equally irrespective of background.
The first part of this is incorrect. Good DEI is about creating a level playing field (as you correctly point out for blind people or wheelchair users). Obviously, this isn't possible in all cases: I think everyone agrees we wouldn't want a blind taxi driver.
> The entire premise is that certain groups require special support
This is correct. Fair criticism of DEI initiatives can be levied at those which don't do this effectively and instead shortcut by using, say, hiring quotas. I've said multiple times that things like this are lazy and stupid because they don't address the lack of opportunity for disadvantaged backgrounds.
> and have been historically excluded because of bias (sometimes true, often wholly false
This is an inaccurate stating of the situation. Some groups (e.g. black people in the USA) are excluded due to bias. Some have been excluded due to situational factors (young white men in the UK have worse outcomes due to poverty). Good DEI initiatives attempt to counter these, with varying levels of success.
Let me take the article as an example. They identified an advantage for people on CTI programmes, which also happened to turn out good ATC operators. This may have advantaged people who could afford to attend the programmes, which could have skewed white male. A good DEI initiative might have been to put the work into outreach in under-represented areas to get more people of colour into CTI programmes. Instead, the FAA banned CTI programmes, threw the students there to the wolves, and seemed to sneak in a test designed to hit hiring quotas. Not only was this discriminatory, it also actively reduced the number of qualified ATC operators.
Nowhere in this scenarios did I need to fall back on "DEI bad," because I tried to discuss the specific issues within the article.
Perhaps I can simplify this argument. If you have a lift heavy things job, which we can agree that women on average are worse at, you shouldn't hire more women by quota, but you could provide free weight training for women. Both things are DEI, the latter is the kind of DEI we want.
And what does the political opposite of those initiatives look like in practice?
What does it look like in practice when you don't stop and wonder why women make up 20% of your qualified candidate pool, but only 7% of your workforce? (As another poster observed.)
Do you just shrug your shoulders, assume that your perfectly meritocratic (By whose definition?) system is free of any form of systemic or personal bias, and move on, without wondering why?
If it's a government initiative then it's taking from all to only give to women.
If it's a publicly owned company, then can you actually make a convincing case that it's a benefit to stockholders?
Only in the case of a private company does this lack ethical issues, but at that point it's just some billionaires whim.
You might be confused by me saying “DEI isn’t the core of the problem,” but that’s not the same thing as saying “these bad things are not DEI.” I hope this clarifies things for you.
Explicitly in the American context DEI is primarily about hiring more members of minority groups at the expense of members of majority groups, based primarily on race and sexuality. This is perfectly exemplified in the FAA scandal.
In the context of DEI 'helping' the disadvantaged is never never done by expanding access to educational opportunities in order to find equally talented people who have been financially excluded or barred entry by prejudice. It is always a matter of lowering the bar for certain protected groups, and often also a matter of removing opportunities altogether for members of perceived privileged groups.
This is especially visible in the arts and education here in Europe - where funding and employment opportunities are overwhelmingly based in exclusion. Primarily of straight, white, cisgender men. You site the example of young white men in the UK having worse outcomes. Please point me to a DEI initiative that targets employing them over other groups. What happened at the FAA is what always happens under the banner of DEI, capital A 'Antiracism' and other successor ideology initiatives. The goal is never fairness, and always power.
The issue with these approaches is simple. They are massively divisive. Rather than aiming to address prejudice, hiring bias or systemic barriers to entry - they actively create them, with the justification of historic prejudice. I heard a joke once in college - whats the difference between an activist and a social justice warrior? An activist sees a step and builds ramp, a social justice warrior tears down the stairs.
DEI is a bad idea, rooted in bad ideology and the stolen valour of movements towards genuine equality. As is any ideology that privileges members of one group over another - however 'noble' its adherents pretend to be.
If you're advocating for approaches like blind hiring, or addressing poverty, or providing educational aids to help neurodiverse or disabled people, or free school meals, or free university, or increased arts and community funding or any of a thousand other initiatives that help people based on real need rather than perceived privilege, you'll find me and many others whom you presume to disagree with support you. But the entire brand and practice of DEI and associated initiatives and terminology is beyond saving.
> If it's DEI, it's bad so any good approach is, by definition, not part of DEI.
The FAA scandal, among other things I've seen, like Matt Walsh's "Am I Racist?" show there's plenty of DEI initiatives that are simply bad, stupid and lazy. As you've seen elsewhere in this topic, I've also highlighted DEI hiring policies that have thought behind them and attempt to improve diversity without engaging in discrimination.
Bitching about DEI only panders to such divisiveness and does not solve any of the problems with the bad initiatives. Neither does ignoring the problems, or calling genuine criticism "racist." Both lead us to the place we're at today where Trump blames people with "severe mental and psychological issues" for a plane crash.
Meanwhile countless people have experienced being excluded from funding, employment opportunities etc. Countless more have sat through (demonstrably ineffective, and even counterproductive) mandatory reeducation in the form of diversity workshops, antiracism training and so on. This is absolutely a major part of why we got Trump in the first place. The lefts complete unwillingness to address the failure and unpopularity of these policies. It's not a case of Trump demonising otherwise good initiatives. Quite the opposite. Rather, Trump an opportunistic populist, seized on valid criticisms to promote himself as the sane alternative.
Policies that served to derail opportunities for substantive change (Bernie in the US, Corbin in the UK) in favour of shiny new posts in HR at every university and corporation. Vivek Chibber is brilliant on this stuff, I'd recommend you check him out for a more cogent critique.
https://jacobin.com/2025/01/elite-identity-politics-professi...
That's a fair point, I've certainly seen aspects of this. I see similar criticisms coming from the left being thrown at the current Labour government as well as the unhinged people calling Harris "Killer Kamala" and Biden "Genocide Joe" (ironic given what Trump just proposed in Gaza). I don't think the far right has the monopoly on idiots and lunatics.
I should counter, however, that many of the criticisms of DEI were also masked racism/misogyny/ableism. Trump's rhetoric should make that blindingly obvious. We'll now get countless people being discriminated against by a hostile federal government and the people who voted for that also need to take accountability for their vote.
This isn't to excuse the poor engagement from the left (especially whilst in government!), merely to point out the nuance of the debate and why "DEI bad" isn't a useful framing.
If you pitch shifted the average American woman, you'd probably get a voice that sounded like a gay (camp) man.
Once we know what the determining traits for hiring are, we can either debate whether their importance in the job at hand (if there are doubts) or find ways to encourage these traits in underrepresented communities.
It's very hard to find a company that does real "blind" interviews. And by blind, I mean where networking doesn't positively impact your application.
As long as networking boosts your chances of getting hired somewhere, you've got a very wide open door to biases, because networks are almost always biased. I should not be able to give me resume to a friend to ensure the hiring manager gets to see it. Yet I haven't found a company where that behavior is detrimental.
Equity is actively discriminating, based on measures like race or sex to try to force an ideological outcome.
Equality (of opportunity) is treating people the same irrespective of race, sex, etc...
Equity is clearly racist, sexist, bigotry. Progressives seems to think this is okay, unlike previous examples from history, as their preferred race isn't white and their preferred sex isn't male.
Equality (of opportunity) is the opposite - it isn't racist, sexist bigotry.
"Correctly" is a hard test to pass, because everyone is going to have a different opinion of what is "correct", but it's impossible to honestly say that China's government hasn't been effective and successful, policy disagreements notwithstanding.
Everyone does in fact have a different opinion on what communism is or should be. That means that we should not pretend that China has exhaustively implemented the entire subject!
Yes, we can point to China as an example of what can happen when a specific group of people implements their specific idea of what communism means. No more, no less. That is literally the point you brought up.
In fact, no country in the world ever claimed to have been communist in a sense of having a communist society. They were all "building communism", rather, with socialism as "intermediate stage".