DEI was never really a genuine endeavor, or it would not be rolled back so quickly by major corporations. If DEI was truly and measurably beneficial to the company, it would not be rolled back so quickly.
I wish corporations were efficient money making machines, but there is so much agency cost with management having different intensives to stock holders which provides fertile ground for politicking and other such emergent behaviors that needlessly tarnish office life.
It's being rolled back quickly because that's what influential rich people want, and because DEI has become a politically charged term that pretty much invites conflict and toxicity at this point
I agree with this on its face, but it seems an incredibly passive tone. DEI didn't just "become a politically charged term". It was deliberately made so.
And the term doesn't just "invite conflict and toxicity". There are toxic people who are using the principles themselves as a point of conflict.
Not being pedantic here. Maybe it's what you meant to say. Or maybe not and you don't agree. Either way, I point it out because it reminds me of the media headlines these days. I find that, among media reporting that purports to be "objective", there's a very odd passive tone, as if these unprecedented things are just happening.
And, that introduces a pretty hard bias.
I've been in mandatory corporate DEI seminars that I had high hopes for, only to find that they felt overly prescriptive and ill-equipped for the complexities of trying to be sensitive to every culture. Having to jump in and explain "Well, some Latinos actually find LatinX to be an offensive term, so you might get the stink-eye if you use it" was a bit uncomfortable for me personally, for example. Getting it all right is hard, and getting a few things wrong can leave a really bad taste.
Ironically, I think the idea itself that it's all so very sensitive is one of the biggest barriers to progress. People are afraid to be open and honest about biases, beliefs, ignorance, curiosities, etc. So, in an effort to ensure that no one is ever offended, companies tend to fall back to these prescriptive simplifications that rest on things like terminology.
Of course, that just reinforces the fear and the divide.
The irony is that it can also seed resentment to simply lecture people about their vocabulary and other third rails. OTOH, when real interaction is allowed to take place, there is an opportunity for humor and humanity to arise. Mistakes will be made, but progress is more about good faith and extending grace on all sides.
So, it's, using x terminology doesn't mean I hate you. I just didn't know. When you assume that good faith, then your guard goes down. And, if I know that you know that, then I'm not going to be so fearful, and my guard drops too.
Next thing you know, we're having an actual conversation.
It's doing more harm than good: https://x.com/stevemur/status/1621680046317654016
Color Blindness is better: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxB3b7fxMEA
It sets up people for failure: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97R3z2ofuYk
Its origins are Marxist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbby7yFrIxM
But, I think it's more the former for a lot of these companies. I sincerely wonder what the true impact of these "rollbacks" is, beyond removing verbiage from some websites/company literature.
That being said I'm sure a lot of companies just threw up a statement, maybe a meaningless committee or whatever with no interest in actually changing anything.
How about software diversity, where one doesn't have to use either iOS or Android to function in the modern world? Or have to use Chrome OS at school, etc. We have no real freedom there unless we want to face significant difficulties.
What changed now is white supremacists took over the US government and the cost of doing business is higher when you support DEI.
Of course, everyone knows "DEI" really wasn't the point, "DEI" just means people who look different than those in power right now. Removal of DEI sends a message just as it's inclusion did.
Speak for yourself. I do expect publicly-owned corporations to be decent, otherwise they do not deserve to be publicly owned. Unfortunately, it seems money gets in the way of that every day.
Look at the bloomberg report from 2023[1]. You really think 94% hiring of non-whites was organic? Literally impossible. Calling any of this white supremacy is laughable.
[1]https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2023-black-lives-matter-e...
I too have seen managers hire people based on things like race, why is no one going after them? They're not breaking the law because they're being coerced by DEI, they're breaking the law to appease each other and to do business illegally.
Just like DEI was abused to further racism against white people, anti-DEI is being abused by the same people to harm the people DEI was designed to include. But the actual law breakers, no one is touching. You can keep DEI as it is and go after equal opportunity violators just fine, but that isn't happening because that isn't their goal. Racism is their goal.
They will soon (in next few weeks) become far more material, and you’ll see approvals fall.
80% of “most consequential president” is just media nonsense.
Stop following the news and suddenly things don’t seem that bad. Because in reality all the media (all media not just the media one disagrees with) does is fuck with your brain and intentionally divide people and piss everyone off.
And that was using actual GAAP accounting auditing methods!
So I guess if the “like this” you mean an ideological Cmd+F “audit” done by people with apparently zero financial experience, never mind public sector auditing, then no.
Can you share a specific instance of fraud that has been found?
"Contracts I don't like" != fraud, obviously.
So I'll ask again: Can you share a specific instance of fraud that has been found?
And you think all of that is 'not fraud'? IDGAF what it's called, people should go to prison and no other president has even tried to get in touch with this filth.
You should have the integrity to just say it!
Second, diversity in e.g. race/gender may be a proxy for some other kind of more functional diversity. In fact, for diversity to matter at all there must be some functional element which can be decoupled from the labels people apply to themselves. The fact that we just assume this latent variable is there without measuring it seemed very unscientific to me.
>without measuring it seemed very unscientific to me.
Well, I think it's accepted that there were "unscientific" elements here. I'm not saying everyone agreed on their value, but they were stated as benefits.
For instance, diversity in viewpoints based on varied experiences would theoretically bring about more interesting solutions. I'm not sure how one would objectively measure that purported effect.
Likewise, helping a company to understand cultural sensitivities among different customer populations, so they don't blunder in language or otherwise.
And, to whatever degree we consider it beneficial for companies to be considered "good corporate citizens" in general, I suppose that would apply here as well—though, again, hard to measure.
So, I agree that say, race/gender are proxies for deeper cultural diversity. I don't know that you would define that diversity as "functional", or that you would need to in order for there to be some benefit.
Also, of course, companies were never taking it seriously, and everyone knew this. But if companies were left entirely to their own devices they would still be paying in company scrip and shooting unionists in the head. Even forcing them to pretend to have ethics is better for society as a whole than nothing.
Of course, I understand the impetus to piggyback a grievance on phrases like "white supremacist", which used to mean something. But these days their non-ironic use really tells us something about the person using it.
Not that it matters, because of course to treat "woke" subjects with any seriousness is thoughtcrime on HN, and good faith only guarantees bad faith in kind. I get that. And I also don't care.