Comment by leovingi | Hacker News Reader

Comment by leovingi | Hacker News Reader

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My entire life, professional and otherwise, DEI has ultimately stood for nothing other than "less white people". Of course it's dressed up in definitions that sound beautiful and moral to the supporters of DEI, but at the end of the day whenever someone uses the term "diverse" they are talking about "less white people".

When the company John Lewis was criticized for a lack of diversity [1], it was because they had too many whites.

When the Academy Awards were criticized for a lack of diversity [2], it was because they had too many whites.

When the EU institutions were criticized for a lack of diversity [3], it was because they had too many whites.

When the BAFTAs were criticized for a lack of diversity [4], it was because they had too many whites.

When investigative journalism in the US was criticized for a lack of diversity [5], it was because they had too many whites.

When the show "Friends" was criticized for a lack of diversity [6], it was because they had too many whites.

After decades and decades of this blatant animosity against people like me I can honestly say I do not care at all what Trump does to these programs or how he goes about destroying them, as long as they are destroyed and the people that supported them punished.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/jun/16/john-lewis-...

[2] https://www.wishtv.com/news/awards-shows-have-been-criticize...

[3] https://www.theparliamentmagazine.eu/news/article/oped-lack-...

[4] https://www.willistonian.org/baftas-criticized-for-lack-of-d...

[5] https://www.poynter.org/business-work/2020/investigative-jou...

[6] https://metro.co.uk/2023/04/02/lack-of-diversity-on-friends-...

And here I was talking about consequential stuff, like helping impoverished communities, adding guardrails to prevent old-boys clubs and enable skilled individuals to enter fields without prejudice for “being black” or “being gay”.

Who cares about criticism over inconsequential stuff? Is it that difficult to care about impoverished people?

The meals for kids at schools is a “dei” program, and republicans axed it, well done! The repubs are also sending kids to work overtime and during the night, effectively gutting their future, and of course it’s the impoverished kids who will have to do that.

>helping impoverished communities, adding guardrails to prevent old-boys clubs and enable skilled individuals to enter fields without prejudice for “being black” or “being gay”

Exactly, like I said - "it's dressed up in definitions that sound beautiful and moral to the supporters of DEI".

I do not care for theoretical definitions of why your ideology is good and moral, I care about its practical effects on me and the world around me. And somehow, those practical effects always turn out to be "less white people".

And I will NEVER support an ideology that disenfranchises me under the cover of equality!

What I am expressing here is that practical things that all of us can agree are good and useful, such as helping impoverished kids, result in tangle positive consequences, an educated society has less crime, therefore net positive. This is a practical and real world positive consequence.

>And somehow, those practical effects always turn out to be "less white people".

In contrast to your silly and inconsequential examples of just "criticism", I presented examples where DEI has tangible and measurable results which are net positive. What you express, really, just shows confirmation bias, and you remain oblivious to all the positive things that have come out of "DEI" programmes that you have benefited from.

Case in point, women die significantly more in car crashes [1] because law mandates male-sized dummies. Some diversity here in terms of gender would have pointed that out, but until the moment this was written, nothing was done.

DEI programmes exist to avoid discrimination such as that one.

> According to Verity Now, a US-based campaign group striving to achieve equity in vehicle safety, women are 73% more likely to be injured – and 17% more likely to die – in a vehicle crash. Earlier this year, a study of 70,000 patients who had been trapped in vehicles found that women were more frequently trapped than men.

> Part of the problem is that test dummies modeled on the average female body are rarely used in safety tests by car manufacturers – because only “male” dummies are mandated for tests by regulators.

So I don't believe you will ever change or your mind or opinion, and you are discussing in bad faith, rendering this conversation utterly useless. Here's my recommendation, if you are going to try to get me to see your side, instead of emitting strawman arguments, try a steelman one, and avoid sensationalism.

[1] https://edition.cnn.com/2022/12/15/world/female-car-crash-te...

It is not an either-or proposition. It would be hard to find a single thing in this world that is 100% bad or 100% good.

I do agree that the article you posted is a very good implementation of equitable practices and I would think it difficult to find anyone who would disagree with the mandating of female test dummies. Mostly because it's a very simple-to-understand example and the implementation of it doesn't hurt anyone else or take away from one group to give to another.

My problem is the pretending that your example is what DEI actually is and any other examples, like the ones I posted, from a number of mainstream media publications no less, are, for whatever reason, NOT considered DEI or, as you put it, are just "silly and inconsequential examples".

Those "silly and inconsequential examples" are supported by every mainstream DEI proponent, including every single DEI department at every large publicly-traded company. There have been numerous articles posted both here on HN and on the wider web about how these DEI implementations turn out to work in practice when it comes to employment prospects, promotion availability and the issues with general hiring practices (lowering standards to achieve some magic number of "equity" in female/minority representation).

My suggestion - if you truly care about the programs such as the one you listed in your comment, you better make sure that's what DEI actually focuses on. Otherwise, you should not be surprised that it gets swept away along with everything else that people feel falls under the DEI umbrella.

> The meals for kids at schools is a “dei” program

I have never heard of such a thing, can you link to where such a program existed?

Free or reduced cost school lunch is a very common program, but it's based entirely on income, not race, gender or sexuality, which is what everyone means when they talk about "dei programs".

If that’s what they mean it’s because they have been played like a fiddle.

If I were to offer lunches for kids in an impoverished community that happens to be predominantly X race, the sensationalists will say “RACE” “DISCRIMINATION”, while the program is simply addressing one region.

Now the funny thing is that the Democratic Party has repeatedly pushed for universally free lunches to take any potential concerns over race out of the picture and the republic party keeps voting those down.

I have never observed the phenomenon you're describing and would like to learn more.

Can you link me to one of these stories where "sensationalists said race discrimination" about a program to alleviate poverty which was not actually racially biased?

When you have privilege, equality feels like oppression. I don’t know where I saw that quote from but I feel this summarizes your points.

Punish who for what? Can you demonstrably prove white people were harmed by DEIA? White people ran the last administration and this one too. What more do you want? Do you get upset if you see a black person drive a nicer car than you?

This anti-DEIA stuff is just cooked up to distract you from the real problems facing this country.

>Can you demonstrably prove white people were harmed by DEIA?

Sure, here you go. This is just one example, but it's been widely covered in tech circles as well as here on HN and I chose it simply because it's one of the most egregious and shockingly honest account of how DEI works in practice as opposed to nice-sounding social theories

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38634647

Things like this have been covered and talked about on HN for years, I am surprised you missed it, with a lot of commenters speaking out about their own experience which more often than not paints the same story each time - a company needs to reach a certain quota based on race or gender to avoid potential discrimination lawsuits, their hiring pipeline does not support that quota so the only options they have is to discriminate against the only group it is socially OK to discriminate against - white men. And on some level - asians - as is mentioned directly by the CEO of IBM in the leaked video posted above.

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