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When a viz-minority hire sucks, it's clearly DEI's fault, we shout from the rooftops.
When a non-minority hire sucks, crickets.
None of you folks are ever 'afraid of talking about it', because any time this subject comes up, we see a full broadsides of tenuous, frequently mask-off racist nonsense.
Meanwhile, the champions leading the fight against the DEI boogieman have a truly amazing knack for both being, and appointing some of the most ignorant, least qualified individuals to ever hold positions of power... And are now speed-running their way through breaking everything.
Before DEI, minorities were hired because they're actually competent. Now they're there because of who they are and not what they can do.
Things need to get worse before they get better.
The founder of TripleByte observed how companies lied about their hiring from the outside: https://x.com/jesslivingston/status/1884652626467303560
You see, it doesn't add up, because usually when a company breaks the law so blatantly, it does so in crafty, shady ways intended to make more money, not in an attempt to create diversity that does nothing for the bottom line while also threatening the very existence of the firm.
But let's say that the top management in your org have made a public commitment to "increase representation of underrepresented groups". The managers in that org are then required, by company policy, to have their own goals be "aligned" with it, so they write something similar. What do you think then happens when it comes to interviews and hiring decisions?
You can have better parental leave and part-time work policies. Or you can open an office in a region with different racial demographics. Or you can send recruiters to events like Grace Hopper. The idea that leadership saying "we want to increase representation of underrepresented groups" converts to people illegally hiring worse candidates because of their demographics is... odd.
So what they are going to do is the only thing that they actually have the power to do, which is to favor candidates that, if hired, will check off the right boxes as far as "team diversity" goes on their upcoming mid-year review.
2. In the private sector, white men are not disadvantaged. Give me a fucking break man.
https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2025/01/12/fifth-circuit-vac...
That's an absurd lie. People convicted of sex crimes shouldn't have jobs with children. Foreign nationals shouldn't have top security or intelligence jobs. People with a record of substance abuse shouldn't operate heavy machinery. And so on an so forth... I'm boring myself with how obvious this all is.
And maybe, just maybe, extremely powerful jobs that have an outsized influence on our society shouldn't only be offered to straight white men. It's clearly not as obvious of an argument as my previous examples, but it's not absurd either.
Harvard denied access to Jews for “personality flaws” in the early 1900s, and similarly denied Asians for “personality” reasons up until a couple years ago when the Supreme Court finally declared that illegal.
Racism is still racism, even if you claim to be “correcting” some imagined harm through your racism
The reality is there are more non-white, qualified people than you could possibly hire. The world is overflowing with them.
So if your board is 100% white men, that's really fucking weird. How did that happen?
The elephant in the room here is that white men are SIGNIFICANTLY more likely to be hired due to the color of their skin. Look at Trump's current admin - full of white men who aren't qualified, who are alcoholics, who are patently stupid, and on and on. But if you look at research, too, just having a white name is enough to increase your chance of being hired by 50%.
It's a good thing this is something that is not happening, then.
What's happening is you are assuming that black individuals or homosexuals finding success must have been handed something. Which is, obviously, prejudiced. The lede you're burying is that those people were hired because they're qualified.
If you make affirmative action illegal, then of course you will hire a variety of races and identity groups (unless you are so racist as to believe they can’t compete on merit)
Where are these mandatory affirmative action policies anywhere?
DEI mostly revolves around programs for outreach, employee resource groups, statements of diversity considerations for research, that kind of thing. The idea that DEI means you have quotas for how many black people you have to hire is just GOP nonsense.
> If you make affirmative action illegal, then of course you will hire a variety of races and identity groups
I mean, not necessarily. Historically, and currently, you're going to end up with a disproportionate amount of white people. Because that's just how the US works - white people are incredibly advantaged so naturally they're going to get more, and better, jobs, in relation to their level of qualification.
Naturally over the past ~80 years it's gotten better. We don't explicitly say "we don't hire black engineers" anymore, so that's great. But you'd be a fool to think this systemic racism just vanishes overnight.
It will takes hundreds, yes hundreds, of years before it is completely eradicated. We live in the shadow of the systems and institutions of our grandparents. Who, might I add, are still alive and still making decisions.
Are you saying that (straight) (white) (men) have not had (nor continue to enjoy) unfair advantages in our society? And is that not an injustice?
Saying "racism is bad" is correct but only the first step. Step two is recognizing the accumulated results of long-standing historical (and continuing, frankly) discrimination against minority groups and working to right that injustice.
But would like to hear your perspective.
It sounds like you actually haven't applied to jobs in the last 10 years or have been applying to some seriously messed up places.
No, it isn't, and this assumption is based on a poor understanding of what DEI is.
The right paints DEI as a directive to hire less-qualified people based on their race. In reality, DEI just ensures that everyone gets a fair chance regardless of their race.
i.e. "Group X is under-performing at math" so therefore the problem is with inherent bias in math and we won't expect engineers and scientists to have competency in this domain to get the makeup of people we have decided upon from the start.
Yes, I am aware of what you think DEI hiring practices are, but speaking as someone who has actually applied these policies, I'm telling you that that's not what happens. The propaganda simply is not true.
Under DEI hiring policies, we were required to document *outreach* to underrepresented groups in order to get a more diverse hiring pool. We *never* lowered our standards and always hired the best applicant.
We've seen that these ideologies are conflict-oriented, racist, and less effective. They were forced on us by policy and law by people who in no way represented most of Americans' thinking. Now, a different group favoring no racism, equal opportunity, and generosity to all groups based on need is reversing the prior group's work. Everyone who had been discriminated against will appreciate ending that discrimination.
you're talking about the american revolution against the british here, right?
or are you referring to the same thing somewhere else?
> Now, a different group favoring no racism, equal opportunity, and generosity to all groups based on need is reversing the prior group's work
right, the problem is that the current elites in power in the current usa government are villifying those people and trying to reverse the reversal: restore racism; eliminate equity; allocate generosity based on political alignment and fealty to one particular personality rather than need
You say this without any evidence at all. As I describe in my comment above, DEI hiring practices do not promote discrimination against anyone.
The right opposes DEI because they genuinely can't understand that someone would want a fair, diverse workplace, so, as you aptly demonstrate, they insert all kinds of imaginary (and obviously false) conspiracy theories in an attempt to show that DEI is actually a disguised attempt to win power for certain favored classes. Nothing could be farther from the truth.
> We've seen that these ideologies are conflict-oriented, racist, and less effective.
You say "we've seen" as if it were established fact, but it isn't. You might as well as "I heard once" or "I saw on Facebook that", insofar as you're attempting to provide a factual basis for your opinions.
> Now, a different group favoring no racism, equal opportunity, and generosity to all groups based on need is reversing the prior group's work. Everyone who had been discriminated against will appreciate ending that discrimination.
No, the current administration is favoring a return to racism by shutting down hiring practices that would have allowed for a diverse hiring pool. Moreover, the administration is transparently also cracking down on viewpoints it doesn't like, by punishing, for example, law firms and universities that are known to to oppose the administration's cause du jour.
I have personally heard managers discussing the candidates' backgrounds in the context where it was clear that some were preferred over others, because their managers wanted to see them "demonstrate some commitment". Now what? Are you going to tell me that I misheard, or that my experience is somehow invalid?
This administration is a cesspit of vile fascist scum, and that's a mild way to put it. But one of the major reasons why they were able to ride the resentment wave into power is because of people like you blatantly denying that water is wet.
Everywhere should have plentiful good quality housing, medical, schools, everything else that is part of the infrastructure of society.
Give those kids, and even the poor workers, nutritious meals to ensure they are ready to function as members of society.
Welfare / unemployment 'insurance' shouldn't be about just getting a paycheck, they should be about connecting those without work to work that benefits society and the people who are now getting a job or furthering training towards a job rather than sitting around hoping someone will hire.
Generally: government (of the people, by the people, for the people) should be about stewardship of the commons, the shared space between private areas.
All of the relevant laws specify that (1) you are not allowed to treat anybody differently based on their race, and (2) if your outcome numbers don't match what the government wants to see, there will be hell to pay.
Only (2) can be directly measured, so that is the part of the law that's enforced. People report that they treat all races equally for the same reason that Soviet agriculture officials reported that the grain harvest was better than expected.
† It's not clear to me why a rebranding was felt to be necessary. "Affirmative action" was popular; a lot of the loss in status of this type of initiative seems to be fairly directly related to the fact that, once the name was changed, people could reevaluate the concept without being confused by the preexisting knowledge that they approved of it.
I don't agree with pretty much the entirety of your post but that stuck out.
Of course; it is a major focus of governmental affirmative action efforts.
> Is there anything to back this up?
Again, of course.
> Redlining was a real phenomenon.
And? Do you think it was a real phenomenon after the 1960s? School segregation was a real phenomenon too; in your opinion, does that mean that modern schools do not admit applicants because they are favored minorities?
Before deciding whether you approve of a government program, maybe you should learn what it involves.