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Never once in my 20+ years working for corporations and government contractors, including companies with very strong DEI programs, have I ever felt excluded or marginalized. And I've never witnessed "reverse racism" (which is a totally absurd name for what would just be racism).
What I have experienced, several times, is people who look like me thinking I'm one of the boys, and flat out telling me they don't hire woman because they "cause too much drama", or only hire women they want to have sex with. And those are just two examples of dozens. Thanksfully those situations have plummeted over the years.
You flat out will not get an equitable work environment if you don't place a focus on it.
Remember the story about enforced diversity statements at universities, and the ex-soviet math teacher warning against them? I do and it was discussed here.
I have seen it from the same types of people who oppose DEI: born affluent, convinced that anyone who can’t retire at 45 chose not to, etc.
I'm not just saying me personally. I'm saying I have never even heard a creditable case of "reverse discrimination" in all my years, across all my colleagues.
DEI initiatives seek to put minority groups on the same level as majority groups. So they get the same consideration as everyone else, not more consideration. If that bothers you I don't really know what to tell you.
You don’t hear about the vast majority of discrimination instances because one simply doesn’t get hired. Often on purpose, “no culture fit” can’t be proven.
You have and will experience it, though usually won’t know. Thinking it doesn’t happen is very naïve.
For the record though, I'm 100% sure a white person hasn't gone a job because of their skin color. People suck, and that doesn't stop being true because of skin color or gender. My point is that DEI isn't some grand conspiracy against white people. They're for the most part well meaning policies intended to equalize a playing field that has been fundementally uneven for essentially all of human history.
I haven’t seen or heard of any professional rascism, sexism, etc directly with my own senses either—in my whole life. Does that mean they don’t exist? Of course not, but that’s what your statements above sound like. “I haven’t seen => doesn’t exist.”
I and people I know have directly observed racism/sexism in our careers, and they have without fail been exactly what DEI initiatives are intended to help prevent.
If someone is using DEI initiatives to abuse their power, that should be dealt with, obviously. But that's not indicative of some conspiracy.
I suspect if I ran down the extremely long laundry list of terrible things done by big corporations you wouldn't argue all corporations should be abolished.
Look at Agile, a movement that took a good idea and twisted it into the opposite.
This only stops working when it bumps into Mother Nature's laws rather than man's laws, so that's what you have to focus on with these people. It's brutal but it's entirely impartial, they can tell Fox News that black is white and up is down, but Ma doesn't give a shit, and they hate that. Who does she think she is?
If you don't like racism, don't be racist.
"No State shall ... deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws"
Not only is the PSF not subject to this clause, the only subject to the clause are governments and the PSF is not even capable of violating it. In what way would DEI programs violate this clause?
That's the plain meaning of the constitution.
It's the same reason that you have absolutely no right to free speech in the workplace. The first amendment applies only to governments.
It is the diacrimination based on protected classes like race and sex that people have a problem with.
Well, its discrimination based on protected classes that has a higher legal bar to be acceptable to the government defining those classes, but protected classes (even in the US) differ between states and between the states and the federal government and, even within the same jurisdiction, for different kinds of activities.
But, no, what is more restricted by law and what people have problems with are not the same thing! Many people have problems with discrimination on bases which are not currently protected classes, and many people endorse discrimination on bases which currently are protected classes.
This is a half joke comment, I'm actually wondering - what can you discriminate on generally in US? (and where you draw the arbitrary line (not saying other countries are better/worse)).
In the US, it’s legal to discriminate on pretty much any basis, with the right justification. What the justification required is (which can be "none at all" for certain cases), however, depends on, besides the basis for discrimination, some combination of:
(1) Are you the federal government, a state (including any subdivision) government, or a private actor (and, in the latter case, are you acting as a contractor for the federal or a state government), and
(2) What is the function (employment, sales of goods or services, government benefits, etc.) for which you are discriminating?
If you mean, what can you discriminate on with no special justification at all, well:
(1) If you are a private actor, almost any basis which does not have an explicit legal restriction applicable to the function you are discriminating with regard to, and if the function isn't a narrow (but signficant) set of functions—the big ones being employment, housing, or a function considered a "public accommodation"—that is pretty much every basis.
(2) If you are the government actor (state or federal), almost no basis at all: while it is a low bar, pretty much every act by which the government discriminates is subject to, at a minimum, what is called the "rational basis test" (this is a consequence, essentially, of jurisprudence apply the due process clauses of the 5th and 14th Amendments and the equal protection clause of the 14th), which requires that the discrimination have a legitimate public purpose and some rational relationship to that purpose.
But to answer comprehensively is...well, a lot more complicated (and different, because of varying state law protections, in each state in some regards.)
This has come up in cases where, for example, machine learning (or even heuristics) were used to sort candidates and the algorithms were discovered to be discriminating based on things like name or zip code, which in the US correlate heavily with race and cannot be used as discriminators for that reason (the court does not turn a blind eye to the notion "Well, Your Honor, technically we weren't discriminating against race, we were discriminating against people named 'Jaqualin'...").
IIUC, precedent is that is incumbent upon the organization using machine learning to confirm that their system hasn't come up with a novel proxy for one of the protected classes and is using that proxy to violate discrimination protections.