Split Thread Diversity Equity and Inclusion and merit in employment etc

[arthwollipot]

Let's try to operationalize this. You have in vote in who is going to get hired. It's down to two candidates:

Candidate A: African American, qualified and so will do a perfectly fine job
Candidate B: white, better qualifications than A - not outrageously so, but still clearly better

Maybe play around with whether this job is professional, trade, or menial.

Does some people needing a bigger slice of the pie mean that you go with A? If not, then at what point does that come into play, if at all?

Okay, first, I am unqualified to make policy.

Okay with that out of the way, it very much depends on circumstances. If Candidate A comes from an underprivileged background, poor neighbourhood, struggle town, then yes, it might make sense for that to factor into the calculation. Framing the question as a simple naïve binary is disingenuous.

 

[Paul2]

Okay, first, I am unqualified to make policy.

Okay with that out of the way, it very much depends on circumstances. If Candidate A comes from an underprivileged background, poor neighbourhood, struggle town, then yes, it might make sense for that to factor into the calculation. Framing the question as a simple naïve binary is disingenuous.

How would you factor that in, though? Who would you give the job to?

 

[theprestige]

Okay, first, I am unqualified to make policy.

Nonsense. You live in a democracy. All policy ultimately comes back to you, the voting citizenry. That's the whole point of democracy.

 

[Emily's Cat]

I can understand how banning such greetings is petty and unnecessary, but I also can't see how it is excluding the majority faith from consideration either,
unless the reminder to "keep our holiday greetings non-denominational" etc. applies only to Christmas. If it means you can say "happy Diwali" but not "Merry Christmas," then yes. If it means you shouldn't mention any specific holiday at all, and just stick to "happy holidays," orthe like, it still seems petty and unnecessary, and likely assumes more offense than is actually there, but it is a different thing.

It literally means that the company had a Diwali celebration, and sent out a corporate wide "Happy Diwali" email, and put up Diwali screen savers for the entire company while simultaneously ONLY asking that we be "non-denominational" about christian holidays.

 

[Emily's Cat]

You've chosen a poor example. Strip clubs are inherently sexist.

Basketball teams should hire a lot of short skinny female players, otherwise they won't be included.

 

[Trausti]

Basketball teams should hire a lot of short skinny female players, otherwise they won't be included.

No, no. DEI doesn't apply to sport.

 

[arthwollipot]

How would you factor that in, though? Who would you give the job to?

I don't have enough information to answer that question.

 

[arthwollipot]

Basketball teams should hire a lot of short skinny female players, otherwise they won't be included.

Sport is also inherently sexist, as demonstrated by that discussion that we will not go into in this thread.

 

[Emily's Cat]

I don't have enough information to answer that question.

This is a dodge, arthwollipot - and it's one you tend to use a lot. You make a very big assertion, with an element of moral righteousness involved.

When your assertion is challenged, and you're asked to justify your stance, you link to something really, really big but provide no synopsis or quotes from that link as evidence. When your link is challenged, you insist that the other person either hasn't read it or has read it wrongly... even if they have provided quotes in support of their position.

When your premise is challenged, you insist that you're not an expert. You decline to support your premise by providing your own rational or thought process in any fashion, but you continue to demand that other people must accept your premise as being correct.

When the application of your assertion is challenged, you find some quibble that makes each challenge somehow not applicable - you No True Scotsman each situation.

In all seriousness, and with as much respect as I can convey... do you even understand what your own positions are, and why you hold them? Do you actually grok what you're asking for and what the application is, and whether or not it has any chance in hell of being successful at addressing whatever problem you think it's targeting?

 

[Emily's Cat]

Sport is also inherently sexist, as demonstrated by that discussion that we will not go into in this thread.

Oh FFS.

Expecting strip clubs to hire fat ugly male dancers seems like it should be EXACTLY how you go about addressing the sexism (and fatphobia and pretty privilege) of strip clubs. That's EXACTLY what the entire premise of DEI is supposed to do - address the inherent bigotry of existing business by expecting those businesses to hire people who don't fit the prior mold in order to *create* diversity - because diversity is an inherently good thing that is supposed to be an end in and of itself.

 

[Paul2]

I don't have enough information to answer that question.

It seems like you don't want to game out the hypotheticals I'm trying to consider, so we'll leave it at that.

 

[theprestige]

You're all missing the point. The strippers are the product. The basketball players are the product. DEI would be about the management and staff.

Will a basketball franchise perform better with a more diverse back office? A more diverse scouting department?

Will a strip club be more profitable if management makes sure to include radfem and fundy viewpoints?

These are the DEI questions to ask.

 

[Emily's Cat]

You're all missing the point. The strippers are the product. The basketball players are the product. DEI would be about the management and staff.

Will a basketball franchise perform better with a more diverse back office? A more diverse scouting department?

Will a strip club be more profitable if management makes sure to include exclude radfem and fundy viewpoints?

These are the DEI questions to ask.

FTFY...

 

[arthwollipot]

This is a dodge, arthwollipot - and it's one you tend to use a lot.

No it's not. Hiring someone requires an application, and an interview, and assessment against hiring criteria, probably background checks depending on what kind of job they are going for. I do not know enough about Paul2's candidates to make a snap assessment of who they should hire, and anyone that thinks they do is, at best, wrong.

This is why the Hypothetical Game is always fallacious. Real world decisions are more complex than the simple ones that people try to push as hypotheticals.

 

[arthwollipot]

You're all missing the point. The strippers are the product. The basketball players are the product. DEI would be about the management and staff.

Will a basketball franchise perform better with a more diverse back office? A more diverse scouting department?

Will a strip club be more profitable if management makes sure to include radfem and fundy viewpoints?

These are the DEI questions to ask.

No, I wouldn't ask those questions, though they are better questions than some of the others.

Something like a basketball team, yeah, a bit of diversity there probably wouldn't hurt. I'm not an expert in the sportsballs. But as I said the entire purpose of strip clubs is sexual, and therefore inherently gender dependent. And just for the record, male strippers do exist.

Also, "radfem" and "fundy"? Poisoning the well much?

 

[Paul2]

No it's not. Hiring someone requires an application, and an interview, and assessment against hiring criteria, probably background checks depending on what kind of job they are going for. I do not know enough about Paul2's candidates to make a snap assessment of who they should hire, and anyone that thinks they do is, at best, wrong.

This is why the Hypothetical Game is always fallacious. Real world decisions are more complex than the simple ones that people try to push as hypotheticals.

You could just make all those other factors the same for the two candidates (hiring criteria met equally for each candidate, background checks come up the same - clean, to make things easy - for each candidate, etc.), as well as being in the middle of a bell curve that plots where certain values for those factors could lie (years of relevant experience, graduated from the same school, etc.).

ETA: There are real life situations in which, considering ALL the factors that conceivably could come into play when making a hiring decision, at the end of the day, the decision operationally and functionally comes down to the factors in my original scenario because the others equal out or are so minimally different as to be irrelevant. *That's* the type of situation in which we can discover where certain values are.

 

[bruto]

You could just make all those other factors the same for the two candidates (hiring criteria met equally for each candidate, background checks come up the same - clean, to make things easy - for each candidate, etc.), as well as being in the middle of a bell curve that plots where certain values for those factors could lie (years of relevant experience, graduated from the same school, etc.).

ETA: There are real life situations in which, considering ALL the factors that conceivably could come into play when making a hiring decision, at the end of the day, the decision operationally and functionally comes down to the factors in my original scenario because the others equal out or are so minimally different as to be irrelevant. *That's* the type of situation in which we can discover where certain values are.

That seems a reasonable possibility. Certainly in other areas it's possible to study matched pairs in which a single variable is prominent, and though that degree of ducumentable equality is unlikely in a real world situation, it's possible to think about it. But I think in the real world, where people are complex, the decision would likely be a difficult one and always a bit of a gamble, as it likely is even without the DEI issue. What constitutes true equality involves many unknowns and a certain degree of subjective judgment. I think too many people on both sides confuse a principle and a rule.

 

[Darat]

Yep - employed a few people over the years by a metaphorical toss of a coin.

 

[theprestige]

No, I wouldn't ask those questions, though they are better questions than some of the others.

Something like a basketball team, yeah, a bit of diversity there probably wouldn't hurt. I'm not an expert in the sportsballs. But as I said the entire purpose of strip clubs is sexual, and therefore inherently gender dependent. And just for the record, male strippers do exist.

I think you're still missing the point. Strippers are the product. Diversity in the product line isn't the issue. A successful product line is based entirely on what your target customers actually want. "The customer is always right", and all that. Diversity in management is what DEI is aimed at, at least in the US.

Also, "radfem" and "fundy"? Poisoning the well much?

Tongue in cheek. I think we can all agree that there is such a thing as excessive diversity of opinion, in a group.

 

[arthwollipot]

You could just make all those other factors the same for the two candidates (hiring criteria met equally for each candidate, background checks come up the same - clean, to make things easy - for each candidate, etc.), as well as being in the middle of a bell curve that plots where certain values for those factors could lie (years of relevant experience, graduated from the same school, etc.).

ETA: There are real life situations in which, considering ALL the factors that conceivably could come into play when making a hiring decision, at the end of the day, the decision operationally and functionally comes down to the factors in my original scenario because the others equal out or are so minimally different as to be irrelevant. *That's* the type of situation in which we can discover where certain values are.

Now you're talking about a spherical cow in a vacuum, which is fine for theoretical physics, but people are different from each other. You can't just arbitrarily control for those variables.