Split Thread Diversity Equity and Inclusion and merit in employment etc

[Susheel]

Exactly what white privilege was involved in me pointing out that @arthwollipot's article erased women three times?

The response wasn't to you. You aren't the only interlocutor on this thread, you know.

 

[Manger Douse]

The response wasn't to you. You aren't the only interlocutor on this thread, you know.

So why did you quote me then?

 

[Susheel]

So why did you quote me then?

My response was to @Trausti, I have no idea how your quote got included. Didn't even realise it was possible to quote two people in one post. Sorry. It was my mistake.

 

[jt512]

I can't be the only person who has noticed that despite being loudly and forcefully anti-DEI, the current administration is not doing a lot to promote meritocracy.

For some bizarre reason, you think dismantling DEI promotes white supremacy. Newsflash: it's 2025. The U.S. is not the systemically racist society it once was. The default isn't white supremacy; it's judging people without regard to their skin color. Dismantling DEI is promoting meritocracy.

 

[mumblethrax]

For some bizarre reason, you think dismantling DEI promotes white supremacy.

Well, it very obviously could do. If you just assume that every non-white person got their job through DEI and fire them in name of "dismantling DEI", that's going to promote white supremacy.

Dismantling DEI is promoting meritocracy.

I don't see any reason to believe that.

 

[steenkh]

The default isn't white supremacy; it's judging people without regard to their skin color.

And yet, when a colored person or a woman is holding a high position, the default opinion of MAGA is to think that they are incompetent.

Is competence judged before people are fired on DEI grounds?

 

[Brainster]

Pete Buttigieg makes a good comment:

What do we mean when we talk about diversity? Is it caring for people’s different experiences and making sure no one’s mistreated because of them—which I will always fight for—or is it making people sit through a training that looks like something out of Portlandia? Which I have also experienced. [This] is how Trump Republicans are made. […]

Richard Kahlenberg writes about some of the less effective defenses of DEI:

Donald Trump and congressional Republicans would love nothing more than for Democrats to defend these unpopular and race essentialist policies. Some already have. Democratic Rep. Jasmine Crockett Texas, for example, stood up for DEI with the absurd claim: “If you are competent, you are not concerned. The only people crying are mediocre white boys.”

Not that he finds Trump any better:

Fortunately for Democrats, Trump has taken a winning issue and undercut it by making outrageous statements of his own. After a tragic airplane crash, at a moment when the president should have been consoling the country, Trump cast blame on DEI policies despite lacking any evidence. The administration then hired an acting Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy who recently wrote, “Competent white men must be in charge if you want things to work.”

And suggests an alternative:

Rather than defending unpopular DEI programs that harden racial differences or adopting Trump’s punitive approach of opposing anything that might produce healthy levels of diversity, Democrats should champion a middle ground policy of “integration, equal opportunity, and belonging.”

It might sound as if he is just using different words for the same thing, but he makes some good points. Rather than have race-based affirmative action, why not have class-based affirmative action? Since the lower classes tend to be disproportionately minority, you achieve your goal of a more racially diverse student body/workforce, but you haven't made the decision based on race. As Kahlenberg points out, this gives the Democrats an opportunity to cut into Trump's base of working-class whites, whose kids could also qualify for affirmative action.

 

[arthwollipot]

For some bizarre reason, you think dismantling DEI promotes white supremacy. Newsflash: it's 2025. The U.S. is not the systemically racist society it once was. The default isn't white supremacy; it's judging people without regard to their skin color. Dismantling DEI is promoting meritocracy.

Have you even looked at your current administration? Comrade Krasnov is certainly dismantling DEI, but he is absolutely not promoting meritocracy.

 

[jt512]

Well, it very obviously could do. If you just assume that every non-white person got their job through DEI and fire them in name of "dismantling DEI", that's going to promote white supremacy.

Nobody has proposed firing anybody to dismantle DEI except for DEI administrators.

 

[jt512]

Have you even looked at your current administration? Comrade Krasnov is certainly dismantling DEI, but he is absolutely not promoting meritocracy.

Meritocracy is how most people in most organizations are hired by default. You don't have to "promote" it; it's how organization that want to succeed operate. You rank-order the candidates and make offers starting with the most-qualified candidate until somebody accepts. When you get rid of DEI meritocracy is what's left.

 

[Aridas]

Meritocracy is how most people in most organizations are hired by default. You don't have to "promote" it; it's how organization that want to succeed operate. You rank-order the candidates and make offers starting with the most-qualified candidate until somebody accepts. When you get rid of DEI meritocracy is what's left.

If this is your response to that, you've rendered "merit" into little more than a bad joke. Though, perhaps you do have a partial out with the "want to succeed" qualification.

 

[mumblethrax]

Nobody has proposed firing anybody to dismantle DEI except for DEI administrators.

The current US administration has done exactly that, while performatively declaring that DEI is dead and that "meritocracy is back". It's a never-ending procession of incompetent loyalists being hired, while minorities and women are fired for having the temerity to be hired in the first place.

Meritocracy is how most people in most organizations are hired by default. You don't have to "promote" it; it's how organization that want to succeed operate. You rank-order the candidates and make offers starting with the most-qualified candidate until somebody accepts. When you get rid of DEI meritocracy is what's left.

This is faith-based nonsense. Large organizations are lousy with the biases and competing interests of the people that work for them. Meritocracy isn't some natural state of affairs in organizations left to their own devices, or we (in liberal societies, at least) always would have been meritocratic--anti-discrimination measures never would have been necessary in the first place.

It's at best an aspiration, and not one that's going to be shared by everyone in any organization. It presupposes a seriousness and a commitment to organizational goals on the part of the people who making employment decisions (rather than, for example, showing preference for a friend or relative), and even then needs a lot of hard work and careful thought invested to correct for known biases. That's before you consider all the ways that organizations try to "rank-order" candidates that have been known for decades to be at best ineffective, and at worst counter-productive, yet which are still commonly practiced (for example, unstructured candidate interviews).

 

[jt512]

This is faith-based nonsense. Large organizations are lousy with the biases and competing interests of the people that work for them. Meritocracy isn't some natural state of affairs in organizations left to their own devices, or we (in liberal societies, at least) always would have been meritocratic--anti-discrimination measures never would have been necessary in the first place.

It's at best an aspiration, and not one that's going to be shared by everyone in any organization. It presupposes a seriousness and a commitment to organizational goals on the part of the people who making employment decisions (rather than, for example, showing preference for a friend or relative), and even then needs a lot of hard work and careful thought invested to correct for known biases. That's before you consider all the ways that organizations try to "rank-order" candidates that have been known for decades to be at best ineffective, and at worst counter-productive, yet which are still commonly practiced (for example, unstructured candidate interviews).

Sorry, but you are just full of hot air.

Every place I've ever worked, I was hired because I won a competition for most-qualified applicant, and everybody I've hired, or have been involved in hiring, up to a university vice president, was hired for the same reason.

 

[mumblethrax]

Sorry, but you are just full of hot air.

This is not a response.

Every place I've ever worked, I was hired because I won a competition for most-qualified applicant, and everybody I've hired, or have been involved in hiring, up to a university vice president, was hired for the same reason.

Anecdotes are not evidence.

 

[jt512]

This is not a response.

Sometimes you have to also read the next sentence.

Anecdotes are not evidence.

Statistician here. Actually they are.

 

[mumblethrax]

Sometimes you have to also read the next sentence.

I don't have to read the next sentence to identify empty invective, and the next sentence also wasn't a response.

Statistician here. Actually they are.

I have no interest in you trying to defend the validity of unverifiable personal anecdotes.

 

[Aridas]

This was linked to in another thread, but I think that it deserved linked to here, too.

Military to Remove 'Enola Gay' Photos for Violating DEI Rules

Separately from that, though -

I have no interest in you trying to defend the validity of unverifiable personal anecdotes.

Ehh. There's a technical argument to be made there. Anecdotes are evidence, just not of the same quality and nature as the evidence provided by studies that can actually remove biases to more meaningful levels. With that said, though...

Sorry, but you are just full of hot air.

Every place I've ever worked, I was hired because I won a competition for most-qualified applicant, and everybody I've hired, or have been involved in hiring, up to a university vice president, was hired for the same reason.

The latter doesn't actually justify claiming that first bit and is, at best, somewhat half-assed when it comes to addressing the points raised in what had been quoted, anyways. If the personal experience claims are actually true, that'd be nice and worthy of compliments for all involved, but wouldn't be a refutation. The actual criteria used to determine who was the "most-qualified applicant," of course, are not stated, which also reduces how meaningful the claim is.

Once more, to revisit a topic from earlier in the thread that illustrated some of the problem actually at hand with firmer data - when orchestras instituted measures to reduce the effect of factors other than quality of sound produced, the composition of who actually got hired changed significantly. Claiming meritocracy, afterwards, is far more supportable than claiming meritocracy before, yet the winners of the competition before could easily and correctly also claim that they won a competition for "most-qualified applicant."

 

[mumblethrax]

Ehh. There's a technical argument to be made there. Anecdotes are evidence, just not of the same quality and nature as the evidence provided by studies that can actually remove biases to more meaningful levels.

I wouldn't contest that technical argument, but they lack persuasive power to such a degree that I don't think it makes sense to raise personal experience in response to historical observations and decades of research.

 

[Susheel]

Sorry, but you are just full of hot air.

Every place I've ever worked, I was hired because I won a competition for most-qualified applicant, and everybody I've hired, or have been involved in hiring, up to a university vice president, was hired for the same reason.

So DEI is not really an issue...

 

[Trausti]

It might sound as if he is just using different words for the same thing, but he makes some good points. Rather than have race-based affirmative action, why not have class-based affirmative action? Since the lower classes tend to be disproportionately minority, you achieve your goal of a more racially diverse student body/workforce, but you haven't made the decision based on race. As Kahlenberg points out, this gives the Democrats an opportunity to cut into Trump's base of working-class whites, whose kids could also qualify for affirmative action.

Because a straight White male might benefit. Just can't have that. But a person's sex or race tells you nothing about what privileges, advantages, or disadvantages that person may have had in life. Focusing on class makes much more sense if the sincere goal is to reduce inequality. But White people bad, so no.