I honestly don’t functionally disagree that a lot of DEI stuff has been annoying, pointless and some of it even actively counterproductive, I just think the backlash is several million times worse than whatever the issues were. It’s like murdering someone for chewing loudly.
Reposted from
Josh Busby
I thought of DEI policies as mildly annoying like IRB. They exist for a reason but it's kind of hard to bureaucratize a response to a real concern. The bigger issue was if all my colleagues look like me or all my students look like me, that's not good, fair, or likely to be a vibrant place.
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But it's being torn down by people who want to create something even worse than what came before it.
'We can't be discriminatory, look at our official hiring policies!'
That's it.
Any good they do is purely incidental, sadly
Makes it easy to fire dicks.
Couldn't be more biased on this topic
Funnily enough, of all places, I think the NFL's rules on interviewing and hiring coordinators is maybe the best example of a DEI initiative working really well.
But they want to.
C.f. Lee Atwater 1981
https://www.historynewsnetwork.org/article/lee-atwaters-infamous-1981-interview-on-the-southe
Beneficiaries of DEI never taking ownership of it resulted in low resistance to it ending.
IIRC he thinks most people get it and aren’t going to be a problem. A small percentage don’t understand the line and the training helps and another set are going to get fired and it’s obvious in the class.
They want to make it illegal not to be racist.
Conservatives are anti black, anti woman, anti disabled person in the purest sense.
On left, people sometimes literally mean “anti annoying training at work”. 1/
All this on the backdrop of disabled, black, queer, etc people looking at both groups having to wonder at times who really means what.
We should use specific language to make points like
“Corporate co-opting of DEI fails to achieve it”
The appropriate response is to make snarky comments to your work friends and then forget about it in 48 hours. It is not to try and blow up the US government.
I have the same feeling about Star Wars and gaming culture
are some of the new demands irritating ? Yeah
Does it mean we vote in a fascist who's going to start the year of Lead in Mexico ? NO
Same thing with people getting bent out of shape over micro aggressions. All they are is there are some things that are insulting in context so maybe don’t say them.
Is anyone surprised?
I think it's great and way past time that we put people of color into decision making roles.
I don't have it memorized but yes, the negative impact was greatest for URM and women.
Genuinely using social media spin against what is essentially public domain law to get themselves to the 14 Words.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/2/5/is-south-africa-confiscating-land-targeting-some-groups-as-trump-claims
https://bsky.app/profile/chrononaut.bsky.social/post/3lhje7di4bk2u
But yeah, the pushback is wild.