There is an essential difference between “ill-judged”, “pious” or “hypocritical” policies and racial animus being given full throat by a bunch of incredibly wealthy autocrats, and if people can’t see it I am a bit worried tbh - ThreadSky

twlldun.bsky.social • 21 days ago

There is an essential difference between “ill-judged”, “pious” or “hypocritical” policies and racial animus being given full throat by a bunch of incredibly wealthy autocrats, and if people can’t see it I am a bit worried tbh

Reposted from jamelle

do i roll my eyes at a lot of DEI stuff? yeah, i wrote a whole essay about why i thought it was bullshit back in 2020. but trump et al aren’t saying, “corporate DEI policies mainly exist to protect corporate interests from discrimination lawsuits.” they’re saying “get the blacks out”

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dasmunch.bsky.social•21 days ago

Don't forget 'perfectly sane and unremarkable work given a wordy and ridiculous name that manages to entirely obscure this,' which in my experience is an awful lot of this stuff

mcdaragh.bsky.social•21 days ago

Yep. The Badenoch project is basically that with a veneer of deniability, and it seems to be failing because Trump is making old white racists dream of not even having to pretend anymore

twlldun.bsky.social•21 days ago

Yes, yes, these policies were very regularly a malaise of liberalism and very regularly needed arguing against. But…they were still by-products of a flawed liberal system, not active and rampant illiberalism.

jonconnorton.com•21 days ago

It’s a bit like health and safety. Yes, there were some silly rules related to process, but anyone who was ever worked in a factory or worked with forklifts understand why we have it.

twlldun.bsky.social•21 days ago

I mean, to a degree. I think there are also intellectual underpinnings to the DEI stuff which can quite often be dodgy! The wilder fringes of stuff around, say, race seem quite often…racist to me. But even so, even so, the fabled solution is basically the Klan.

theangelremiel.bsky.social•21 days ago

Generally DEI policies have noble intentions and clumsy implementation, but the people who want to get rid of them aren't objecting to the implementation.

twlldun.bsky.social•21 days ago

Eh I’m not entirely sure about the nobility of some edges of them tbf but even so, they are products of the hegemonic superstructure of “modern liberal capitalist democracy”, which ostensibly most everyone believes in to some degree whereas the opposition…not so much not so much

foarp.bsky.social•21 days ago

I take the rapid, unquestioned removal of all signs of 2020’s DEI from websites and so forth as pretty conclusive evidence that they were never sincerely held.

That said, the intent is not to get rid of cringey tiresome woo nonsense, it’s to reverse long-standing policies against discrimination.

foarp.bsky.social•21 days ago

The fact that we did not need the performative DEI stuff, and that I don’t want it back either, doesn’t stop me from recognising the intent of the people doing the removing is: to reverse underlying protections and signal to those who want to discriminate: “please go ahead”.

twlldun.bsky.social•21 days ago

Absolutely every word

pjgcpg.bsky.social•21 days ago

What was the acronym used, when white males automatically got the best jobs and education, for over 200 years? DEI is the newer name for affirmative action. It made it necessary for employers and colleges to give females and minorities a chance to gain the ability to compete with white males.

pswidlicki.bsky.social•21 days ago

Remember a very telling exchange with Goodwin before he went full overt fash around corporate DEI being superficial/performative and trying to pin him on whether he thought it was bad because it wouldn't advance its stated objectives or whether the objectives themselves were undesirable

amhoward.bsky.social•21 days ago

Anti-DEI people’s position is grounded in them believing they are not themselves racist. They’re the ones that claim when that when a black candidate sits in front of them that “they don’t see colour”. It is, of course, bullshit.

amhoward.bsky.social•21 days ago

Step one is to recognise that yep, I do make assumptions about people and yes, those assumptions are prejudices. If you steadfastly refuse to acknowledge this, there’s little chance of actually countering them.

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