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Split Thread Diversity Equity and Inclusion and merit in employment etc

arthwollipot said:
You certainly dodged that one. Nice moves.
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arth, they do have a point. While it's not wrong to point out that a source is fairly certainly biased, that doesn't automatically refute any particular point made. Of more importance than the bias, quite frankly, is the quality of the factual part of things. Going by the Media Bias Fact Check link, there's limited cause to argue there. It's only rated as mostly factual, yes, but the explanation states that that rating is due to misleading statements on other subjects, while having no actually failed fact checks.

If you wanted to make some argument about Harvard in a more direct way, of course, that might be doable. For example, on a quick search, I came up with this link from 2018 that lends a fair bit more context to work with. One of the more direct quotes that deals with the base issues at hand is -
Nationally, women constitute 44 percent of faculty at postsecondary institutions and just over half the total population, but only 33.8 percent of faculty at Harvard in the latest year with data. While the proportion of women in faculty and research positions at Harvard has shown encouraging growth from 2003 to 2015, gender diversity at Harvard still lags substantially behind national rates.
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More recent data can change things, of course, and it's entirely plausible that overshooting can happen. That doesn't change that it sure looks like Harvard's long had underlying problems, though.
 
Aridas said:
arth, they do have a point. While it's not wrong to point out that a source is fairly certainly biased, that doesn't automatically refute any particular point made. Of more importance than the bias, quite frankly, is the quality of the factual part of things. Going by the Media Bias Fact Check link, there's limited cause to argue there. It's only rated as mostly factual, yes, but the explanation states that that rating is due to misleading statements on other subjects, while having no actually failed fact checks.
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The mistake both of you are making is that I'm not talking about facts. I'm arguing the heavily-biased spin they put on everything they report.

If you read that article, you would come away with an opinion that may or may not be in agreement with facts, but will definitely be a deeply biased one.

Take this:

Harvard deliberately factors race into the hiring process. The university gives committee chairs privileged access to “self-identified demographic data, including gender, race, and ethnicity” and encourages chairs to “use this information to encourage diversity in the applicant pool, long list, and short list.” Harvard admits that some of its hiring programs have explicit “placement goals” for women and minorities—which, despite the university’s denial, function as a soft quota.
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Ibid.

This spins affirmative action as racial discrimination. If you knew nothing about affirmative action prior to reading this, you would have no choice but to believe that affirmative action is racial discrimination. It isn't. The source is biased. The source, regardless of whether it is factual or not, pushes a radical right-wing agenda not only on this topic, but also evidently on another topic that I will absolutely not be mentioning.

◊◊◊◊ them. ◊◊◊◊ the authors and ◊◊◊◊ the editors.
 
jt512 said:
There’s nothing to dodge. A mature person reads all sides of an issue and makes up their own mind. The only one who is dodging any thing is you.
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◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊. You're not reading all sides. You're explicitly and proudly reading only the radical Rightist side, and spinning it as a virtue.
 
arthwollipot said:
◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊. You're not reading all sides. You're explicitly and proudly reading only the radical Rightist side, and spinning it as a virtue.
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I'm reading only the "radical Rightsight [sic]." Hilarious.
arthwollipot said:
The mistake both of you are making is that I'm not talking about facts. I'm arguing the heavily-biased spin they put on everything they report.

If you read that article, you would come away with an opinion that may or may not be in agreement with facts, but will definitely be a deeply biased one.

Take this:

Ibid.

This spins affirmative action as racial discrimination. If you knew nothing about affirmative action prior to reading this, you would have no choice but to believe that affirmative action is racial discrimination. It isn't. The source is biased. The source, regardless of whether it is factual or not, pushes a radical right-wing agenda not only on this topic, but also evidently on another topic that I will absolutely not be mentioning.

◊◊◊◊ them. ◊◊◊◊ the authors and ◊◊◊◊ the editors.
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If you knew anything about affirmative action, you would know that it explicitly contradicts long-standing (U.S.) civil rights law. If you were honest, you would admit that affirmative action is explicit racial discrimination. The fact that it discriminates against identity groups that you think deserve it doesn't make it any less discriminatory under any common-sense meaning of the word or under U.S. law.
 
jt512 said:
I'm reading only the "radical Rightsight [sic]." Hilarious.

If you knew anything about affirmative action, you would know that it explicitly contradicts long-standing (U.S.) civil rights law.
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I do, and it doesn't. If it does, then the US civil rights laws are not what I thought they are and should be radically changed.
jt512 said:
If you were honest, you would admit that affirmative action is explicit racial discrimination.
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It doesn't. The Rightist straw definition of affirmative action is. And that's the only definition you are open to.
jt512 said:
The fact that it discriminates against identity groups that you think deserve it doesn't make it any less discriminatory under any common-sense meaning of the word or under U.S. law.
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While you are correct that I am not an expert in US law, antidiscrimination laws in most developed countries are broadly similar. The antidiscrimination laws I learned from my long career in the Australian Public Service gave me a very comprehensive understanding of how they are supposed to function. And this was a subject on which I had to do a yearly refresher course, along with privacy and security.

What you are and have been describing in this thread, I repeat, is absolutely not Diversity, Equity, or Inclusion. It's some bull made up by American conservatives that most of the rest of the world thinks is a joke. A very unfunny joke, given how many lives are being ruined in the fake crusade against it.
 
arthwollipot said:
I do, and it doesn't. If it does, then the US civil rights laws are not what I thought they are and should be radically changed.
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US civil rights law says that, in general, you cannot use demographic characteristics such as race, sex, age, national origin, or ethnic background as a factor in employment decisions, contractor selection, or college admissions. What would you change it to: that you can only use it to benefit minorities and women?
arthwollipot said:
It's some bull made up by American conservatives...
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It was made up by people who call themselves "progressives." It is the right who called them out on it (finally).
 
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jt512 said:
US civil rights law says that, in general, you cannot use demographic characteristics such as race, sex, age, national origin, or ethnic background as a factor in employment decisions, contractor selection, or college admissions. What would you change it to: that you can only use it to benefit minorities and women?
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That's not what affirmative action is.
jt512 said:
It was made up by people who call themselves "progressives." It is the right who called them out on it (finally).
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No, actual Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion policies were created by progressives. The Rightists, just like they did with those other culture war phrases Political Correctness, Critical Race Theory, and "Woke", took the phrase and twisted it into a gross perversion of the original idea. And you're now doing their work.
 
jt512 said:
If you knew anything about affirmative action, you would know that it explicitly contradicts long-standing (U.S.) civil rights law. If you were honest, you would admit that affirmative action is explicit racial discrimination. The fact that it discriminates against identity groups that you think deserve it doesn't make it any less discriminatory under any common-sense meaning of the word or under U.S. law.
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arthwollipot said:
I do, and it doesn't. If it does, then the US civil rights laws are not what I thought they are and should be radically changed.
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jt512 said:
US civil rights law says that, in general, you cannot use demographic characteristics such as race, sex, age, national origin, or ethnic background as a factor in employment decisions, contractor selection, or college admissions. What would you change it to: that you can only use it to benefit minorities and women?
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Please answer the question.
 
arthwollipot said:
The mistake both of you are making is that I'm not talking about facts. I'm arguing the heavily-biased spin they put on everything they report.
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That's quite obvious. It also serves as a response that has limited value on its own and, based on how you used it, is hard to take as anything other than you just attacking the source, rather than addressing the arguments that were actually at hand.

arthwollipot said:
This spins affirmative action as racial discrimination.
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By its nature, it is discrimination. Whether it is justified as a partial remedy to the effects of illegal forms of discrimination that caused problems is another matter. As mentioned in what I had linked to and quoted, there's good reason to suspect that unfair discrimination had already been notably in play, after all, even if it wasn't necessarily explicit policy. To go back to the orchestra, because they make a fine reference overall - blind auditions/removing the ability to let biases interfere changed the hiring composition significantly, which demonstrates that there certainly was unfair bias in play. If something effectively similar could be done at Harvard, that would be far less easy for those like jt512 and City Journal to try to put themselves on a moral high ground as they opposed it.

arthwollipot said:
◊◊◊◊ them. ◊◊◊◊ the authors and ◊◊◊◊ the editors.
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Sure. They fairly certainly earned that. Pushing the "Our forebearers worked hard to rig the system to give us lots of racially based advantages! How dare you work to explicitly counter that!" selfish undertone and working to pervert justice into injustice isn't some noble thing, after all.
 
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arthwollipot said:
I deny the premise of the question.
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You deny the premise, that US civil rights laws prohibit using demographic characteristics such as race, sex, age, national origin, or ethnic background as a factor in employment decisions, contractor selection, or college admissions. Then what do you think US civil rights laws say about using demographic characteristics such as race, sex, age, national origin, or ethnic background as a factor in employment decisions, contractor selection, or college admissions?
 
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