Split Thread DEI in the US

[Opcode]

Yet you have no issues commenting without knowing the basic background of the thread. Cool, that's pretty standard for right-wingers.

I read the first page and the last page. If you have some specific point you want me to consider, point it out. It isn't difficult. BTW, how much of those 68 pages do you have memorized in detail? Might you have missed some point?

I'm talking about him calling for Biden to be killed for crimes Kirk imagined up.

Mr. Kirk didn't call for extrajudicial execution, and judicial execution, of course, would be through a court. Kirk had an opinion that he expressed.

There is also the $8 million from China, the $3.5 million from Russia, the million dollars a year from Ukraine, $3 million from Romania and $142k from Kazakhstan

Evidence?

These facts were uncovered by the U.S. House Oversight Committee's investigation and are public records. Why do you dispute my statements if you know about this investigation? Why do you attack Charlie Kirk for what he said if you haven't investigated enough to have uncovered these facts?

The Bidens’ Influence Peddling Timeline - United States House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform

United States House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform

oversight.house.gov

Kind of an empty promise given you're a Trump supporter, isn't it? So NOW it's a problem but as Trump is pardoning his friends and family you don't seem to have a ◊◊◊◊◊◊◊ thing to say.

I've had several more years to watch and think about Biden's excesses than Trump's. We've had more investigations into Biden's questionable behavior than Trump's.

Check this out. This is how much of a grown up I am, and how much I'm not in a cult. If Biden broke the ◊◊◊◊◊◊◊ law, put him in jail.

OK! Of course, we both know that won't happen. Even if he lived long enough for a trial, he's privileged.

Try him and put him in jail. He never pardoned himself and your man in the White House is all about law and order. Why aren't you crying to Trump to do something? Tell them to get to work. You just listed off a bunch of clearly illegal bribes, right? You guys apparently have the evidence? Why isn't Trump doing his job?

The wheels of justice grind slowly.

Or, and hear me out, you have no ◊◊◊◊◊◊◊ clue in the slightest what "DEI" is, how it's applied, or what it means.

But, you pretend you do, without giving us any specific area where you think I'm wrong.

Also, since you obviously have no idea how the aviation world works, individual companies don't do the testing. They involve physical, and mental evaluations plus written exams and hours of flight.

And you are claiming that this extensive testing is the result of DEI? Or, did it exist before DEI came along? So, what are you claiming that DEI has done in the world of aviation hiring?

Right, it's a racist hypothetical attempting to call out a black pilot. It's built on no evidence, no proof and no research. It trips me up because we're on a skeptics forum, not at a bar. Up your game.

A major corporate trend allegedly changes hiring and employment practices to the benefit of those who are disadvantaged on the basis that they were disadvantaged, but you don't see the connection between that and questions about the qualifications of people who were hired into hazardous jobs.

If I'm seeing everything through racism then why does Kirk's particular "hypothetical" revolve around the race the pilot?

Because DEI does. That's the topic. Do you want pilots to be tested based on their skills as pilots or based on the disadvantages and injustices that other black people used to experience?

Why is he saying that the pilot, of a specific shade of skin, would be the unqualified one? Again, you don't seem to be very good at this.

Oh, my argument is fine. It's your comprehension that is the problem.

 

[Opcode]

I don't think any of you have any ◊◊◊◊◊◊◊ clue in the slightest as to what DEI actually does or what the guidelines are. In fact, I bet you couldn't accurately describe it to me in your own words if I paid you.

Why would you expect us critics to be able to do so when none of you advocates can?

 

[Opcode]

Not sure what this word salad means. Can I define it? Sure. I absolutely can. Would you agree with it? No. Would you handwave it away? Yes.

So, your chosen course of action is to avoid addressing the point, knowing that your opponents would just disagree with you. How inconsiderate of us to be critical of your statements! No wonder you don't even bother!

I think you're wrong pretty much all of the time.

Opinions don't matter; it's the reasoning that gets us to those opinions that matter. You don't appear to know what reasoning you used, or you haven't presented it coherently if you do.

So we'll disagree.

Naturally. Because you have nothing more than your opinions to offer.

You can think he's right all you want, and I can think he's an old crank talking out of his ass. Just because he teaches at a school and makes a claim doesn't mean I have to agree with it. There's no sources, there's no evidence, it's just his opinion. It means nothing more to me than anyone else's opinion.

The point of his game is to allow you to reach enlightenment by giving you hints leading towards it.

We can flip this logic easily. "If DEI didn't put PoC on equal footing, then old, angry, white men wouldn't bitch about it so much". See? I can make unsupported, random claims too!

The problem is that your rebuttal doesn't explain why DEI exists, but his does.

 

[Opcode]

I've said it before. The opposite of diversity is uniformity. The opposite of equity is discrimination. The opposite of inclusion is exclusion.

Understand that any time politics is involved, people try shaping perceptions through the crafty use of and definitions of words, even if the results mean the opposite of what the words should mean.

If you're not in favour of DEI, then you are in favour of uniformity, discrimination, and exclusion.

That would be a naive interpretation of what DEI is, stemming from a naive interpretation of what the acronym means.

Since it's only ever white people who argue against DEI, this amounts to white supremacy.

No, some black people do, too, but that isn't the most important point and I can make my arguments without using that fact.

Why do you believe that DEI is necessary or helpful?

The basic premise of the anti-DEI argument is that people of colour, women, disabled people, LGBTQIA+ people, and people of other minority groups should not get opportunities when there is a cishet white man who could get it instead.

Every company I've seen that implements DEI already had PoC, women, disabled people, LGBT+ and others in their employ. What problem does DEI solve in these companies? How would we know that DEI is solving any problem?

 

[Opcode]

But again, why should that be the litmus test? Why is capitalistic cash-grabbing the only measure of success that matters?

It is the point of the studies cited by Ryan O'Dine: "Firms whose business is to coach other companies on improving their financial performance and competitiveness are among the loudest cheerleaders for DEI." It is not an unreasonable point as that is essential aspect of any business.

 

[arthwollipot]

Why do you believe that DEI is necessary or helpful?

Would you agree that a ramp to enable wheelchair users to access buildings are necessary or helpful? Do ramps help able-bodied people? Is providing a ramp discrimination against able-bodied people?

 

[Opcode]

look at Trump's cabinet. You don't get that kind of clown show by selecting on the basis of merit.

Erol Musk (Elon Musk's dad) was recorded in a video as saying that for the top government offices, you can't hire people for merit; you have to hire for loyalty. That seems to be what Trump is doing; hiring people who, despite all their flaws, will remain loyal and obedient to Trump.

 

[Opcode]

We also have a very prime example of a massive company ditching their DEI standards and losing a ton of money, we all know it as Target.

Target lost $2.5 billion dollars in stock price, plus more than 5% in revenue, *because* it implemented its Progressive agenda (such as allowing transgender people to use either restroom), resulting in a years-long boycott (that recently ended). Google Gemini tells me that the more recent boycott provoked by Target's ending of its Progressive policy has cost Target $12 billion in market value. The moral of the story seems to be, "Don't mix controversial politics and business. You could end up ticking off everybody!"

 

[Opcode]

Because people have always been treated with discrimination and inequity based on race and sex, and it's time to redress that.

When your goal is an equal mix of green and purple, if your bowl already has a lot more green than purple, you need to add more purple to reach the goal. That's not discrimination, that's equity.

It's also illegal, according to SCOTUS.

 

[Opcode]

So DEI only proves itself if it can revive a dying company?

Why else do it?

Oh, both Conservatives and Liberals have a reason they would give to my question. However, when praising the virtues of DEI, the economic benefit to the company often is mentioned, as we've seen several times in this thread.

Does DEI claim it will do that? That's a bit like saying (stand back -- an analogy!) Exercise is good for you. "Oh? Then show me one person dying of Ebola that was cured through exercise!"

A better analogy is "Exercise is good for you." "Oh, then show me somebody whose health has improved because they began exercising."

But my previous question -- I'm genuinely curious how you'd like to see the problems of discrimination addressed. How would you level the playing field?

Focus on merit. Hire for merit. If you focus on anything else, you are engaging in irrelevant (if not illegal) discrimination.

 

[Opcode]

How would you solve the problem I outlined above? The goal is an equal mix of green and purple. You start with considerably more green than purple. You either have to put more purple in, or take some green out. Either one is unacceptable to you. Do you just accept that there's more green and your goal is unattainable?

Why is that your goal? How did you decide that an equal mix of the two should be the goal? Even if the general population were an equal mix, that doesn't mean that the employee mix of companies should reflect the composition of the general population.

 

[Ryan O'Dine]

Why else do it?

If DEI helped with employee retention, employee satisfaction, and created more fair and balanced hiring protocols, those would be benefits as well, regardless of the bottom line.

According to the Claremont Graduate University's Drucker Institute as reported by the Wall Street Journal, "the 512 firms with a leader in an explicit DEI role scored, on average, significantly higher in nearly all of the elements of its rankings than the 190 companies lacking such a position." Companies were evaluated on "customer satisfaction, employee engagement and development, innovation, social responsibility and financial strength."

Forbes

Focus on merit. Hire for merit. If you focus on anything else, you are engaging in irrelevant (if not illegal) discrimination.

What if companies habitually aren't focusing on merit? How do you deal with that?

And here's the thing about relying on the legal system -- this is addressed @Trausti as well -- What if that system is, itself, discriminatory?

What if, on top of that, Joe Schmo street corner lawyer was the only lawyer a poor out of work (because they were discriminated against) PoC could hire? How much of a chance would Joe lawyer realistically have -- regardless of the merits of the case -- against, say, a Microsoft team of specialized lawyers whose whole career was focused on such cases?

How would you address issues of imbalance such as those?

 

[wareyin]

I already did, as you would know if you had read the peer-reiviewed paper I linked to.

That was not evidence of your claim that "In light of the mountains of evidence that demonstrate that what your organization calls "DEI" is an outlier, it is your obstinance that is laughable," that was supposedly about (nonexistent) DEI requirements for federal grants.

Do you have any evidence of what you claimed?

 

[wareyin]

For the last time: The paper quotes and links to the Biden EOs that mandated those DEI requirements, and the paper quotes and links to the funding agencies' own DEI mandates that they put in place in response to those EOs. That is, the paper literally proves that those DEI requirements were in place during the Biden administration, no matter how many times you repeat "no they weren't," "no they weren"t," "no they weren't."

QED.

I read the Biden EO, and it didn't mandate those DEI requirements. If it had, you or the paper could quote that part.

It didn't, so you and they can't quote what you claim is in there.

QED

 

[wareyin]

Then show it. You and everybody else keeps dancing around that mythical mechanism.

There is no mystical mechanism. DEI simply doesn't remove existing mechanisms to filter out substandard applicants.

No, I'm pointing out that DEI says that you are given special consideration if you are black, or part of any other grouping that the Progressives want to promote.

But it does not, actually.

DEI does not select based on merit, so any program that promotes people through DEI always will lead to the question of what merit the person from the same group has.

DEI is far closer to selecting strictly on merit than the current "Oh, her name is Laquisha, I don't think she'll be a good fit" without looking at the rest of the resume.

You are playing the race card.

Er, no. You guys automatically thinking black people are substandard is not me playing the race card.

 

[wareyin]

One study means nothing, regardless of subject or discipline. Science is based on repeatability and requires extensive confirmation.

Good thing that was 2 studies, huh?

Similar concept, different implementation, especially now that SCOTUS has struck down much of AA. AA is more explicit in its bias towards promoting protected groups (particularly on the basis of ethnicity), while DEI is couched in the conceit that it promotes *all* people equally (while claiming that whites already have all the advantages).

Similar, but not the same concept, and different implementation. Ok. Also, DEI does not claim that whites have all the advantages.

Obviously, your idea of preferential treatment is defective.

Nonsense. I obviously understand how DEI is used in practice while you do not.

I didn't say there were.

The reply you are quoting was not to you, so this is an odd thing to claim. You and jt512 are not the same person, right?

See, this is the final insult. This is vigorously rubbing salt in the wound. I grew up in a single-parent household headed by my school teacher mom. We lived in poverty most of my childhood. I had a lot of access to books because my mom was a teacher and library books were free. I had more access to books than to food or clothes. Most or all of my clothes for the last decade of my childhood were donated to my family. Much of our food was, too. Some charity once gave my family Christmas presents, but we had to give them all back when we were evicted from our home. As an adult, I've done a little better, but I had to work hard to get anything, and I still was homeless a few times. I've managed to earn three associate degrees, but I've spent forty years trying to earn a bachelor's degree, because I keep running out of money or have to move because I can't support myself. I'm a disabled Navy veteran, which gives me a few benefits, but educational benefits were limited to $8200.

My public high school administered a proctored, day-long battery of IQ tests to qualify me for the school's Gifted and Talented program. Those IQ tests place me in the top 1.5% of the general population. I took the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) each year from my sophomore year of high school, and it placed me in the top 1% or 2% of those tested nationwide. I took an aptitude test administered by the state's employment commission, which said that I had the aptitude to become anything for which they had a job code. Despite all that, I've had great difficulty getting hired, earning an income, staying above the poverty line. I'm just a few years away from retirement age, but I have no career, barely any retirement savings, more debt than assets and income, no wife or children. Now, you come along and claim that I've gotten preferential treatment! You are correct that I'm an angry white guy, but you are way off base about the reason for it!

Yet again you quote me talking to jt512 and pretend I was talking to you to get all huffy? Interesting.

Honestly, your experience of childhood poverty and institutional failure, excluding homelessness, is very similar to my own experience and the experience of countless others across all races. Your struggle with financial hardship is entirely real.

However, your personal struggle with class barriers does not negate the existence of systemic racial discrimination. The issue of "preferential treatment" refers to the absence of the quantifiable, race-based barriers that are routinely applied to minorities in hiring and other systems. Your socioeconomic difficulty is a separate failure of economic policy, not evidence against racial bias.

 

[arthwollipot]

Why is that your goal? How did you decide that an equal mix of the two should be the goal? Even if the general population were an equal mix, that doesn't mean that the employee mix of companies should reflect the composition of the general population.

You're all over the place, aren't you? Whatever your desired mix, if the current mix is not that, what do you do?

 

[Trausti]

Like I said before, ramps are not built in to older buildings, which means that people who are confined to wheelchairs have difficulty accessing them. Laws or regulations are passed to require ramps to be installed, thereby equitably including those who previously were excluded because of their disability. That's affirmative action.

So, again, there is no reason to concern ourselves with someone's race or sex. Hurrah!

 

[Trausti]

You make it sound like there's hardly any discrimination in the US, that there's no especially notable problem. Am I reading you right?

Then it shouldn't be hard to show actual examples of discriminatory laws or regulations, right?

Source? The Pew studied showed that full time working women are making less than full time working men. Apples to apples.

Did they control for pregnancy? Are they doing the same jobs? Would it surprise you to know that men tend to do more difficult, dirty, dangerous jobs and get paid more for it?

Anyway, here's a Swedish study that found that for women incapable of pregnancy, there was no gap.

Gender Without Children

 

[Trausti]

You're all over the place, aren't you? Whatever your desired mix, if the current mix is not that, what do you do?

Kinda scary when folks are talking about their "desired mix" and wanting government policy to enforce that.

 

[arthwollipot]

So, again, there is no reason to concern ourselves with someone's race or sex. Hurrah!

Race and sex aren't the only reasons people are discriminated against.

I ask again - does a ramp for wheelchair users discriminate against able-bodied people? Nobody has answered that yet.

 

[Ryan O'Dine]

Then it shouldn't be hard to show actual examples of discriminatory laws or regulations, right?

There's the law, and then there's how the law is interpreted, enacted, and regulated. In the end, the law is just people. Imperfect, prone to bias, and human.

 

[Trausti]

Race and sex aren't the only reasons people are discriminated against.

I ask again - does a ramp for wheelchair users discriminate against able-bodied people? Nobody has answered that yet.

No. And wheelchair users come in all races and both sexes.

 

[jt512]

I read the Biden EO, and it didn't mandate those DEI requirements. If it had, you or the paper could quote that part.

It didn't, so you and they can't quote what you claim is in there.

QED

OK. So you can't read.

Even the manuscript on Arxiv by John Herbert that you linked to (that you obviously didn't read) admits that the funding agencies had instituted DEI plans for funding. John writes, "Given that the Trump administration has now ended PIER plans, Inclusion Plans, and DEI activities in general, certain aspects of this debate now seem outdated." Obviously, these requirements had to exist in order for them to have been subsequently eliminated.

Here is the order from the Department of Energy dated January 28, 2025, "immediately ending the requirement for Promoting Inclusive and Equitable Research (PIER) Plans in any proposal... All open solicitations have been or will be amended to remove the PIER Plan
requirement and associated review criterion... Selection decisions will not take into consideration the content of PIER Plans or any reviewer comments on PIER Plans."

 

[Trausti]

There's the law, and then there's how the law is interpreted, enacted, and regulated. In the end, the law is just people. Imperfect, prone to bias, and human.

Agreed. The more the laws the greater the tyranny.

 

[arthwollipot]

No.

A little bit of affirmative action for the inclusion of disabled people is okay then. Good. I'm glad we got that sorted out.

And wheelchair users come in all races and both sexes.

And people are discriminated against for reasons other than race and sex.

 

[Trausti]

And people are discriminated against for reasons other than race and sex.

Surely. And most of those reasons are just fine. This job requires a college degree in X; don't have that degree, don't apply. Then there's attractive privilege. I have to check myself often on that one.

 

[Trausti]

Pretty privilege.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016517652200283X

Calling the Handicapper General. For equity, we all have to be equally ugly.

 

[arthwollipot]

Surely. And most of those reasons are just fine. This job requires a college degree in X; don't have that degree, don't apply. Then there's attractive privilege. I have to check myself often on that one.

There's a difference between you can't have this job because you don't have the required qualifications, and you can't have this job because your wheelchair can't get up the stairs even though you do have the required qualifications.

Kinda scary when folks are talking about their "desired mix" and wanting government policy to enforce that.

Let me restate this analogy so that a 13 year old can understand it, since apparently that's what we need to do now.

Say in your population you have 70% green and 30% purple. But an institution within your population is found to have 90% purple and only 10% green. This is manifestly unfair for all the greens, right? They are a majority of the population as a whole, so why are they so badly underrepresented in the institution? What should you do to redress this situation and make it fair and representative?

 

[wareyin]

So, again, there is no reason to concern ourselves with someone's race or sex. Hurrah!

Which is honestly what DEI initiatives aim for, and which you are actively opposing. Huzzah.

 

[wareyin]

OK. So you can't read.

Apparently one of us can't. Recall, you and the paper claim that this supposed mandate is in two Executive Orders. And in support of this, you provide something from the Department of Energy, and not a quote from the Executive Order?

Even the manuscript on Arxiv by John Herbert that you linked to (that you obviously didn't read) admits that the funding agencies had instituted DEI plans for funding. John writes, "Given that the Trump administration has now ended PIER plans, Inclusion Plans, and DEI activities in general, certain aspects of this debate now seem outdated." Obviously, these requirements had to exist in order for them to have been subsequently eliminated.

Further evidence of reading comprehension problems? "DEI activities" are not DEI mandates.

Here is the order from the Department of Energy dated January 28, 2025, "immediately ending the requirement for Promoting Inclusive and Equitable Research (PIER) Plans in any proposal... All open solicitations have been or will be amended to remove the PIER Plan
requirement and associated review criterion... Selection decisions will not take into consideration the content of PIER Plans or any reviewer comments on PIER Plans."

Still waiting for the supposed mandate that you and the authors claim is in one of the EOs. As a reminder, you should be able to find this mandate in EO 13985 or EO 14091

 

[The Great Zaganza]

Every Immigration Restriction Policy is DEI.

 

[jt512]

Apparently one of us can't. Recall, you and the paper claim that this supposed mandate is in two Executive Orders. And in support of this, you provide something from the Department of Energy, and not a quote from the Executive Order?

Further evidence of reading comprehension problems? "DEI activities" are not DEI mandates.

Still waiting for the supposed mandate that you and the authors claim is in one of the EOs. As a reminder, you should be able to find this mandate in EO 13985 or EO 14091

The EOs mandated DEI throughout the entire Executive Branch, which includes the funding agencies. But who cares? Who mandated them was not the point. Their existence was. Now that you can no longer credibly deny that, you’re trying to latch on to an ancillary issue.

 

[wareyin]

The EOs mandated DEI throughout the entire Executive Branch, which includes the funding agencies. But who cares? Who mandated them was not the point. Their existence was. Now that you can no longer credibly deny that, you’re trying to latch on to an ancillary issue.

I'm still waiting on evidence that the EOs actually did mandate what you and the authors claim, as you and they have so far been unable to actually substantiate that.

 

[jt512]

I'm still waiting on evidence that the EOs actually did mandate what you and the authors claim, as you and they have so far been unable to actually substantiate that.

I can’t help you with your reading problem, and the EOs were never the point. The mandatory DEI programs, which, contrary to your denials, have now been undeniably shown to exist, are the point. If you want to believe that the directors of every funding agency got the idea to mandate that DEI be incorporated into funding proposals right after those EOs were issued, but weren’t responding to those EOs, be my guest.

 

[ZiprHead]

Or this woman.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1997224523179938271

https://fox11online.com/news/local/...fter-deeply-troubling-video-circulates-online
This what happens when your racist president decides to vilify a group of people, and his idiot cultists respond.

I heard the Cinnabon racist got a hundred thousand dollars on a go fund me type of fundraiser.

But racism no longer exists.

 

[Resume]

I heard the Cinnabon racist got a hundred thousand dollars on a go fund me type of fundraiser.

But racism no longer exists.

Then there was the playground Karen that abused little black children, calling them the N-word who proudly did the same.

 

[ZiprHead]

Then there was the playground Karen that abused little black children, calling them the N-word who proudly did the same.

I guess it pays to be a bigoted POS in public in Trump's America.

 

[wareyin]

I can’t help you with your reading problem, and the EOs were never the point. The mandatory DEI programs, which, contrary to your denials, have now been undeniably shown to exist, are the point. If you want to believe that the directors of every funding agency got the idea to mandate that DEI be incorporated into funding proposals right after those EOs were issued, but weren’t responding to those EOs, be my guest.

The paper you cited led with the claim that the EOs mandated DEI programs in grants. Yet neither you nor the authors can actually find that language in the EOs. Perhaps crowing about your peer reviewed study that gets the basics wrong right out of the gate isn't going as well for you as you'd like? Shall we look at some of the other errors and misrepresentations in the paper, or would you like to drop it?

Now, on to your claim that mandatory DEI programs have been shown to exist, let's see that proof, shall we? And remember, citing an Energy Dept doc that links to a Trump EO that claims to have removed a mandate is not actually proof that the mandate existed. Trump, as has been proven so often, has no clue what he is talking about and just says he did stuff.

 

[Resume]

I guess it pays to be a bigoted POS in public in Trump's America.

Yes it does.

Meet Crystal: hardworking White mom doing her job at Cinnabon. Two Somali customers decide to make her shift hell with intimidation.

Instead of banning the offenders and backing their employee, Cinnabon fires Crystal to keep the nons happy.

We’re not letting this slide. Funds go to making sure Crystal lands on her feet after this betrayal.

No White person should lose their job for refusing to be harassed by Somalians.