It does require lowering standards and quality, by definition, because in the absence of DEI pressure campaigns they'd have been selecting suppliers based on standards and quality by default. Any other criteria inherently trades off against that.

And you seem to know that's true because your claim slides smoothly from "getting something of lesser quality" to "lowering standards below acceptable levels" which aren't the same thing. The latter phrasing means the products are worse but you consider the lowered quality to be an acceptable tradeoff.

> Here, you assume that focusing on businesses owned by people of color necessitates lowering your standards of your suppliers below acceptable levels.

And it does. Otherwise, the movement would be simply named: "focus on businesses with the best product".

The irony is that he didn't say that at all and it's actually you who assumed this.

The optimum outcome comes if there's zero racism, i.e. we only look at the quality of the company. Let's say there's R amount of racism, and D amount of DEI to counter it (super hand-wavy of course). The optimum outcome is if R = D. If R > D, racism skews the outcome away from the optimum. If D > R, DEI skews the outcome away from the optimum.

The anti-DEI (and anti-affirmative action, etc) crowd is claiming that in 2024, D > R. They would probably also claim that in 1960, R > D, i.e. a black doctor is likely to be more qualified than his/her peers.

This is disingenuous.