I said at the top of my thread that the refusal of people in power to engage with criticisms like this thoughtfully has allowed the far right to toxify these debates and I think the downvotes and responses to my comments are minor, but perfect, examples of my point. Instead of discussing the issues and how they should be fixed, the “debate” breaks down into “DEI bad” on your side and “saying DEI bad is racist/sexist/etc.” on the other side.
This is essentially a No True Scotsman fallacy. If it's DEI, it's bad so any good approach is, by definition, not part of DEI.
> DEI is predicated on outcome diversity, rather than treating applicants equally irrespective of background.
The first part of this is incorrect. Good DEI is about creating a level playing field (as you correctly point out for blind people or wheelchair users). Obviously, this isn't possible in all cases: I think everyone agrees we wouldn't want a blind taxi driver.
> The entire premise is that certain groups require special support
This is correct. Fair criticism of DEI initiatives can be levied at those which don't do this effectively and instead shortcut by using, say, hiring quotas. I've said multiple times that things like this are lazy and stupid because they don't address the lack of opportunity for disadvantaged backgrounds.
> and have been historically excluded because of bias (sometimes true, often wholly false
This is an inaccurate stating of the situation. Some groups (e.g. black people in the USA) are excluded due to bias. Some have been excluded due to situational factors (young white men in the UK have worse outcomes due to poverty). Good DEI initiatives attempt to counter these, with varying levels of success.
Let me take the article as an example. They identified an advantage for people on CTI programmes, which also happened to turn out good ATC operators. This may have advantaged people who could afford to attend the programmes, which could have skewed white male. A good DEI initiative might have been to put the work into outreach in under-represented areas to get more people of colour into CTI programmes. Instead, the FAA banned CTI programmes, threw the students there to the wolves, and seemed to sneak in a test designed to hit hiring quotas. Not only was this discriminatory, it also actively reduced the number of qualified ATC operators.
Nowhere in this scenarios did I need to fall back on "DEI bad," because I tried to discuss the specific issues within the article.
Perhaps I can simplify this argument. If you have a lift heavy things job, which we can agree that women on average are worse at, you shouldn't hire more women by quota, but you could provide free weight training for women. Both things are DEI, the latter is the kind of DEI we want.
Explicitly in the American context DEI is primarily about hiring more members of minority groups at the expense of members of majority groups, based primarily on race and sexuality. This is perfectly exemplified in the FAA scandal.
In the context of DEI 'helping' the disadvantaged is never never done by expanding access to educational opportunities in order to find equally talented people who have been financially excluded or barred entry by prejudice. It is always a matter of lowering the bar for certain protected groups, and often also a matter of removing opportunities altogether for members of perceived privileged groups.
This is especially visible in the arts and education here in Europe - where funding and employment opportunities are overwhelmingly based in exclusion. Primarily of straight, white, cisgender men. You site the example of young white men in the UK having worse outcomes. Please point me to a DEI initiative that targets employing them over other groups. What happened at the FAA is what always happens under the banner of DEI, capital A 'Antiracism' and other successor ideology initiatives. The goal is never fairness, and always power.
The issue with these approaches is simple. They are massively divisive. Rather than aiming to address prejudice, hiring bias or systemic barriers to entry - they actively create them, with the justification of historic prejudice. I heard a joke once in college - whats the difference between an activist and a social justice warrior? An activist sees a step and builds ramp, a social justice warrior tears down the stairs.
DEI is a bad idea, rooted in bad ideology and the stolen valour of movements towards genuine equality. As is any ideology that privileges members of one group over another - however 'noble' its adherents pretend to be.
If you're advocating for approaches like blind hiring, or addressing poverty, or providing educational aids to help neurodiverse or disabled people, or free school meals, or free university, or increased arts and community funding or any of a thousand other initiatives that help people based on real need rather than perceived privilege, you'll find me and many others whom you presume to disagree with support you. But the entire brand and practice of DEI and associated initiatives and terminology is beyond saving.
If you pitch shifted the average American woman, you'd probably get a voice that sounded like a gay (camp) man.
Once we know what the determining traits for hiring are, we can either debate whether their importance in the job at hand (if there are doubts) or find ways to encourage these traits in underrepresented communities.
It's very hard to find a company that does real "blind" interviews. And by blind, I mean where networking doesn't positively impact your application.
As long as networking boosts your chances of getting hired somewhere, you've got a very wide open door to biases, because networks are almost always biased. I should not be able to give me resume to a friend to ensure the hiring manager gets to see it. Yet I haven't found a company where that behavior is detrimental.
Equity is actively discriminating, based on measures like race or sex to try to force an ideological outcome.
Equality (of opportunity) is treating people the same irrespective of race, sex, etc...
Equity is clearly racist, sexist, bigotry. Progressives seems to think this is okay, unlike previous examples from history, as their preferred race isn't white and their preferred sex isn't male.
Equality (of opportunity) is the opposite - it isn't racist, sexist bigotry.
