6 ms·

Although the intentions behind DEI are good such a top down approach doesn't seem to get the desired results (i.e optimal use of everyone's talent, irrespective

Although the intentions behind DEI are good such a top down approach doesn't seem to get the desired results (i.e optimal use of everyone's talent, irrespective of their colour, sex and/or identify). Unfortunately the name (and perhaps ideas?) are now tainted and I hope this doesn't impact the bottom up approaches (i.e support kids and young adults with extra classes, trainings, and in general just being chill and accepting about people) which probably should have been the focus from the start.

crooked-v 2y ago
I think the more important question is: are the intentions to get actual results, or just to sidetrack anything that would take actual effort with 'but we have DEI statements'?
nsajko 2y ago
Were the intentions behind colonialism good, too, in your opinion?
- concordDance 2y ago
  Probably depends on the colonialist. I expect many were in it for money at the expense of the colonised population, but I expect just as many did it to "civilize and raise up the barbarians as good christians".
  - kanapala 2y ago
    Other thought “And clean our cities of the crooked nose vermin” so it’s all good?
    - defrost 2y ago
      In practice both paths were bad in varying ways, it's just that one was paved with a disregard for others, the second paved with good intentions. eg: Daisy Bates oozed good intentions https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/bates-daisy-may-83 https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/bates-daisy-may-83 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daisy_Bates_(author) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daisy_Bates_(author) and strongly put the case that: "As to the half-castes, however early they may be taken and trained, with very few exceptions, the only good half-caste is a dead one." and a number of other firm opinions that spawned a regime of hugging "the good ones" to death while abusing the "in betweens". But yeah, good intentions.
  - leosanchez 2y ago
    > but I expect just as many did it to "civilize and raise up the barbarians as good christians". Do you have any examples for this ?
    - concordDance 2y ago
      This poem captures some of the spirit: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_White_Man%27s_Burden https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_White_Man%27s_Burden
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- dang 2y ago
  Please don't take HN threads into flamewar hell. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
langsoul-com 2y ago
"The path to hell is paved with good intentions"
bozhark 2y ago
By using DEI as a metric you end up doing the complete opposite of “optimal use of everyone's talent, irrespective of their colour, sex and/or identify…”
- worik 2y ago
  > By using DEI as a metric you end up doing the complete opposite of “optimal use of everyone's talent, irrespective of their colour, sex and/or identify…” That is a puzzling statement. Why is it true?
  - AnimalMuppet 2y ago
    Let's say you're trying to hire programmers. DEI could mean going to historically black colleges and women's colleges, and encouraging people there to apply for jobs at your company. This gets you more diverse applicants, from which you pick the best available, because your goal is to hire good programmers. But what DEI actually means in practice is someone in HR keeping statistics on how many non-white-male programmers you have, and scolding you because you haven't hired enough non-white-males. That kind of DEI leads to non-optimal use of everyone's talent, because you hire non-optimal people for the job openings you have.
- lazyasciiart 2y ago
  No, the complete opposite of that is when you only allow white men to do things - not when you attempt to give everyone the opportunity and don’t have a good way to choose the optimal one amongst them. And that opposite setup is, I’m sure you know, exactly how things worked in most of the west until relatively recently. The overwhelming impression is that because the current setup is closer to overall optimum and further from an optimum for white men, people see it as a net loss.
JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> support kids and young adults with extra classes, trainings If that support is available to those who need it irrespective of race, sex, et cetera, sure. Targeting underserved populations is one thing. Restricting access based on protected characteristics is illegal under any commonsense interpretation of the law.
- worik 2y ago
  > Restricting access based on protected characteristics What about when you turn that on its head? "Promoting access based on ..." If you assume a finite set of places to access then the approaches are equivalent, but for the the emphasis I think it matters (I am unsure DEI is the solution) that people can access professional services supplied by professionals from a similar cultural background to themselves In Aotearoa we have mechanisms to encourage Māori applicants to law and medical school for exactly this reason, and it seems to have been both hugely successful and extremely triggering.
  - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    > we have mechanisms to encourage Māori applicants to law and medical school I see the argument for setting aside seats for people who fluently speak the language. I do not based on race. ”Black patients hav[ing] better interactions, on average, with physicians of their own race” is a problem, but segregating medical care on the basis of race isn’t the solution [1]. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7174451/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7174451/
    - worik 2y ago
      > see the argument for setting aside seats for people who fluently speak the language. I do not based on race. It is based on culture It is not enough to have genes. And since most Māori people speak English it would simply be stupid to base it on language as that language would be English not Te Reo Māori
      - 2y ago
inglor_cz 2y ago
I am almost certain that by 2100, the current worship of skin-deep diversity will be relegated to the cabinet of ancient curiosities, along with lobotomy, bell-bottom jeans and haruspicy [0], and people will worship something equally weird, but momentarily fashionable. Diversity is not really a value. If it were, it would have been recognized as such millennia ago, because already the Egyptians and the Babylonians knew what mixed societies looked like. It is not as if American diversity is a new phenomenon, never seen before. Rome or Alexandria in 1 AD was very diverse, and so was India when Buddha was still a young and naive prince. Real human values, virtues and vices don't change that much across centuries. You can still discern courage, truthfulness, sloth or compassion in stories written three thousand years ago and half a world away. Diversity as a pseudovalue is a modern fad of American origin, partly conjured into being by ancient American racial problems. Even many American allies (Japan, Taiwan, Poland, Finland, Denmark, Turkey, Argentina, Israel etc.) don't bother to even pretend to worship at that DEI-emblazoned altar, so dear to the good professors of Berkeley. Countries with more distant political systems like the Arab sheikhdoms or China probably don't even understand what the word is supposed to mean. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haruspex https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haruspex
- worik 2y ago
  I am unsure about most of those countries but Japan and Israel have a reputation for being extremely racist Prejudice of any form is unhelpful. Racism is particularly nasty
  - inglor_cz 2y ago
    DEI is prejudice squared. Individuals are stuffed into tight racial and gender boxes in a big bout of social engineering. It is better than stuffing them into boxcars and deporting them, but ultimately the logic behind those treatments is the same. You are not John Doe, you are White or Black or whatever, a Lego brick that can be replaced by another Lego brick of the same color and the bureaucratic system will be happy. If you want to address racism, throw away the entire neo-racist stuff that now passes for enlightened and start again. "Whiteness" et al. belong to the same heap of historical refuse as "Judeobolshevism" or "degenerate art". I can't think of a better way to deepen and perpetuate absurd divisions among people than the identity obsession and pseudo-quotas that the modern American progressive movement is pushing.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
willis936 2y ago
I had a dinner with someone directly affected by MIT's recent slashing of DEI. At one point they mentioned that they made sure a venue had chairless locations and shuttles with lifts for baby strollers. Someone else at the dinner said "for disabled people too, right?" The person who worked at MIT organizing events reacted like they had never once considered disability access. The term "inclusion" should not be co-opted to mean "exclusion".

crooked-v 2y ago

I think the more important question is: are the intentions to get actual results, or just to sidetrack anything that would take actual effort with 'but we have DEI statements'?

nsajko 2y ago

Were the intentions behind colonialism good, too, in your opinion?

concordDance 2y ago
Probably depends on the colonialist. I expect many were in it for money at the expense of the colonised population, but I expect just as many did it to "civilize and raise up the barbarians as good christians".
- kanapala 2y ago
  Other thought “And clean our cities of the crooked nose vermin” so it’s all good?
  - defrost 2y ago
    In practice both paths were bad in varying ways, it's just that one was paved with a disregard for others, the second paved with good intentions. eg: Daisy Bates oozed good intentions https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/bates-daisy-may-83 https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/bates-daisy-may-83 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daisy_Bates_(author) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daisy_Bates_(author) and strongly put the case that: "As to the half-castes, however early they may be taken and trained, with very few exceptions, the only good half-caste is a dead one." and a number of other firm opinions that spawned a regime of hugging "the good ones" to death while abusing the "in betweens". But yeah, good intentions.
- leosanchez 2y ago
  > but I expect just as many did it to "civilize and raise up the barbarians as good christians". Do you have any examples for this ?
  - concordDance 2y ago
    This poem captures some of the spirit: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_White_Man%27s_Burden https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_White_Man%27s_Burden
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
dang 2y ago
Please don't take HN threads into flamewar hell. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

langsoul-com 2y ago

"The path to hell is paved with good intentions"

bozhark 2y ago

By using DEI as a metric you end up doing the complete opposite of “optimal use of everyone's talent, irrespective of their colour, sex and/or identify…”

worik 2y ago
> By using DEI as a metric you end up doing the complete opposite of “optimal use of everyone's talent, irrespective of their colour, sex and/or identify…” That is a puzzling statement. Why is it true?
- AnimalMuppet 2y ago
  Let's say you're trying to hire programmers. DEI could mean going to historically black colleges and women's colleges, and encouraging people there to apply for jobs at your company. This gets you more diverse applicants, from which you pick the best available, because your goal is to hire good programmers. But what DEI actually means in practice is someone in HR keeping statistics on how many non-white-male programmers you have, and scolding you because you haven't hired enough non-white-males. That kind of DEI leads to non-optimal use of everyone's talent, because you hire non-optimal people for the job openings you have.
lazyasciiart 2y ago
No, the complete opposite of that is when you only allow white men to do things - not when you attempt to give everyone the opportunity and don’t have a good way to choose the optimal one amongst them. And that opposite setup is, I’m sure you know, exactly how things worked in most of the west until relatively recently. The overwhelming impression is that because the current setup is closer to overall optimum and further from an optimum for white men, people see it as a net loss.

JumpCrisscross 2y ago

> support kids and young adults with extra classes, trainings If that support is available to those who need it irrespective of race, sex, et cetera, sure. Targeting underserved populations is one thing. Restricting access based on protected characteristics is illegal under any commonsense interpretation of the law.

worik 2y ago
> Restricting access based on protected characteristics What about when you turn that on its head? "Promoting access based on ..." If you assume a finite set of places to access then the approaches are equivalent, but for the the emphasis I think it matters (I am unsure DEI is the solution) that people can access professional services supplied by professionals from a similar cultural background to themselves In Aotearoa we have mechanisms to encourage Māori applicants to law and medical school for exactly this reason, and it seems to have been both hugely successful and extremely triggering.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > we have mechanisms to encourage Māori applicants to law and medical school I see the argument for setting aside seats for people who fluently speak the language. I do not based on race. ”Black patients hav[ing] better interactions, on average, with physicians of their own race” is a problem, but segregating medical care on the basis of race isn’t the solution [1]. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7174451/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7174451/
  - worik 2y ago
    > see the argument for setting aside seats for people who fluently speak the language. I do not based on race. It is based on culture It is not enough to have genes. And since most Māori people speak English it would simply be stupid to base it on language as that language would be English not Te Reo Māori
    - 2y ago

inglor_cz 2y ago

I am almost certain that by 2100, the current worship of skin-deep diversity will be relegated to the cabinet of ancient curiosities, along with lobotomy, bell-bottom jeans and haruspicy [0], and people will worship something equally weird, but momentarily fashionable. Diversity is not really a value. If it were, it would have been recognized as such millennia ago, because already the Egyptians and the Babylonians knew what mixed societies looked like. It is not as if American diversity is a new phenomenon, never seen before. Rome or Alexandria in 1 AD was very diverse, and so was India when Buddha was still a young and naive prince. Real human values, virtues and vices don't change that much across centuries. You can still discern courage, truthfulness, sloth or compassion in stories written three thousand years ago and half a world away. Diversity as a pseudovalue is a modern fad of American origin, partly conjured into being by ancient American racial problems. Even many American allies (Japan, Taiwan, Poland, Finland, Denmark, Turkey, Argentina, Israel etc.) don't bother to even pretend to worship at that DEI-emblazoned altar, so dear to the good professors of Berkeley. Countries with more distant political systems like the Arab sheikhdoms or China probably don't even understand what the word is supposed to mean. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haruspex https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haruspex

worik 2y ago
I am unsure about most of those countries but Japan and Israel have a reputation for being extremely racist Prejudice of any form is unhelpful. Racism is particularly nasty
- inglor_cz 2y ago
  DEI is prejudice squared. Individuals are stuffed into tight racial and gender boxes in a big bout of social engineering. It is better than stuffing them into boxcars and deporting them, but ultimately the logic behind those treatments is the same. You are not John Doe, you are White or Black or whatever, a Lego brick that can be replaced by another Lego brick of the same color and the bureaucratic system will be happy. If you want to address racism, throw away the entire neo-racist stuff that now passes for enlightened and start again. "Whiteness" et al. belong to the same heap of historical refuse as "Judeobolshevism" or "degenerate art". I can't think of a better way to deepen and perpetuate absurd divisions among people than the identity obsession and pseudo-quotas that the modern American progressive movement is pushing.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

willis936 2y ago

I had a dinner with someone directly affected by MIT's recent slashing of DEI. At one point they mentioned that they made sure a venue had chairless locations and shuttles with lifts for baby strollers. Someone else at the dinner said "for disabled people too, right?" The person who worked at MIT organizing events reacted like they had never once considered disability access. The term "inclusion" should not be co-opted to mean "exclusion".