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I don't like DEI and am willing to engage. The US has a huge disparity of outcomes along racial lines. This is a legacy of slavery as well as social and governm

I don't like DEI and am willing to engage. The US has a huge disparity of outcomes along racial lines. This is a legacy of slavery as well as social and governmental discrimination following slavery. [Racial biases persist today, but are much better today than the past, and we should focus on elimination of those biases, not adding new ones.] These factors result in real disparity in capabilities and merit today. This is precisely why racism was and is so detrimental. I oppose DEI because I think it is racist, even if good intended. I think our laws and institutions should strive to be race blind and treat people equally, as individuals, based on their individual actions and merit. I don't think that group statistic should be a higher priority than equality for individuals. In my mind, DEI is a myopic obsession with the group statistics, to the detriment of individual equality. If a school enroll someone with a 400 point lower sat over the higher person on the sole basis of their race, that is a major Injustice on the scale of individual humans, even if it moves some group statistic closer to equal. I think countering racism with racism is a very dangerous game, likely to blow up in everyone's face. Instead, equality under law should Ensure equal treatment moving forward. Past wrongs should be addressed by race blind improvements to economic mobility.

dfxm12 2y ago
DEI is not a law. I get how this misunderstanding is possible given how wildly the term gets thrown about by conservatives, like it is a boogieman that is the source of everyone's problems. Anyway, everyone is already ostensibly equal under the law, but, like you've recognized, we've still found our way into a system of racism (that goes beyond governmental discrimination). Logically, to recognize systemic racism, that folks are born into a disadvantage, then to say that these disadvantages must be ignored, is to exploit systemic racism. It does nothing to address the system. If anything, by making it an EO, it strengthens the system. You call DEI countering racism with racism, but your only argument for this is getting mad at a hypothetical situation. To add, though, to recognize systemic racism and to then put so much weight on an SAT score, while standardized testing is known as being a component of systemic racism [0], is racist in and of itself. 0 - https://www.nea.org/nea-today/all-news-articles/racist-beginnings-standardized-testing https://www.nea.org/nea-today/all-news-articles/racist-begin...
- s1artibartfast 2y ago
  With respect to education, I'm not attached to SAT scores. Pick any non racial metric of merit, and I'm OK with it. Income is fine, not a protected clause. Random is fine too. Just don't promote or penalize people based on race. With respect to jobs, if you agree the most qualified person should get it, we are similarly aligned. If you agree with all that, we are good, not matter what it is called. I just call it non discrimination.
  - wredcoll 2y ago
    I'm not sure this is terribly relevant given where the conversation has gone, but in your example, college admissions, race was essentially used as a tie breaker between equally qualified candidates. I suspect that's how it ended up being used in a lot of places (aside from deliberate outreaches to encourage applications, etc). Beyond that though, I'm not sure not getting into harvard is exactly a "grave injustice". You don't have a right or entitlement to go to harvard regardless of what your academic score is. And I don't think there's a reasonable argument that there should be such a right.
    - s1artibartfast 2y ago
      I have argued elsewhere that Harvard has no obligation to accept anyone. However, the civil Rights act does prevent discrimination based on race if they do. The supreme Court case on the admissions topic showed extremely clearly that race was not just a tiebreaker. Imo, the far more egregious use is public universities. Similarly, if I run an organization, I can choose to serve 10 or 10,000. I just can't hang out a sign saying "no blacks/whites allowed".
      - Whoppertime 2y ago
        What about Brown v. Board of Education? Do you think that Southern schools had an obligation to accept black students or did they not have to accept anyone at all? Do you think in 1900-1945 when Harvard Yale and Columbia were putting a quota on the number of Jewish students to limit their enrollment that was fine, as Harvard has no obligation to accept anyone, Jewish or otherwise?
chneu 2y ago
DEI is just giving other people the chance to setup the opportunity pipeline that already exists for white people in a white dominated society. It isn't a law. It's just looking at history and going, "They'd probably be as successful if there was a pipeline for those folks to get there, since that pipeline doesn't exist we need to represent them to allow the pipeline to be built." You also don't seem to fully know what DEI is. You assume it's specifically hiring less qualified people because of their skin color. That isn't what DEI is. It isn't racism. It's just giving other people the same chance of success. Representation is important. Anti-DEI is just white people, once again, being offended that someone else is getting equal treatment. Look at trans hate, same thing. Look at book bans, same thing. It's just white folks getting upset and being offended.
- leereeves 2y ago
  > the opportunity pipeline that already exists for white people There is no opportunity pipeline for white people. There is an opportunity pipeline for a small number of well connected, wealthy people who can get their kids into elite prep schools starting from kindergarten. It's not open to working class white people. Edit: that doesn't mean no working class white person can succeed. Just that the prep school, elite university, big corporation (or startup founder) "pipeline" - which certainly does exist - is for wealthy people.
  - kelseyfrog 2y ago
    What would an opportunity pipeline for white people look like? How would we detect one if it were to exist?
    - leereeves 2y ago
      Why ask me? It was chneu who claimed it existed. Edit: Yes, I made a bold assertion, based on the view from the working class and the many intelligent white people I know who were held back by not being wealthy or well-connected. For those outside the elite pipeline, it's an advantage not to be white. If there's a pipeline I don't know about, I'd like to hear it. Point it out so more people can join the pipeline to success!
ryanobjc 2y ago
"If a school enroll someone with a 400 point lower sat over the higher person on the sole basis of their race, that is a major Injustice on the scale of individual humans, even if it moves some group statistic closer to equal." So this is a hypothetical that is not worth discussing. Until specific cases can be brought to bear, why are you inventing situations that may never have existed? I'd also like to opine on SAT scores for a second. First off, it's well known that SAT scores are not directly correlative in post-secondary educational success, nor work-success. Second they are not highly accurate measurements - there's an inherent fuzziness to them. So even if 2 students had a SAT within some Epsilon, the SAT scores might not really provide much differentiation there. Ergo, basing all of our policies on SAT scores - which are well known to be easily gamed, and also a product of a private institution - seems not a good idea. Moving on, the problem with being against "myopic obsession with the group statistics" is you are ignoring some important evidence. What do you think of the "group statistics" that say that black people start less businesses, have less family wealth? Or black women have higher maternal mortality? These are pointing to important individual outcomes that are, to say the least, wrong. So I don't think that paying attention to group statistics, like black maternal mortality (aka how many black moms die in child birth or due to child birth) is "myopic" and "to the detriment of individual equality." It's a very very real problem we, if we intend to call ourselves a moral society, need to solve. So having specific programs to help solve black maternal mortality in a hospital is not "countering racism with racism" imo. It's a focused program on solving a focused problem. This logic extends out to most "DEI" things. For example is it good if the students at universities drift from representing America on average? I'd say it is not good. What about the ivy league pledges to make school free for anyone who's family income was under $X a year? Is that a myopic obsession with group statistics, namely poor people who can't afford elite colleges even if they were admitted? Seems like yes that could fit into your definition of why you oppose DEI. And IT IS a DEI program - it's increasing diversity (income/class diversity) and equality/equity (improving outcomes for individuals) and inclusions (including those who cannot afford elite colleges). So when DEI programs that are focused on race, because much of our racial divide was artificially constructed by racist laws and policies of the past, it is suddenly bad, even though I rarely hear anti-DEI people go on about the low income scholarships for ivy leagues. Honestly it starts to sound that in fact many people may in fact have a problem not with the overall concept, but the beneficiaries of the programs. So back to your comment, let's pick some specific circumstances that we know about and may you can propose how you'd meaningfully fix it, policy wise, within 5 years: - Black maternal mortality us 3x higher than white maternal mortality - Black people are ~ 14.4% of USA, but 12.5% in colleges. Is this a problem? - If we think talent is spread equally, then we should expect to see more % of black founders in YCombinator than the 2-4% there is. Maybe not exactly 14.4% but surely closer to 10% than 0%? Is this worthwhile of being solved? - While we are at it, only 11% of YCombinator founders are women. Is this a problem? So what can be done about these noticeable gaps? What kinds of suboptimal outcomes are being picked when, for example, few YCombinator founders even know about the challenges and struggles of the average American? (who's a woman btw, women are 50.49% of the population, a majority) What kinds of products, opportunities, etc are being missed here? Maybe none? What are your "race blind improvements" to economic mobility here? You have a 5 year timeline to make statistically meaningful changes to these metrics.
derf_ 2y ago
> I think our laws and institutions should strive to be race blind and treat people equally, as individuals... One of the things I was told in my mandatory DEI training was that male job applicants will frequently apply for jobs even when they satisfy less than half of the required qualifications, but female job applicants rarely do. Additionally, language in the job description that hints at a stereotypical 'tech bro' culture can also be off-putting to female candidates. So just by being aware of these issues and paying attention to them when crafting your job posting, you can get a more representative distribution of applicants. You then evaluate those applicants on their actual merits. But if you are scaring off half the population before they even get to the interview, you are greatly reducing the chances of hiring the best candidate, and certainly not treating the individuals equally. That is just for gender, but I am certain you can find similar things for race.
- milesrout 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - harimau777 2y ago
    What people usually argue is that men and women are the same in many ways but are often conditioned by society to act differently. That conditioning is what people are generally critical of and attempt to change via things like DEI.
    - jocaal 2y ago
      > but are often conditioned by society to act differently Mind expanding on this a bit?
- nradov 2y ago
  Do you have a citation for that? I'm not saying it's necessarily wrong, or that employers couldn't do better with writing job postings. But I've found that a lot of corporate training content is total BS, often based on a single low-quality study that was never reproduced. When the results seem "truthy", people tend to believe without being sufficiently critical.
mcphage 2y ago
> I think our laws and institutions should strive to be race blind and treat people equally, as individuals, based on their individual actions and merit. That sounds nice, but that’s not what our laws and institutions are doing, nor is it the direction they’re moving in.

dfxm12 2y ago

DEI is not a law. I get how this misunderstanding is possible given how wildly the term gets thrown about by conservatives, like it is a boogieman that is the source of everyone's problems. Anyway, everyone is already ostensibly equal under the law, but, like you've recognized, we've still found our way into a system of racism (that goes beyond governmental discrimination). Logically, to recognize systemic racism, that folks are born into a disadvantage, then to say that these disadvantages must be ignored, is to exploit systemic racism. It does nothing to address the system. If anything, by making it an EO, it strengthens the system. You call DEI countering racism with racism, but your only argument for this is getting mad at a hypothetical situation. To add, though, to recognize systemic racism and to then put so much weight on an SAT score, while standardized testing is known as being a component of systemic racism [0], is racist in and of itself. 0 - https://www.nea.org/nea-today/all-news-articles/racist-beginnings-standardized-testing https://www.nea.org/nea-today/all-news-articles/racist-begin...

s1artibartfast 2y ago
With respect to education, I'm not attached to SAT scores. Pick any non racial metric of merit, and I'm OK with it. Income is fine, not a protected clause. Random is fine too. Just don't promote or penalize people based on race. With respect to jobs, if you agree the most qualified person should get it, we are similarly aligned. If you agree with all that, we are good, not matter what it is called. I just call it non discrimination.
- wredcoll 2y ago
  I'm not sure this is terribly relevant given where the conversation has gone, but in your example, college admissions, race was essentially used as a tie breaker between equally qualified candidates. I suspect that's how it ended up being used in a lot of places (aside from deliberate outreaches to encourage applications, etc). Beyond that though, I'm not sure not getting into harvard is exactly a "grave injustice". You don't have a right or entitlement to go to harvard regardless of what your academic score is. And I don't think there's a reasonable argument that there should be such a right.
  - s1artibartfast 2y ago
    I have argued elsewhere that Harvard has no obligation to accept anyone. However, the civil Rights act does prevent discrimination based on race if they do. The supreme Court case on the admissions topic showed extremely clearly that race was not just a tiebreaker. Imo, the far more egregious use is public universities. Similarly, if I run an organization, I can choose to serve 10 or 10,000. I just can't hang out a sign saying "no blacks/whites allowed".
    - Whoppertime 2y ago
      What about Brown v. Board of Education? Do you think that Southern schools had an obligation to accept black students or did they not have to accept anyone at all? Do you think in 1900-1945 when Harvard Yale and Columbia were putting a quota on the number of Jewish students to limit their enrollment that was fine, as Harvard has no obligation to accept anyone, Jewish or otherwise?

chneu 2y ago

DEI is just giving other people the chance to setup the opportunity pipeline that already exists for white people in a white dominated society. It isn't a law. It's just looking at history and going, "They'd probably be as successful if there was a pipeline for those folks to get there, since that pipeline doesn't exist we need to represent them to allow the pipeline to be built." You also don't seem to fully know what DEI is. You assume it's specifically hiring less qualified people because of their skin color. That isn't what DEI is. It isn't racism. It's just giving other people the same chance of success. Representation is important. Anti-DEI is just white people, once again, being offended that someone else is getting equal treatment. Look at trans hate, same thing. Look at book bans, same thing. It's just white folks getting upset and being offended.

leereeves 2y ago
> the opportunity pipeline that already exists for white people There is no opportunity pipeline for white people. There is an opportunity pipeline for a small number of well connected, wealthy people who can get their kids into elite prep schools starting from kindergarten. It's not open to working class white people. Edit: that doesn't mean no working class white person can succeed. Just that the prep school, elite university, big corporation (or startup founder) "pipeline" - which certainly does exist - is for wealthy people.
- kelseyfrog 2y ago
  What would an opportunity pipeline for white people look like? How would we detect one if it were to exist?
  - leereeves 2y ago
    Why ask me? It was chneu who claimed it existed. Edit: Yes, I made a bold assertion, based on the view from the working class and the many intelligent white people I know who were held back by not being wealthy or well-connected. For those outside the elite pipeline, it's an advantage not to be white. If there's a pipeline I don't know about, I'd like to hear it. Point it out so more people can join the pipeline to success!

ryanobjc 2y ago

"If a school enroll someone with a 400 point lower sat over the higher person on the sole basis of their race, that is a major Injustice on the scale of individual humans, even if it moves some group statistic closer to equal." So this is a hypothetical that is not worth discussing. Until specific cases can be brought to bear, why are you inventing situations that may never have existed? I'd also like to opine on SAT scores for a second. First off, it's well known that SAT scores are not directly correlative in post-secondary educational success, nor work-success. Second they are not highly accurate measurements - there's an inherent fuzziness to them. So even if 2 students had a SAT within some Epsilon, the SAT scores might not really provide much differentiation there. Ergo, basing all of our policies on SAT scores - which are well known to be easily gamed, and also a product of a private institution - seems not a good idea. Moving on, the problem with being against "myopic obsession with the group statistics" is you are ignoring some important evidence. What do you think of the "group statistics" that say that black people start less businesses, have less family wealth? Or black women have higher maternal mortality? These are pointing to important individual outcomes that are, to say the least, wrong. So I don't think that paying attention to group statistics, like black maternal mortality (aka how many black moms die in child birth or due to child birth) is "myopic" and "to the detriment of individual equality." It's a very very real problem we, if we intend to call ourselves a moral society, need to solve. So having specific programs to help solve black maternal mortality in a hospital is not "countering racism with racism" imo. It's a focused program on solving a focused problem. This logic extends out to most "DEI" things. For example is it good if the students at universities drift from representing America on average? I'd say it is not good. What about the ivy league pledges to make school free for anyone who's family income was under $X a year? Is that a myopic obsession with group statistics, namely poor people who can't afford elite colleges even if they were admitted? Seems like yes that could fit into your definition of why you oppose DEI. And IT IS a DEI program - it's increasing diversity (income/class diversity) and equality/equity (improving outcomes for individuals) and inclusions (including those who cannot afford elite colleges). So when DEI programs that are focused on race, because much of our racial divide was artificially constructed by racist laws and policies of the past, it is suddenly bad, even though I rarely hear anti-DEI people go on about the low income scholarships for ivy leagues. Honestly it starts to sound that in fact many people may in fact have a problem not with the overall concept, but the beneficiaries of the programs. So back to your comment, let's pick some specific circumstances that we know about and may you can propose how you'd meaningfully fix it, policy wise, within 5 years: - Black maternal mortality us 3x higher than white maternal mortality - Black people are ~ 14.4% of USA, but 12.5% in colleges. Is this a problem? - If we think talent is spread equally, then we should expect to see more % of black founders in YCombinator than the 2-4% there is. Maybe not exactly 14.4% but surely closer to 10% than 0%? Is this worthwhile of being solved? - While we are at it, only 11% of YCombinator founders are women. Is this a problem? So what can be done about these noticeable gaps? What kinds of suboptimal outcomes are being picked when, for example, few YCombinator founders even know about the challenges and struggles of the average American? (who's a woman btw, women are 50.49% of the population, a majority) What kinds of products, opportunities, etc are being missed here? Maybe none? What are your "race blind improvements" to economic mobility here? You have a 5 year timeline to make statistically meaningful changes to these metrics.

derf_ 2y ago

> I think our laws and institutions should strive to be race blind and treat people equally, as individuals... One of the things I was told in my mandatory DEI training was that male job applicants will frequently apply for jobs even when they satisfy less than half of the required qualifications, but female job applicants rarely do. Additionally, language in the job description that hints at a stereotypical 'tech bro' culture can also be off-putting to female candidates. So just by being aware of these issues and paying attention to them when crafting your job posting, you can get a more representative distribution of applicants. You then evaluate those applicants on their actual merits. But if you are scaring off half the population before they even get to the interview, you are greatly reducing the chances of hiring the best candidate, and certainly not treating the individuals equally. That is just for gender, but I am certain you can find similar things for race.

milesrout 2y ago
[flagged]
- harimau777 2y ago
  What people usually argue is that men and women are the same in many ways but are often conditioned by society to act differently. That conditioning is what people are generally critical of and attempt to change via things like DEI.
  - jocaal 2y ago
    > but are often conditioned by society to act differently Mind expanding on this a bit?
nradov 2y ago
Do you have a citation for that? I'm not saying it's necessarily wrong, or that employers couldn't do better with writing job postings. But I've found that a lot of corporate training content is total BS, often based on a single low-quality study that was never reproduced. When the results seem "truthy", people tend to believe without being sufficiently critical.

mcphage 2y ago

> I think our laws and institutions should strive to be race blind and treat people equally, as individuals, based on their individual actions and merit. That sounds nice, but that’s not what our laws and institutions are doing, nor is it the direction they’re moving in.