3 ms·

> "this quarter, we only have headcount for 'diverse' candidates", Such a statement from those with hiring authority is highly illegal. Any HR department that

• klipt 1y ago
  That's like saying "the Crusaders weren't real Christians because real Christianity is peaceful" See also: No True Scotsman Fallacy
  • epistasis 1y ago
    No, that's not at all the case, the crusaders were acting under the blessing of the church. It still may not be "real" Christianity, but it's not like there were DEI advocates out there giving guides on how to break the law. I was at two companies promoting DEI that were explicit about non-discrimination and had extensive training on it to prevent the illegal actions linked in that lawsuit. There's no "this is DEI this is not DEI" but any halfway sane and truthful assessment would focus on what the proponents claimed, said, and propagated as their intentions. Just as the Christians of the time were intending to do with the crusades. Calling this a "no true Scotsman fallacy" is just attempting to misapply a logical fallacy to avoid looking at the issue truthfully and honestly.
    • FloorEgg 1y ago
      > it's not like there were DEI advocates out there giving guides on how to break the law I think you're very mistaken. Not only were their guides, but there were federal regulations mandating that the laws be broken. It is/was a mess.
      • judahmeek 1y ago
        What are your sources?
        • FloorEgg 1y ago
          The federal regulations... It's not hard to find if you go looking...
          • judahmeek 1y ago
            Then it shouldn't be hard for you to say something other than 'do your own research'
            • FloorEgg 1y ago
              Actually it took me almost an hour to re-do a portion of the research and lay it out, which I did further down the thread, if you care to look. Also you didn't ask me to link you to my sources, you asked me what my sources were. I answered your question directly in the best way I could at the time. Expecting an internet stranger to spend an hour digging up sources for you, when you don't ask respectfully or with any inclination of curiosity comes off as combative - I am not here to debate, I am here to discuss. If you are genuinely curious, take 30 seconds to scroll down and find the other comment I made that took me an hour to put together.
              • judahmeek 1y ago
                I appreciate that you took the time to follow through with sources to support your claim. You & I definitely have different definitions of "not hard to find", however.
                • FloorEgg 1y ago
                  I guess so, but it's relative. An hour isn't hard if you're driven by curiosity, but it is if it's a chore you're doing for someone else.
    • rayiner 1y ago
      Your point is well taken. Not everyone was violating the law. But meanwhile Microsoft was setting explicit numeric targets on hiring employees from particular racial groups: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/wells-fargo-microsoft-diversity-us-labor-department-affirmative-action-laws-workplace-discrimination https://www.cbsnews.com/news/wells-fargo-microsoft-diversity.... Companies were also demanding race-conscious staffing practices at the law firms they used: https://www.wsj.com/business/law-firm-clients-demand-more-black-attorneys-11604313000 https://www.wsj.com/business/law-firm-clients-demand-more-bl.... Microsoft offered financial bonuses to law firms for promoting lawyers from specific racial groups: https://today.westlaw.com/Document/If3eb4570033e11eb8e48d387532371a6/View/FullText.html https://today.westlaw.com/Document/If3eb4570033e11eb8e48d387....
  • rlprlprlp 1y ago
    Sure, but you’re god deciding who goes to hell.
• rayiner 1y ago
  > Such a statement from those with hiring authority is highly illegal. Any HR department that would let this message be delivered, either explicitly or implicitly, would open the company to massive lawsuits, such as the one you linked to. You’re correct about the law, and the EEOC interpretation has been consistent for decades: https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/guidance/section-15-race-and-color-discrimination https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/guidance/section-15-race-and-color.... But in practice, in many though not all places, “DEI” became a vehicle for double standards, quotas, and other illegal hiring practices. I suspect what happened is that a generation of professionals went through university systems where racial preferences were practiced openly: https://nypost.com/2023/06/29/supreme-court-affirmative-action-case-showed-astonishing-racial-gaps https://nypost.com/2023/06/29/supreme-court-affirmative-acti.... When they got into corporate America, including law firms, they brought those ideas with them. But even though pre-SFFA law authorized race-based affirmative action in universities, it was never legal for hiring. So you had this situation where not only did the big corporations engage in illegal hiring practices. But their law firms advising them were themselves engaged in illegal hiring practices. They all opened themselves up to major liability.
  • KPGv2 1y ago
    > I suspect what happened is that a generation of professionals went through university systems where racial preferences were practiced openly I feel like you're ignoring that racial preferences were practiced openly for the entirety of the existence of the university systems in the US. It's just that for almost all of time, the preference was for "white non-Jews" (where "white" was historically malleable: Benjamin Franklin wrote a somewhat famous screed about how Germans and Swedes weren't white, they were inferior, and they were "darken[ing America]'s people"
    • rayiner 1y ago
      The Civil Rights Act of 1964 banned that and it was awhile before the discrimination was rebooted to run in the opposite direction.
      • 1y ago
• FloorEgg 1y ago
  I don't think that's quite fair, as in many cases there were federal regulations that pressured industries into behavior that was discriminatory to one group in order to favor others. In fact there was an accumulation of contradictory laws and regulations over 15+ years. In many cases regulations were set that had financial repercussions if hiring practices that were considered illegal weren't followed. There is a respectful interpretation of one of the conservative concerns during the election in that the accumulation of regulations made it impossible to conduct business legally and compliant with regulations in some industries. Personally I'm very much for the goals of DEI and very much against some of the means that were being taken to reach those goals. It's an extremely difficult and complex problem. I can't help but wonder if the movement had just focused on inclusion and primarily where there is leverage towards future prosperity, if there wouldn't have been such a backlash and the efforts would have been enduring and compounding. Slipping that "equity" in there is a trap to confuse responsibility with privilege and cause a lot of trouble that is extremely hard to work through. It's the justification for representation-driven hiring and selection (affirmative action), and equity based hiring practices that were both federally mandated AND constitutionally illegal at the same time. I can't help but suspect it's something like satisfaction, where if you pursue it directly it's fleeting and destructive but if you focus on the inputs you get more of it and it's enduring.
  • deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
• colechristensen 1y ago
  Illegal stuff happens all the time in the workplace and very frequently goes unreported, underreported, or otherwise results in nothing. Using claims that something is illegal to discredit an argument is extremely dubious.
• renlo 1y ago
  Most eye opening experience in my personal development was attending HR conferences (we sold an HR product but I am an engineer), where speakers were openly saying this out loud. I know you won’t believe me given your statement, but using codewords they said they were trying to hire “diverse candidates”, retain “diverse candidates”, explicitly mark “non-diverse candidates” leaving as non-regrettable churn, filtering and searching for diverse employees within the company to fast track for promotion, etc. I was in shock how brazenly they were saying the quiet part out loud, and breaking the law. This was 10 years ago, there were no repercussions for it, in fact they were all lauded.
  • rayiner 1y ago
    It wasn’t even coded in many cases. I’ve had pitch meetings where I had to explain how I was brown as part of an express consideration of the business decision. White people talked about my race to my face more in 2020-2021 than during seven years in the south starting right after 9/11. Some “DEI” was high level measures like recruiting at a broader set of universities. But in the last 5 years it routinely got down to discussing the race of specific individuals in the context of whether to hire them or enter into business relationships.
  • cycomanic 1y ago
    It's funny how everyone brings up all these anecdotes, but then the reality is that there are plenty of studies that show that if your name is associated with being black you have much lower chances to be invited to an interview. So seems like all this talk by HR people didn't really change any hiring practices. It's also funny how everyone is outraged by the DEI programs, instead of the real discrimination that is happening in hiring.
    • WesolyKubeczek 1y ago
      Hint: if everyone has such anecdotes, they are no longer anecdotes.
      • heroprotagonist 1y ago
• jchw 1y ago
  > Linking the term DEI to illegal hiring practices is like linking having a male manager to sexual harassment. Obviously, it is not fair to discredit all DEI initiatives simply because some of them (possibly a small minority of them) have lead to illegal hiring practices, but it is nonetheless an issue that it happens. That's obviously still true even if it seems entirely antithetical to the point of said initiatives. How much of an issue it really is we can only really postulate, though. Personally, I feel the existence of illegal discrimination in service of improving diversity numbers felt like it was treated as an open secret for almost as long as I've been working in tech. I honestly figured it was mostly an urban myth, but it does seem to be a recurring problem that needs addressing. (I also was somewhat skeptical of police ticket quotas being prevalent, as they are routinely brought up in every day conversation despite being illegal in most jurisdictions I've been, but that also turned out to be largely accurate. Color me surprised.)
  • alistairSH 1y ago
    How much of an issue it really is we can only really postulate, though. Between the Labor Dept and various think-tanks/economic research groups, there should/could be data. I suspect there are a small number of very public MegaCorps doing illegal DEI and that’s enough to illicit the backlash we’re seeing. I know from my own employer, DEI is about outreach during recruiting and a combination of training for all employees and providing opportunities for people to gather and talk (via coffee talks and round tables that with DEI topics, but open to all).
    • potato3732842 1y ago
      >I and that’s enough to illicit the backlash we’re seeing. Gee, it's almost like we're re-learning what the origin of the phrase "even the appearance of impropriety" is.
      • TimorousBestie 1y ago
        Unfortunately, it’s trivial these days to gin up the appearance of impropriety even where there is none.
• throwaway48476 1y ago
  Whether something is illegal is only loosely correlated with whether it is common. Eg the war on drugs.