Comment by stanleykm
5 days ago
Cant imagine a better person than Paul Graham to give us the history of the origins of the struggles various underprivileged groups have had over the recent decades.
Anyway the conservative reaction to “wokeness” (or “wokism” if youre an annoying european conservative) is way more annoying than “wokeness” ever was. And as far as I can tell its just them going “I am annoyed by these people so I am going to be a huge baby”
Like theres no material impact to them here. How much can a DEI team possibly cost? It’s just babies being babies.
Actually I’m going to take that back. There is a material impact to them but it is that they risk losing out by not being in Trump & friends good books. In that case Paul’s rant is not only wrong but it is hypocritical because this is just as performative! If not more! The billionaires are already the most privileged group!
> How much can a DEI team possibly cost?
I don't think opposition to "a DEI team" is about cost at all, it's about the fact that it's harmful to your company to hire and fire based on skin color or gender expression, or to harass and lecture people for not participating in the DEI religion enough. If I had a nickel for every hiring discussion I've been in where I felt pressured to thumbs-up someone with serious flaws just because we were below an unspoken but widely-understood quota, I'd have a lot of nickels.
The idea that we should pass over the best candidate if he's a certain color and pronoun, thinking that will right the wrong of centuries-old sins, that's the mind virus that some of us don't approve of.
If you want an example of why it's bad and dumb even if you're a progressive, our VP, a very unpopular candidate who ran a laughably failed campaign for president was undeniably chosen as VP for DEI reasons, then she couldn't be "passed over" when Biden changed his mind about running, due to optics, so she, a candidate who peaked at 17% in the 2019 primary, was installed as the nominee.* The DNC killed itself on the altar of DEI in this case, and then lashed out at everyone else saying things like "Latinx people are white supremacists!"
*Stipulated: Democrats have a massive shortage of popular national-level politicians, so obviously while Harris was a bad choice, I can't point to any guaranteed 'better' ones.