Comment by bz_bz_bz
3 months ago
The Brigida lawsuit, from which we get a lot of the documents in the article, was filed in 2016 and has framed this as a DEI discrimination issue from the get-go.
3 months ago
The Brigida lawsuit, from which we get a lot of the documents in the article, was filed in 2016 and has framed this as a DEI discrimination issue from the get-go.
With a grain of salt - any hiring lawsuit by its nature is going to be a discrimination case.
The fact that everyone is really quick to just throw around DEI = discrimination is kind of my point. Even the text of the Brigida lawsuit clearly points out that nobody would have a problem with the FAA increasing minority representation in other ways.
If I deliberately hire whites more than other races nobody would deny that is discrimination. If I deliberately hire more minorities than whites, that is not discrimination?
That depends: Are you underpaying them? The question, "why" matters here a lot.
"I tend to prefer minorities because I can underpay and get away with more" is a thing that exists in the real world. See: Immigrant farm workers and H1B visa holders.
Is that discrimination against white/majorities or is it a kind of discrimination against minorities? It's injustice, for sure but I point it out because DEI policies, discrimination, racism, and sexism come in many, many forms. There's a ton of nuance and grey areas.
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If your candidate pool is 80% white and you hire 25% minorities, is that discrimination? I have seen people argue (rabidly!) both ways on that question.
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Could you please elaborate how DEI is not discrimination? Is hiring based on someone's RACE ever not discrimination?
DEI is just a loose label for having less discrimination in the workforce. There's nothing that implies exclusion unless you are intentionally bad faithing the meaning.
Imagine the FAA was only attending job fairs in white parts of the country. Then they decide to attend job fairs in more diverse parts of the country. No one would suddenly decide they were prejudiced against white people!
There's a difference between forcing a white person to give up a seat, and letting a black person sit anywhere on the bus. But both of these are being labelled "DEI" in this thread.
Again, nobody is arguing that the FAA didn't shoot themselves in the foot by introducing a dumb assessment that threw out good candidates. But I think there should be nothing scandalous or wrong with the FAA trying to be available to more candidates.
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if this question is in good faith, you can read about this ideology by looking up Robin DiAngelo or Ibram X Kendi, who are experts on the pro-DEI academic theory that answers your question.
It seems that the American voter disagrees with Kendi et al
> The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination. As President Lyndon B. Johnson said in 1965, “You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, ‘You are free to compete with all the others,’ and still justly believe that you have been completely fair.” As U.S. Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun wrote in 1978, “In order to get beyond racism, we must first take account of race. There is no other way. And in order to treat some persons equally, we must treat them differently.
- Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist
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