Comment by legitster
2 months ago
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.
Using race as a metric in your hiring decisions, for any reason at all, is illegal. You simply cannot do it. Not as a tie breaking point, not a plus factor-- nothing at all.
The law is crystal clear on this:
https://x.com/andrealucasEEOC/status/1752006517761421719?t=v...
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I think specifically hiring somebody because of their race is not just problematic but outright racist. I don't care if you are doing it because you want to underpay them or because you just dislike their race.
If somebody decided he wanted more white people because he prefers whites, that would be discrimination. Nobody denies that, but when the races are swapped, suddenly it is nuanced? Give me a break!
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Holy shit.
You can still delete this.
[flagged]
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.
Discrimination involves deliberately factoring the applicant's class into hiring decisions.
Discrimination isn't determined by looking at single digit percentage differences in aggregate statistics.
That is not deliberately hiring whites? That is just hiring whites by happenstance. I am talking about choosing the white candidate because he is white.
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.
The DEI label has indeed been placed on overtly discriminatory practices. At 3 out of the 4 companies I've worked at carried out explicit discirmination under the banner of DEI. One such DEI policy was reserving a segment engineering headcount for "diverse" candidates. Quite literally forcing white and Asian men to give up their seat.
You're not in the position to unilaterally declare what DEI is and is not. I don't deny that there are plenty of non-discriminatory DEI programs that genuinely do aim to reduce discrimination. I don't think it's a good move to try and deny that DEI encompasses exclusionary and discriminatory practices, when so many people have witnessed exclusionary and discriminatory DEI programs firsthand.
That isn’t what happened though. What happened was they intentionally turned down highly qualified white applicants. It wasn’t like they found new “diverse” applicants — they actively didn’t hire people that were qualified and happened to be white. They weren’t being “available” to more applicants, they became outwardly hostile to white applicants. They didn’t grow the pie, they moved the pie.
Huge difference.
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The problem here is that the notion that "DEI is just a loose label for having less discrimination in the workforce" is always hidden behind by people who want to use it for more forceful discrimination.
It would serve those who truly just want to make sure our society all starts from the same starting line to come up with a new term, one that encompasses meritocracy as the goal along with generous helping hands along the way (training programs, tutoring programs, outside-the-class mentorship opportunities). And to focus on helping lower _class and income_ folks get a leg up, not on including or excluding people by characteristics that are a circumstance of birth (skin color).
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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
That just leads to an endless cycle where each group tries to avenge discrimination by the other group.
This is not a serious answer. IMO the fairest but not necessarily most accurate characterization for Ibram X. Kendi would be charlatan (others could say he's deliberately inducing racial hatred and stoking division). Additionally, according to recent news Boston University fired him and closed down his "antiracist research" center.
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