Comment by JeremyNT
5 days ago
> Before we try to rehabilitate "DEI" let's not forget what it was and is: universities and employers grouping people together based on skin color and treating them differently based on it, by applying wildly different standards.
One of the major problems with "DEI" as used in the vernacular is that people have trouble agreeing on the meaning of the term.
This results in partisans inventing their own fantastical definitions of it, which they use as bogeymen to encourage misogyny or race baiting.
DEI practices I've witnessed at the companies I've worked at include:
* Creating separate interview pipelines for "diverse" candidates, with multiple chances to re-try failed interviews (Asian and white male applicants get one chance).
* Financial penalties when quotas on the basis of race and gender were not met. Of course, the company portrayed them as bonuses rewarded for reaching inclusion milestones, but ultimately a bonus and a penalty are indistinguishable.
* Designating separate headcount pools for women and URM hires.
What was even more concerning was that the people who were privately the biggest proponents of these practices would, like you, publicly condemn the idea that DEI involves discrimination as racist and misogynist.
The confusion is the point. People who want to have racial preferences in admissions and hiring can’t use the phrase “racial preferences,” because it’s always been unpopular. So they used the term “affirmative action” instead. But that also came to be understood as meaning racial preferences. So then they switched to “DEI.” Now they’re throwing that label under the bus too. I suspect within a few years we’ll have a different label.