I’m at a university thoroughly steeped in the idea of diversity, equity, and inclusion, and I tell you — it doesn’t do the harm the opponents claim, and it helps our students who aren’t white men. It is truly a win:win. I am not hurt by efforts to even the playing field and appreciate that we can create an environment that benefits everyone. There are, of course, some loud assholes who play the victim card — like Chris Rufo, Jerry Coyne, Bret Weinstein, Heather Heying, Steven Pinker, Jonathan Haidt, etc., all the pretentious bigots of the intellectual dark web
— but honestly? They can’t demonstrate harm. They whine. At heart, they’re just entitled twits and racists who want to roll back the clock to a day when they were able to belittle and discriminate.
So I welcome this new interpretation of the acronym “DEI”: Demographically Entitled Idiots. I too oppose Demographically Entitled Idiots, and wholeheartedly support the ideals of diversity, equity, and inclusion.
By the way, my university also embraces the indigenous culture that lived on this land before us. It doesn’t mean we abandon science, as some of the fear-mongers want to complain. It means we respect the people, their history, and their culture, and honor them in our ceremonies and our teaching. That is all and that is everything.
Judging by Sean Hannity and other wise men on TV, I alvays assumed it meant ‘demonic egregious incursion’. You know, by darkies, preverts and femunists.
(Also, see “boobquakes”.)
The right wing whiners really don’t have an original thought, do they? I remember when they just called this Affirmative Action back in the 90s.
Diversity helps prevent groupthink.
Most of the worst atrocities in the world were planned and carried out by groups of people who lacked diversity.
I’m not close to the world of public education since my kids are grown. They benefited from academically selective middle and high schools. I read that these, as well as API classes, are being eliminated, because they are not racially balanced enough. Is this part of DEI? What do you all think of this?
That is not DEI. That’s just stupidity. They’re using “racial balance” as an excuse to kill classes they don’t want to give.
When George “the Lesser” Bush was in office, there was that lawsuit about “quotas” at some law school (Michigan?). It wasn’t a quota system, but rather there was a way of taking into consideration life experiences that might impact the strength of your application. This contributed something like 20% to your score. It was revealed during this case that the benefit you get for being the child of an alum of Yale actually gave you more of a boost. The sort of thing that would benefit a slacker frat boy like…GWB.
OK, there’s one historical, and even present, problem with a throwaway line in the cartoon: There really was/is a problem with straight white male pilots on civilian airliners who (may have) “coasted into this job without any true talent or expertise.” Historically, the pathway to pilot status on civilian airliners was disproportionately (not exclusively) via getting almost all flight training and the first 1500 hours-plus of flight time on multiengine aircraft through military service…
… which led to (and still leads to) demographically-entitled idiocy. It’s not quite coasting into the job without true talent or expertise; it’s rather the opposite, in that only those from the straight white male cohort were selected to develop talent or expertise in that demanding role. That the majority of those in the program do in fact develop that talent/expertise so that air travel is safer than driving in downtown [insert name of any major city anywhere in the world] begs the preliminary question — the one addressed by “the other kind” of DEI — of who is allowed to enter that training system in the first place.
It’s better than it used to be, but still nowhere near “representative” or an efficient use of human resources for mission accomplishment. The biggest hint is that the USAF got its first black uniformed service head — a position that, for a variety of historical reasons, is by law reserved for pilots, and not even necessarily multiengine-qualified pilots — in… wait for it… 2020, 73 years after Truman’s executive order integrating the military (and coincidentally establishment of the USAF as a separate service). We’re just not going to get into legacy admissions to the academies here, except to say that Gen Brown’s background demonstrates how insidious it is.
“It doesn’t do the harm opponnents claim”.
Since when have facts mattered in the fewer swamp of far-right social media/Fox News/Republican statements? Eisenhower claimed the welfare state of Sweden caused excess suicides and that was in the goddamned 1950s. It is just a matter of having a bigger bullhorn so you drown out everything else.
Academia are less vulnerable to desinformation than, say, blue-collar workers in an Appalachian mining town, but the politicians who decide the budgets are another matter.
Well DEI is anti-meritocracy.
So is generational wealth.
microraptor
I believe the SCOTUS killed Affirmative Action so there’s no reason for the chuds to continue attacking it.
Trying to compensate for the anti-meritocratic bias, is not anti-meritocracy. It strives to remove the noise and bigotry that is the real anti-meritocracy.
I’ve been a consultant for years, and found that having a diverse set of employees worked a lot better than just having entitled white guys. These people complaining about DEI just can’t stand seeing their priviledge slipping away.
Surely, you see the problem, right? Helping people who aren’t white men is EXACTLY what they’re concerned about.
I suspect the fundamental fracture in the world is between the people who are happier if others are also happy and the people who can only be happy themselves if someone else is not.
@#4 The University of Michigan had a scorecard for entry in the 1990s until it too was challenged. The biggest categories for points was GPA, varsity athlete, and legacy. For other categories, being a resident of the U.P. earned the same points as being a racial minority.
When Sweden had the draft, it turned out every unit of conscripts collectively had a wide range of talents, which was very useful. For instance, there would always be one or two qualified to drive trucks or buses.
A question: does ‘the intellectual dark web’ have any political clout?
Reactionary antiwoke douchebro sums up Jerry Coyne. In the same category as conservative propagandist Rufo for sure.
It doesn’t surprise me that right-wing edgelords would attack DEI. Filling the public sphere with loud, asinine opinions is how many of them earn a living.
birgerjohansson: given how much of their blathering gets out into conservative politicians’ speeches, I would say yes they do have political clout.
drew– DEI is pro-merit, not anti-merit. It is intended to remove both conscious and unconscious biases in supposedly merit-based selections. As long as there is discrimination based on race, gender, etc., DEI is a crucial tool for preventing unwarranted privilege being permanently baked into institutional structures. Even if we lived in a perfect world where DEI was unnecessary, it would still not cause harm because any institution with unbiased procedures would achieve DEI targets naturally.
A large part of the problem with the false dichotomy between “merit” and “DEI” is that measuring merit is — at best — a guess. It may be a somewhat informed guess, but it places far greater emphasis on the measuring instrument than on what is being measured. The phrase “teaching to the test” very much comes to mind; so does “fulfillment of parental expectations.”
Jaws@21 — true, but even when ‘merit’ can be well-defined and measured (e.g. ability to do standardised maths problems), there is clear evidence of bias in recruiting/selecting at prestige universities, companies, and so on. Having said that, I completely agree with you that ‘merit’ is not always easy to measure, and almost everyone I’ve ever read hammering the table about the importance of true meritocracy is actually railing against black people and women moving into their privileged spaces.