Is DEI really the answer?

[Lamb]

Diversity, Equity & Inclusion is DEI and it's what has been pushed by Democrats as the answer accepting those of all racial, sexual, gender, religious and socioeconomic backgrounds.

The other day I noticed something on the video of Trump's attempted assassination. There was a very very short woman guarding the President and his head was exposed. Was she hired because of DEI? Or was she hired because she could protect the former President who is over 6 feet tall?

Is DEI really the answer?

I remember hearing an interview of someone in Biden's cabinet who was pushing DEI and the journalist asked about hiring for a pilot of an airplane. The woman pushed for a woman of color to be hired and the journalist said he'd rather someone who was qualified, regardless of color get the job.

Do you go by color or by skills? This isn't a racist thread, it's just an example of how I feel DEI isn't the answer. I prefer to have all tall secret service agents to guard Trump because of his height...is that wrong?

 

[tango]

It's just the latest attempt to create equality of outcome rather than equality of opportunity.

Years ago my wife attended an evening class. The class was endlessly disrupted by a woman who shouldn't have been there because she didn't meet the most basic criteria for the course prerequisites. Just to add insult to injury she didn't pay for the course - because she was on welfare the course was funded for her, despite her not meeting any of the prerequisites. When course materials arrived she received hers before anyone else did because, obviously. Nothing could be done because "equal opportunities".

The trouble with equal opportunities is when it gets abused. If multiple people are comparably skilled and experienced the irrelevant factors shouldn't be considered, but trying to get rid of the bias inherent in people is very difficult. People will typically select people who are like them in some way, whether that way is race, gender, political outlook or some other factor - even if we were to 100% eliminate racial bias we'd just end up with some other bias which could be as simple as which sports team you follow or what color jacket you chose for the interview.

When the laudable attempt to create equality of opportunity shifts to create equality of outcome the result is madness. The person who makes no effort gets treated the same as the person who makes an effort. The person totally unsuited to the job is selected in preference to the person qualified.

If I'm choosing a circle of friends in many ways I'm not too bothered about qualifications. It doesn't take a lot to sit and drink a beer with me, or to go for a hike, or to sit and have a chat. I'd rather sit and have a beer with a nice guy who has no qualifications but thinks about things, than with someone who has an armful of degrees but is a bit of a jerk.

If someone is going to perform surgery on me I don't care whether they are male or female, black or white, gay or straight, but I do want someone who can open me up, have the maximum chance of successfully completing the task, and then putting me back together again. If the surgeon is a jerk but does a good job mending me I'm OK with that.


I think a lot of the trouble is that it fixes the wrong problem. It's all well and good to say that (group) is historically repressed and so doesn't have the opportunity to learn, and looking to rectify that. But the answer isn't to hire unqualified people, the answer is to fix the education system so the next generation does have the opportunity to learn. That then feeds into questions about why the current generation isn't learning, and apparently it's easier to force unqualified staff into situations than it is to fix the system before it spits out any more unqualified people.

 

[Albion]

It's just the latest attempt to create equality of outcome rather than equality of opportunity.

Years ago my wife attended an evening class. The class was endlessly disrupted by a woman who shouldn't have been there because she didn't meet the most basic criteria for the course prerequisites. Just to add insult to injury she didn't pay for the course - because she was on welfare the course was funded for her, despite her not meeting any of the prerequisites. When course materials arrived she received hers before anyone else did because, obviously. Nothing could be done because "equal opportunities".

I have to disagree. Equality, which for long has been an American ideal, is erased when DEI becomes the standard. There isn't even a mention of equality there.

Instead, supposedly underrepresented or disadvantaged groups (defined by government, the DEI administrators, and their institutions) are given preference.

You refer to "equality of opportunity" which, however, is not identified by the term "Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion." And your wife's experience as you described the situation, wasn't "equality of opportunity" in operation, either.

You were actually describing a case in which compensation was given to a person, supposedly in order to make up for some carefully defined past or present injustice to the exclusion of other such injustices that might have befallen other participants. That's not 'Equality' and it's not even 'Equality of Opportunity.'

 

[tango]

If you read the rest of my post I think you're saying more or less the same as I am.

Equality of opportunity is a good thing, because it means people have the same chance to succeed. When equality of outcome trumps equality of opportunity the result is absurdity, such as the woman on my wife's class who didn't meet any of the prerequisites but was apparently awarded a place because apparently there was a deficit of stupid people on the course.

Equality of opportunity means the medically qualified black woman has the same chance to get the surgeon's job as an equally qualified white man. Equality of outcome means that some officer somewhere notices there aren't very many black female surgeons and sets about hiring more of them even if they aren't as well qualified as the other candidates being overlooked.

As I said in my post, under the concept of equality of outcome the person who makes no effort gets the same outcome as the person who does make an effort. It's absurd.

 

[Albion]

If you read the rest of my post I think you're saying more or less the same as I am.

I do recognize the similarities.

Equality of opportunity is a good thing, because it means people have the same chance to succeed.

Except that DEI, which the original post in this thread asked about, does not represent equality of opportunity. The term doesn't even claim to be about that. It is about what you've taken pains here to disassociate yourself from.

 

[tango]

Except that DEI, which the original post in this thread asked about, does not represent equality of opportunity. The term doesn't even claim to be about that. It is about what you've taken pains here to disassociate yourself from.

Well, yes, which is why I differentiate between the laudable concept of equality of opportunity and the pointless attempt to create equality of outcome.

As I said in a previous post DEI attempts to fix the wrong problem. There's no reason why we shouldn't have more of whatever groups are 'historically underrepresented" populating whatever field hasn't had very many of them. But the way we need to do that is by improving training - fixing problems at a different level. If it's really a problem that there aren't enough black surgeons we need to get more black students into medical school, which in turn means getting better grades for black students in earlier education. That's a difficult problem to solve.

Simply lowering the bar for black students ticks the box that there are now more black surgeons but it doesn't actually solve the problem - the black surgeons who earned their way into their role are devalued as people come to distrust black surgeons, not knowing which ones of them earned their position and which ones were DEI hires.

Equality of opportunity - helping disadvantaged groups do better from the start - not a bad thing.
Equality of outcome - ignoring problems right down the line and tinkering with the end results - not a good thing.

 

[Albion]

That's correct.

In other words, DEI--which is the issue--is not fair, and it does not intend to provide equality of opportunity. Indeed, it doesn't aim to provide equality by any sense of the word.

It claims to be seeking equity, not equality, and that's what the DEI programs that exist in our institutions understand about their aims. The similarity between these two terms deceives many casual observers into thinking that the goal IS equality in some sense, when that is not the case.

Most Americans would support the idea of equality of opportunity, but what we've gotten in our institutions lately is DEI instead.

 

[The Jason]

Americans don't know what hurtful racism is - because, generally speaking, they haven't grown up with it, but it did exist in the US before. It does exist strongly in some non-western nations, now.

Anyway, these days people might be avoiding the look at qualifications which can be dangerous, and I don't see why feelings would be hurt if qualifications kept certain people out and they might be of color, or they may not be.