Well, you have to make the bets before the thing happens, so….

Yes, and I don’t support them.

So, according to my answer and your pathetic attempt at wit, the purveyors of DEI programs should themselves attend DEI programs to become less racist and sexist.

So enlightening, troll. Truly remarkable.

I do think DEI programs are both racist and sexist. Now, what’s your point?

Sure, they’re connected. You give me a formula for simply rid racist thought from all human minds and I’ll concede you have a point here. Until then, I’m gonna keep operating on the fact that racist thought manifests differently in different areas of society and that they require unique solutions. In the area of discrimination in hiring practices, resumes absolutely are a contributing factor.

You’re not going to get me to simplify my thinking on this enormously complex issue by pointing to the abstract notion of “people are fucking racist!” You can’t address that directly. You have to take the more pragmatic approach of addressing the concrete elements in society that you can actually change. In fact, if you’d studied any actual literature on the topic, you’d know this already, because all the academics agree with what I just wrote.

Yes, but I was referring solely to DEI programs, which have nothing to do with systemic racism in police brutality or judicial prejudice areas.

I honestly don’t understand your point. Can you clarify?

You can externalize your assumptions all you want; it doesn’t change the fact that interpersonal communication is the responsibility of all involved.

I.e., grow up and stop winging about minor details on internet forums.

Only in the same sense that most political opinions are “manufactured” by mainstream news outlets. It doesn’t really matter. DEI’s problems are valid criticisms, and you can’t simply dismiss them because they’re highlighted by right-wing outlets.

Oh, I agree, and I wasn’t trying to suggest what I wrote above was all that’s needed. I’m a big proponent of racially blind admissions/hiring processes. Exclude any data that could be construed as being race-identifying. The more we can force admissions/hiring to base their choices solely on performance-relative metrics alone, the better.

However, I have to admit that such a goal is a bit unrealistic. Race-identifying information will likely always find a way into admissions/hiring processes, simply because of interviews. I don’t claim to know how to create the perfect system, obviously. This is a complex problem that people a lot smarter and more educated than I have been striving to solve for decades.

But I think that raising people up from the very bottom of society is still the best approach, the most efficient way to do that is by focusing on disadvantages experienced early in life. If you can level the playing field during kindergarten, you provide a more equal launch pad for every stage of life thereafter; keep working up from there and we’ll eventually wind up with a more equal result in adulthood.

Eh. Yes, if you’re looking at the data from efficacy studies alone. However, I would argue that DEI programs create political turmoil that creates harm to society that these studies don’t take into account. Addressing systemic racism is important, but DEI approaches have created understandable division about majority groups being discriminated against in the service of fixing the problem. I think focusing on wealth inequality has the overlapping effect of helping minority racial groups while sidestepping the race politics inherent to DEI programs that give fuel to racist groups in society.

Republicans’ motivations for getting rid of DEI certainly aren’t mine. Believe it or not, there are people out there who disagree with the DEI approach but still agree that systemic racism/sexism in society is a problem that needs addressing. Don’t lump me in with the GOP.

I never said addressing systemic racism was limited to addressing said issues in educational attainment alone. Clearly, it’s a multifaceted problem that requires a broad range of fixes.

Doesn’t your point simply mean DEI encourages more sexism than racism, but doesn’t actually deny it encourages racism too?

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I would wager the vast majority of consumers don’t give a damn about things like this. And in cases that they do, it’s much more likely that they’ll care about the absence of such programs than the reverse.

Yes, but Apple has also built their empire on horrible practices in China and by exploiting tax loopholes to the point where they regularly pay zero taxes. I’m not trying to be a purist here—I have an iPhone and an Apple Watch—but I don’t think their retainment of DEI programs should be construed as a moral choice; Apple products are largely purchased by liberals, so they have a public image to mind if they’re going to avoid reducing sales by pissing off their main customer market.

Research clearly shows most corporate entities (and their figureheads) donate to both sides of the political game. They want to have friends in power no matter who wins the election.

I would argue that if your goal is to fix systemic racism, a much more effective approach would be to target the pipeline problem early on by focusing on improving education systems in poor/racial minority communities. Their difficulties in competing later on in life stem directly (and I would argue most strenuously) from disadvantages they experience early on. If companies see improvements in the resumes of racial minorities, they will naturally be more likely to hire them; I would argue that their greed for having the best employees will override the racial biases of White CEOs and HR managers.

While not exactly the same thing as DEI programs, affirmative action programs have a history of efficacy studies that demonstrate positive (if only moderately so) results. However, there’s also solid research that points to backlash effects and criticisms of “positive discrimination.” In other words, while affirmative action programs do somewhat accomplish their goals of helping minority groups achieve, they come at the cost of intentionally discriminating against majority groups (mainly Whites), which understandably creates antipathy towards them from the majority groups. Also, despite some people’s claims that these programs don’t give slots to minority candidates with weaker test scores, resumes, etc, actual examinations of them have shown that this is not actually the case in practice, and that companies and schools have given preference for weaker scoring minority candidates in order to create the public image of being more diverse.

Basically, affirmative action is a mixed bag and I suspect DEI programs are similarly so. The overall net effect may still be positive though, if only slightly.

Personally, I think a better strategy would be to improve education systems for poor communities. Instead of focusing on race directly, focus on improving outcomes for the poor. Due to overlaps in racial and economic variables, you’ll wind up helping racial minorities while avoiding the criticism of engaging in “positive discrimination.” Plus, fixing the pipeline problem early on is a more efficient approach, since it focuses on preventing people from failing early on rather than trying to fix their failures later on.