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by ChocolateGod 505 days ago
So why did companies adopt quotas?

In theory if DEI was about being race, sex, gender, sexuality, age blind, it wouldn't be controversial.

But companies went in hard with things such as quotas, and there's even cases in the courts at the moment where Red Hat/IBM supposedly awarded bonuses based on hiring managers fulfilling diversity quotas.
2 comments
tonyedgecombe 505 days ago
>In theory if DEI was about being race, sex, gender, sexuality, age blind, it wouldn't be controversial.

I think it would, there is a substantial contingent that wouldn't even like that.

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SilverBirch 505 days ago
Of course its controversial either way. Let's assume for our purposes that DEI is purely about being race, sex, gender, sexuality, age blind (which we can absolutely argue about separately). It would absolutely be controversial because it's replacing a system that previously wasn't blind to those characteristics and therefore has a large constituency of people it favoured. If I'm a rich white kid from a good family who went to a top school who gets into an Internship at Goldman because my Dad is golfing buddies with a Partner there then of course I would be opposed to DEI. And guess what? Rich white kids from good families and top schools have quite a lot of political capital.

And that's only those who directly materially lose out. Implicit in DEI is a suggestion that the American system is not a meritocracy, and if you accept that claim you are attacking the identity of a lot of powerful people who genuinely believe they got to where they are through unique skills and effort and not because they had any sort of advantage.

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ChocolateGod 505 days ago
> controversial because it's replacing a system that previously wasn't blind to those characteristics

Was it though?

Or was it just a result of society and culture outside the companies control.

The idea behind DEI is as if a car crashes into another car because of an issue with the road, that leads to one car being more damaged than the other, the solution is to make sure the less damaged car has the same amount of damage, rather than fixing the road.

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Jcowell 505 days ago
It seems silly to say this is the idea behind DEI rather than what folks may feel is the consequence (I neither don’t care if it is or isn’t”).
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