Seems like a lawsuit right there... is this happened I sure hope that there was a lawsuit! Or at least HR implementing new hiring practices company wide afterwards...
In your mind, if the company had researched their past hiring and found that whites/males had been favored for the previous history of the company, how long would it be reasonable for them to favor minorities and other underrepresented groups to balance the scales?
> You can’t undo racial discrimination against someone who is now dead by discriminating against someone else who is now alive.
A better way to look at it: We can and should try to mitigate the indirect, generational disadvantages of past racial discrimination. Some of those disadvantages are domino effects, manifested over many years. They're the evil twin of generational wealth.
Those generational disadvantages can be a drag on the descendants of the victims of the past discrimination. That gives a certain amount of comparative advantage to those of us whose ancestors didn't suffer racial discrimination — and who benefit from present-day white advantage even when our ancestors weren't among the racial oppressors.
Sure, my various immigrant grandparents, great-grandparents, and great-great-grandparents had to deal with a certain amount of ethnic discrimination. But it was nothing like that suffered by nonwhites.
The correct analogy is, “Suppose you were abused by your parent; should you be allowed to establish a benefit specifically and only for the abused children of other parents?”
You and 0xDEAFBEAD answer that question no, because that benefit discriminates in your mind against all non-abused children. And against all adults, probably. I don’t know how deep the grievance mobilization goes.
To make your analogy work, the benefit would be for people who weren’t personally abused, but whose parents or grandparents were abused. And yes, that would be quite odd.
The rationale for racial preferences in 2025 is not that they are a benefit to individuals who were personally harmed by racial discrimination. The institutions engaging in these practices insist that they are otherwise engaged in race blind practices. If such practices existed, DEI as we know it would be unnecessary. We could simply just enforce the existing laws in a race-blind way.
>The correct analogy is, “Suppose you were abused by your parent; should you be allowed to establish a benefit specifically and only for the abused children of other parents?”
That analogy is invalid because the original injustice here was discrimination, and people are proposing more discrimination in order to correct the original discrimination. Maybe that would be reasonable if you could be sure that the new discrimination narrowly targets people who unjustly benefited from the old discrimination. However, in practice this is unlikely to be the case: You'll have a situation where senior engineers benefited from discrimination, and we discriminate against a different set of junior engineers in order to "balance the scales". Two wrongs don't make a right.
Furthermore, as a method for achieving justice this is highly dysfunctional. There's no way to get consensus on what the "sentence" should be. There's no way to measure the degree to which the "sentence" has been meted out. It's just a big case of "squeaky wheel gets the grease". The more DEI professionals you hire, the more they will advocate for the need to hire DEI professionals, until the thing collapses into self-parody and Trump gets re-elected.
It's already possible to sue corporations for discrimination and violation of civil rights law. Why is this remedy insufficient? Maybe because there isn't actually a good legal case to be made that the alleged discrimination actually occurred, and people are just grasping at straws?
In any case: We can play these sort of zero-sum and negative-sum games until the cows come home. Functional societies don't cry over spilled milk, and instead focus on positive-sum games. To facilitate positive-sum games, we need a stable and predictable legal framework, not quixotic justice quests which mysteriously get ever more urgent the more the injustice recedes into the past.
If that's the case, I do think favoring non-whites and non-males is perfectly okay.
But how do you think people arrive at the conclusion that whites/males have been favored in the past? Do they:
1) inspect their hiring practices and find evidence of discrimination
2) look at the proportion of minorities in the company vs proportion of minorities in the general population and conclude that any disparity is proof of discrimination
I think they come to that conclusion with that segregation thing?
Besides that, all nonsense. We need the best for the job, the best we can have.
Just the best, with no regards to anything else but the abilities to fulfil the job and all around it.
Instead of non-sense of choosing someone based on racial, etnic, religous, etc... it goes both way. Instead of that, put more teachers in schools, provide free books/uniforms/utilities. Fix that damn airco in that kindergarden class.
Better what makes better.
I'm curious why you say that, since we've arguably been managing without "the best for the job" for centuries, anytime the best was a woman or a minority.
Because we must do better than our ancestors, we have no escuses, whereas e.g. 1880 gobal ileteracy rate > 80%.
More comfortable schools with less pupils per 1 teacher we need, fix the issue, not give painkillers.
We think we want the best, and then at hiring time we look for "culture fit", or hire people we already know, or our relatives instead. Then we wonder why everybody is just like us.
Yep, you'r 100% right, it reminds me I once read that of all given jobs offers, 50% would be taken by someone who got introduced internally.
Out of personal exeperience as employer, that so was decided by me because it was filling the need instantly.
And out of those personal experiences, bad employees brought bad recruits, good employees brought good recruits.
Unknown recruits? half good, half bad.
Ironically chiraldic.
"If countries conscripted only men for thousands of years, for how many thousands of years is it reasonable to conscript only women to balance the scales?"
If these people where actually sincere and not just hiding behind a ideological smokescreen that only benefits them they would be for this same as with DEI in other men dominated jobs like sewage cleaning, road building or other physically taxing but underpaid jobs.
It really makes you think that all the "men and women are the same and sometimes women are even better" always starts at the silicon valley jobs and stops right at enlistment which would be actual equality.
I'm a white male, there is zero chance DEI benefits me directly. But I think we all benefit from a diverse society, with female plumbers and electricians, minority software developers, etc. etc.
Disability accommodations are a cornerstone of DEI. As an able-bodied individual, you may not feel you would benefit from those today; but if you are blessed enough to grow old, one day you will likely be disabled in one way or another. When that day comes, you'll be asking for accommodations to get into public areas, and if those accommodations are not available to you, you will likely find how that limits your ability to participate in public life very unfair.
> if you are blessed enough to grow old, one day you will likely be disabled in one way or another
Oh for sure, for sure. It's hard to predict exactly how the secondary effects play out. But I was referring to the primary intended effects, which I think is what the person I was replying to was talking about.
>Disability accommodations are a cornerstone of DEI.
You missed the memo, they're not pushing this narrative any longer. The poor attempt to launder DEI via the disabled is twisted and transparent. The ADA predates DEI by decades, and has broad support from both sides of the aisle.
It's not only not benefitting you but actively putting you at a disadvantage because of the way you where born.
Why do you think that? Because it makes you feel good or because there is an actual measurable benefit? And no you don't need to have a specific skin color or sexual orientation to be considered diverse/different. If you think "all white dudes are/think the same" maybe change white to black and say that in front of a mirror.
(Not gp but...) I believe it because diversity is not a zero sum game, where every gain for a demographic other than mine means a loss to my demographic which must be fought tooth and nail.
First, we are all enriched by having a variety of experiences and perspectives available to draw upon.
Second, I feel stronger bonds with historically marginalized humans than with humans who happen to belong to my own demographic.
> If you think "all white dudes are/think the same"
What makes you think I think "all white dudes are/think the same"? Did I say anything to suggest that?
The difference, I think, is that I'm not blind to the advantages I receive every day for being a white male. In the words of Louis CK, "If you're a white male and don't admit that it is thoroughly awesome, you're an asshole."