[gcanyon]

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?

[0xDEAFBEAD]

Suppose you were abused by your parent. How much would it be reasonable for you to abuse your child, in order to balance the scales?

[gcanyon]

That's a bad metaphor.

[rayiner]

It’s a good metaphor. You can’t undo racial discrimination against someone who is now dead by discriminating against someone else who is now alive.

[dctoedt]

> 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 YouTube "head start in the race of life" video is spot on. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vvHWAjh3Ks

Some will say, it's not my job to mitigate today's effects of past discrimination. That seems ... uncitizenly, if you will.

[TimorousBestie]

No, it’s a bad metaphor.

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.

[rayiner]

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.

[TimorousBestie]

> To make your analogy work, the benefit would be for people who weren’t personally abused, but whose parents or grandparents were abused.

No, this is a consequence of your ideology, which assumes that racial discrimination ended with the Civil Rights Act and etc. (Hence “we could simply just enforce. . .”) Mine does not.

Note that the metaphor as stated by 0xDEAFBEAD, which you already said was good, did not include this additional generational gap.

[gcanyon]

I'd argue the correct analogy is "Suppose you were abused by society; should society be forced to address that abuse." But that's just me.

[0xDEAFBEAD]

You're asking too much of society with such vague complaints. We should focus on getting basics right: prosperity, jobs, reduce crime, reduce road death, and so forth before navel-gazing about "abuse by society". In any case, even if society does somehow "address the abuse", it shouldn't come in the form of randomly abusing other people. But that's what you appear to be advocating for: Because some people were discriminated against, we should now randomly discriminate against some other people.

[0xDEAFBEAD]

>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.

[typewithrhythm]

You cannot make a fair system by introducing subjective ideas like historical balance.

A set of rules for fairness require that current decisions only account for individual merit; not special status.

[gcanyon]

I didn't propose subjective harm in the past, why would you suggest that I did?

But in any case, it seems like your answer is zero, right?

[Ohmec]

Inverting the privilege pyramid does not make for a balanced and healthy system.

[xdennis]

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

[gcanyon]

Companies know their own historical data and practices best.

[3oil3]

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.

[gcanyon]

> We need the best for the job

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.

[3oil3]

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.

[amanaplanacanal]

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.

[3oil3]

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.

[kelnos]

This isn't a thread about what's reasonable, it's a thread about what's legal.

[gcanyon]

That means a "what's reasonable" question is disallowed?

[klipt]

"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?"

[gcanyon]

Okay, so we've established that your upper bound is "less than thousands of years" but what's your lower limit? Or were you just strawmanning?

[akimbostrawman]

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.

[gcanyon]

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.

[ModernMech]

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.

[gcanyon]

> 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.

[throwawaypath]

>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.

[ModernMech]

I am not saying disability law originated in the DEI movement of today, I'm pointing at the through line between the passage of the ADA and the modern DEI movement. From the civil rights era in the 60s, to women's rights in the 70s, to the ADA in the 90s, to gay rights in the 00s, to DEI today. The principles behind disability accommodations -- access, fairness, inclusion -- are foundational to DEI as a broader movement. The ADA was an early expression of those principles in law; DEI later extended them into other social and organizational contexts.

And yeah, the ADA has received broad bipartisan support in passage because it's well understood even by partisans that disabilities affect everyone, so it's important to have protections in place.

What's not so understood by partisans is how those disabilities manifest, so since the passage of the ADA there has also been widespread pushback on what qualifies as a disability, and what accommodations are reasonable. THAT is a whole different conversation which, as someone who is disabled and covered under the ADA, I will say can be like pulling teeth to get protections guaranteed under the law. For example, businesses are often loathe to make physical accommodations like ramps and elevators, and there is often resistance to providing accommodations for mental health conditions or neurodiversity.

But DEI itself is about creating equitable access and participation for everyone. This includes people who are disabled, and at no point in time has DEI not included disabled people. Maybe for the terminally online right, who only focus on gender and race, but that's not what it's all about in the real world. Notably, DEI also has been a driving force for veteran employment (having dedicated veteran hiring pipelines is absolutely DEI). It's very common for people to do what you're doing now -- "All the accommodations I like and/or benefit me are sound law and not DEI; all the accommodations I don't like are DEI and must be outlawed"

[akimbostrawman]

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.

[rectang]

(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"

Ha, we definitely do not all think alike.

[klipt]

> diversity is not a zero sum game

The moment HR rejects a candidate for being "insufficiently diverse" that's a zero sum game isn't it?

[gcanyon]

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."

[cutemonster]

Reading your other comments, I was just thinking that you seemed to group everyone who look the same, together, and think about them as if they were 1 type of person you could generalize about. For example, white men, or black men, or women. - So, yes I suppose you did.

For example, if your country gets attacked, primarily the men go and defend their country and people. Is that "thoroughly awesome"? Anyway have a nice day

[akimbostrawman]

>advantages I receive every day for being a white male

Really like what? There are many concrete examples of how "white dudes" are statistically are disadvantaged.

Higher rate to being victim of a violent crime, suicide, homelessness, harsher sentences, dying at work, dying younger, dying in a war, white guilt