> DEI efforts, and often those leading them, are increasingly the most biased and close minded parts of the organization.
That's a feature, not a bug. As Ibram X Kendi says, "the only remedy to past discrimination, is present discrimination".
That's a feature, not a bug. As Ibram X Kendi says, "the only remedy to past discrimination, is present discrimination".
We call it race when it's based on appearance markers we associate with race, we call it sexism when we base it off gender, we call it ageism when it is off apparent age, we call it nationalism when it is based off national origin.
And it's always wrong, and left unchecked, it is always destructive.
this is probably the dumbest sentence I have ever read in my life.
Is present slavery the only remedy to past slavery?
Not only is this logically fallacious (has Kendi really considered every possible remedy?), but it is belied by historical fact. Chinese people were heavily discriminated against in America at one time. Today, Chinese people and their descendants are among the most successful ethnic groups in America, but have never received any sort of affirmative action program. In fact, Chinese people are still discriminated against (by e.g. Ivy League admissions offices) for being "too successful."
My experiences with DEI acolytes who follow the likes of Kendi, Crenshaw, Coates & DiAngelo is that they respond to these inconvenient facts with mystical assertions about successful non-white groups being "white adjacent" or beneficiaries of "white supremacy."
Some comments on this post mention the irony of diversity initiatives that discriminate. Kendi’s argument, I think, is that there’s no good reason for occupations to be skewed towards one race or gender or age or whatever, so additional / opposite discrimination simply undoes the initial bias.
I think that’s a challenging POV for a couple of reasons.
First, for those of us in well paid or high status jobs, like software development, it’s a POV that suggests “maybe you don’t deserve it quite as much as you imagine”. That’s a tough thing to consider, doesn’t feel great and probably isn’t going to be popular.
Second, it’s really hard (impossible?) to know the extent to which culture has affected distribution into occupations. But some people seem confident that our status quo is natural and fair and some people seem confident that it’s unnatural and unfair. When people with those different POVs talk to each other, they’re starting with a big gap in how they understand the world.