Texas Passes Ban on DEI Offices and Tenure Reform at Public Universities
thetexan.news
thetexan.news
Really surprised the government has the ability to do this, but I’m not super well educated here.
That reads a bit confusing, but basically the constitution exists to give citizens rights and specifically limit the federal government. States can do more than the federal government but can't trample on the rights of citizens.
In labor markets, sure. But isn’t merit for a youth largely built through education? Certainly feels like full-blown meritocracy without accounting for equality of opportunity is for some a self-fulfilling prophecy and for others a catch-22. At any rate probably a recipe for supercharging wealth inequality.
To put it simply, a poor white student from rural Alabama only needs a proper accent and a good suit to blend in with the upper-classes. However, a black student only needs to lose access to their parents money and they immediately have a longer harder uphill battle to fight against racism which will presume them to be uneducated, underperforming, and generationally poor unless they work 2x as hard to prove it wrong.
That said...
I do think there's a danger in supporting DEI programs simply because they have good outcomes (which other posters are doing). If a group achieves your end-results but doesn't have your philosophy, then my life experience (e.g. MAGA) has shown that they will become the enemy that you don't see until it's too late.
I would agree that most would probably fail that test, does they mean we need blanket bans on equity programs or more effective ones?
American in particular needs nourishment funding for all socioecon/demographic classes.
Just because you disagree with a particular form of DEI (and to put my personal cards on the table, I am somewhere between indifferent to moderately against race based affirmative action) doesn't mean the concept of DEI is not important.
In fact, as we can see in this thread here, most people who say they are against DEI are in fact in favor because they do recognize that, at the very least, current higher educational practices are highly tilted towards those who are rich and those whose parents already have college degrees.
Maybe you guys need colleges looking only at grades and SAT scores, and no questions about race on any of the forms. This is how most of the world does it, and there is no need for DEI offices.
If the student loans were cut down a bit, prices would probably go down too for everyone. (or maybe even have a taxpayer paid education system, like most of the rest of the world).
Honest question.
I don't care about DEI. Not an American either. Just the whole "meritocracy" argument seems like it's a bit problematic.
In arts merit is really problematic but even in sciences and math. A person with the "right connections" can find himself collaborating with the best scientists and in the best labs. Whereas a person with bad connections might be unable to afford the networking even if they do get a scholarship to the best school.
Even in "objective" grading. Is the grade of the student who worked all night to afford school equivalent to the one who had a private tutor and all the free time to study?
To be clear: I don't have the answer for this. But I don't think anyone has. It seems to me that a lot of people use this word as a cudgel rather than use a more nuanced individual distinction. Which I agree, doesn't scale well.
You should also help black children, no matter their economic status, because they are discriminated against compared to their economic peer groups in many facets of life, including education.
Luckily for my argument there are relatively few people who are Will Smith's kids (2, I guess) and relatively many who are, for example, black middle class kids who face significant challenges that their white middle class peers would not. A strictly class-based DEI type program would not acknowledge this reality.
On the other hand, if someone got preferential treatment because of his skin color, and took my spot for something, I'd hate him too.
It annoys me too to see DEI people make stacks off of weaponized bullshit while us engineers keep the lights on, but that's a free business transaction. Why should the state be involved?
It's the key part of your post, but it doesn't really stand on its own without some kind of explanation. It's kind of like saying, "There is no such thing as an 8-foot-tall bird. And no, ostriches don't count."
I internalized why affirmative action and equity are awkwardly unjust in the short-term but more just and better in the long-term, but I don't think that we, as a society, are convinced that the ends justify the means.
It feels good to try to be colorblind, for example, even if critical theory would blackpill you that you can't really be colorblind and you're lying to yourself. But any alternative is socially unsustainable precisely because we resent racism.
As a society, I don't think we can psychologically afford social engineering projects like affirmative action. The insecurity and resentment they breed feel really bad and are huge powder kegs for political strife. So it's probably better to not do them.
Most of what USA does, from affirmative action to preferential hiring based on race or any kind of born-with status would be seen as very racist and/or sexist here.
Even to get into college, points (from grades and standardized testing) are the only thing taken in consideration in most colleges (visual arts, acting, and music being notable exceptions).
And likely anyone who values true freedom of speech: https://themissingdatadepot.substack.com/p/is-dei-destroying...
DEI has advanced in society to the point that, ironically, it's not tolerant of other viewpoints. And the ideology doesn't see this as a problem, in fact like all zero-merit ideologies (meaning they don't value individuals at all, and certainly not on personal achievement), they're actively proud of being bullies. Except this is a bullies club where entry is based on your genes.
DEI as "let's make a meritocracy more meritocratic" is great. Fantastic even. And it certainly was a necessity. DEI appears to not be that, anymore.
And even this is disregarding that DEI is at least partially a coverup for dumb spending cuts by government. Or that it's failing. The advancement of DEI is certainly not making the poor better off.
Can you find some concrete examples of prominent proponents of diversity, equity, and inclusion programs making the claims you attribute to them?
https://www.insidehighered.com/admissions/article/2021/10/25...
"Admissions experts ... agreed that lying is a problem"
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/when-employee-lies-race-there...
https://www.askamanager.org/2022/07/my-relative-is-lying-abo...
https://www.foxnews.com/media/white-woman-caught-lying-race-...
https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/columnists/story/2020-0...
Specifically: here's an article where Rachel Dolezal clearly states she would like to identify as black, to escape her parents' upbringing. She was accused of being a "race faker", which to me indicates, less-than-subtly, that changing your race is not accepted by DEI groups.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/dec/13/rachel-dolez...
(Ironically the "reason" this is unfair strikes me as paticularly ironic. She claims to take on a black racial identity to escape the suffering her family inflicted on her. This suffering appears real, and there's certainly enough elements to indicate it's an ongoing issue in her life even now. According to the "African American community", this is unfair, because they suffered centuries ago, but not personally)
This is one of those things that we can't really talk about anymore. There are racist connotations, ironically to both sides of the argument.
To say it has a strong genetic component could be construed to mean certain races have IQ differences.
To say it does not have a genetic component can be construed to saying current members of races are largely responsible for their own IQ, which is denying the effects of unequal treatment of races.
As for science, there's a problem with heritability. Do you mean genes? Or do you mean "average" attitudes to the intelligence and education of children, which can correlate with race and location? Or do you mean environment in other ways (such as money and available resources, divorce status of parents, ... which again correlates with race)?
Genes alone (from split up twin studies), explain about half the variability in IQ (which translates to about 4 IQ points). The environment you had as a child explains the rest.
DEI isn’t only focused on race. And even if so, if there are more statistically distributed poor people of one race getting by than another, that is a problem.
https://www.texastribune.org/2016/06/23/race-and-admissions-...
> Black and Hispanics make up just 14 percent of students admitted from outside the automatic threshold, even though they make up 60 percent of Texas high school graduates. Meanwhile, white and Asian students make up 73 percent of non-automatically admitted students, while they make up 39 percent of Texas high school graduates overall.
Meritocracy is a dystopia that we somehow warped into its opposite, a utopia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rise_of_the_Meritocracy
This seems to happen with many philosophical ideas: Christianity has become staunchly capitalist, the direct opposite of everything that Jesus taught; Communism, the dictatorship of the working class, became the dictatorship of the non-working elite class, etc.
And what's wrong with meritocracy?
Because what people who object to DEI and equality programs always claim is the problem is too many minorities and too many women - the implication that minorities and women systemically don't deserve equal status to whites and men, and that in a fair system, they wouldn't have it.
Did you know that the White House staff is 154 [1]/474 [2] Jewish, and 44% ethnic minority [3]? That means Jews (2.4% of US population [4]), are 32% of White House staff, while non-Jewish whites (55% of US) are just 24%.
For perspective, Asian-Americans are 5.9% of the US, so if they were as well represented as Jews, White House staff would be 78% Asian.
Would you care to re-evaluate who the US status quo favors? If you're not convinced, I encourage you to apply the same analysis to the Ivy League. You'll find similar numbers.
[1] https://twitter.com/WhiteHouse/status/1658519373881933833
[2] https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/July-1... - these are roles such as policy advisors, director of congressional outreach, director of labor engagement, etc., not security or housekeeping.
[3] https://www.reuters.com/world/us/women-make-up-60-white-hous...
On one hand you have black people who benefit the most, asian people who lose the most, and people like you, who blame white people for that.
But I've had this conversation with people more than enough times to know you won't appreciate the nuance. You have to make this about me and about victimizing white people, rather than a prejudiced system. I understand, but I'm not participating.
Well it seems some minorities aren't fan of DEI either:
> Campus Diversity Is Campus Jew-Hatred
> How DEI is openly attempting to marginalize and silence Jewish students
https://www.commentary.org/articles/seth-mandel/campus-diver...
> The Uncomfortable Truth About Affirmative Action and Asian-Americans
https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-uncomfortable-t...
None of these articles are from the perspective of "white upper Christian men".