Microblog Memes

If you hate the PATRIOT act...etc. Look, titles of things have no bearings on what they actually are. This post is just group masturbation.

TBH, as a poor white kid from coal country, DEI based scholarships were quite unfair to me. Busting my ass to survive while these kids who were already better off than me from the start got a free ride. Nonsense.

I don't have a great answer, but the extreme implementations of these programs and now the extreme removal of them are both wrong.

People don't have a problem saying they oppose dei or the full phrase and will happily explain that they do not like workplace policy designed around diversity equity and inclusion.

Dei is absolutely something that should be considered but the right managed to absolutely annihilate it with their fake news propaganda campaign. When its brought back it needs to be packaged different. I think having every corporation parrot the phrase over and over doesn't not help.

Hey! I have a story on this to tell, which I will make as anonymous as possible:

Someone I know in an administrative position is in the middle of dealing with an employee who is suddenly refusing to do annual DEI training, claiming that it is against their religious beliefs. They were brought in and given a chance to defend that. Asked what specifically about DEI went against their beliefs. They started spouting a bunch of Fox News crap.

It was pointed out to them that DEI means things like making sure disabled people can get over a raised doorway. The employee said they were fine with that, but went into a whole "gay marriage is sinful" sort of rant. They were told they don't have to agree with such things, just respect them at work. And they said that was great and one of the things they loved about working there.

Basically, it turned out that they had zero issues with any of the actual DEI policies. They literally objected to those three letters being used.

Probably why they latch on to “woke” to and they never fully explain what’s so woke about the subject

This is my sad hill to die on, I guess, despite my personal feelings on why anti-discrimination across all aspects is important for society. But after reading some informed perspectives, I think I get where some of the DEI pushback is coming from.

It’s not about diversity, equity or inclusion individually, but DEI as a concept, ie as an actionable form of some underlying ideology. It doesn’t matter if the practitioners of DEI may not subscribe to any underlying ideology, the fact is that DEI opponents are unconvinced about the allegiances of DEI practitioners in special contexts, like the military.

I personally don’t care about having DEI in corporate or education contexts, but i think the concern there is that if the public thinks one way, then it will question why the military/govt doesn’t want to. So, I think I get why they removed DEI/CRT from corporate and education as well.

Per my understanding, the pushback is coming jointly from the military, and the main point of contention was the CRT-derived idea of “inherent racism” or “whites as oppressors”. For example,

CRT scholars argue that the social and legal construction of race advances the interests of white people[9][12] at the expense of people of color,[13][14] and that the liberal notion of U.S. law as "neutral" plays a significant role in maintaining a racially unjust social order,[15] where formally color-blind laws continue to have racially discriminatory outcomes.[16]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_race_theory

Here’s an article which says why DEI was necessarily started (the writer is an academic)

DEI policies and practices were created to rectify the government-sanctioned discrimination that existed and systemic oppression that persists in the United States.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/beyond-the-cubicle/202411/what-we-get-wrong-about-the-dei-backlash-narrative

You have to appreciate why some part of the American armed forces pushes back on these ideas when your CO may be white, and you a minority. There are practical considerations to having such ideas in the back of your mind when you’re supposed to act without question and as a unit.

Here’s some context for reading https://starrs.us/dei-how-to-have-the-conversation/

Here’s another perspective from a Stanford professor, https://amgreatness.com/2024/03/25/will-dei-end-america-or-america-end-dei/

Edit to clarify, I am not saying that we shouldn’t have anti-discrimination policies across different aspects of being a person. I am saying this is why some people don’t like/want DEI or CRT (which are distinct and separate from the existing anti-discrimination policies). And yes, I know the military has issues regarding race and sex discrimination. But I think people can address those without DEI or CRT.

Simple: It's diversity. They hate diversity and would rather live their lives only interacting with people like themselves and never having their world view challenged.

It's racism and there's a shocking amount of folks who will just straight up tell you that they are racist if it's not in public where it could affect their jobs. There's also plenty of losers who don't care and are just openly racist, but they don't tend to have careers on the line.

I've heard the E as both Equity and Equality. Anyone know which it's supposed to be?

You know what, let's give it a shot. 3 things I dislike.

1. Equity based on gender or skin color. So many people pretend that somehow one average working class person should be put ahead in line compared to another, if the other person has the same skin color as some unrelated asshole slaver whose descendants still profit from their riches.

   Most of you would probably agree that a world where the majority are exploited by a few billionaires is not equitable just because the billionaires are diverse. So why push policies that pretend all is equitable as long as you give a few minorities preferential treatment.

   Not only does it not make any real sense, but more importantly, it is divisive. No person struggling in this f**ked up economy wants to hear they should be even worse of, because they have the same skin color as the billionaires exploiting them and they should feel ashamed for that. I would not be surprised if these ideas are intentionally pushed by the rich to divide the working class people and turn them on each other.

2. Bringing people down in the name of Equity. Equity is definitely what we should strive for, but by lifting disadvantaged people up, not tearing "privileged" people down. The whole message that you should be ashamed for not being disadvantaged is ridiculous to me. Maybe you should be ashamed if you are in a privileged position and you refuse to use it to help the disadvantaged, but just be ashamed of privilege period is a wild take to me. We should be aiming to make everyone privileged enough that they don't have to fear being shot every time they see a cop, that they can make a living wage, ...

   If your movements/policies are hostile towards the very people whose support can help you most, then no wonder you can't make any progress and radicals like Trump take advantage of the divisiveness.

3. Low quality diversity in media. Adding diverse characters to media should ideally be like adding trees. You add them when it makes sense without even thinking about it and don't add them when it doesn't make sense. We should work slowly and carefully towards that goal. Unfortunately, so many movies, shows and games have tried to awkwardly add diversity with no regard for how it negatively affects the enjoyability of the product. So your goal presumably was to make diverse people feel included and to normalize diversity in peoples mind. But the result for minorities often is that they repeatedly see character like them being badly and lazily written, either by having no proper character beyond being diverse or conversely feel like straight cis white character that just happens to mention they are diverse. On the other hand, the majority just sees these poorly made products and associate diversity and DEI with bad products. So failure on both goals. The answer is of course quality over quantity. It may take a while to get where we want to be, but it will get there without making things even worse with good intentions.

   By the way, there of course are great examples of well made diverse shows, but they are drowned out by the slop. My favorite example is the Owl house. The plot of the first episode is literally about being captured and placed into "the conformatorium" for being different and then escaping and dismantling the place. And it did this so smoothly I did not even realize there was any messaging in it until long after seeing it.

I've seen the Right's answer to DEI.

They deny that there is/was inequality so they claim that pushing equality gives an unfair advantage.

They say that any perceived inequality is the lack in the sum of experience and expertise.

They say that forced inclusion is unfair on the meritocracy of others.

They also tend to think that racism and sexism are overblown because they are incapable of believing (or it is otherwise too inconvenient for them to believe) that other people actually have problems if they don't themselves experience them.

The alternatives to DEI are:

Conformity Inequity Exclusion