Microblog Memes

As far as I understand, DEI as a policy in a university or workplace means giving place to a candidate because not of their merits or test scores, but because of their race or background.

Isn’t that racism?

This is the distorted mudslinging version. It may not be what you intended, but it's what you've learned via right wing propaganda.

DEI seeks to correct biases that have been inherent in US hiring practices for years - things as fundamental as "if your name sounds too black you don't get called for interviews as often, even with the same qualifications". (Linked literally the first article I found about it, but there are plenty more, and this is just an easy example.)

Some of these biases come from people actually being bigots, but some of them come from "that's just how we've always done it" or even just simple unconscious bias that we all have.

Some of the shitty outcomes are from the fact that in the early, early foundational days of many aspects of US government and law, the country was by and large run by people who weren't too unhappy about lynchings of black people or even participated themselves, and those attitudes found their way overtly and subtly into many practices and regulations that remain in place to this day.

It's a complicated topic deeply interwoven with our history, our geography, and our culture.

DEI initiatives aren't perfect, and like anything else you have individuals who may misapply or overzealously apply their principles, causing a different sort of problem.

But the Republican/Conservative objections to them are, like the Conservative assessments of literally any topic I can think of, based at best upon a shallow, incomplete understanding of cherrypicked details, (see comment from @[email protected] below) and at worst based on exactly the bigotry and racism they shout about not having in their hearts despite their every action proving how untrue that is.

Edited to add - DEI isn't limited to racism, and racism isn't limited to black people. There is of course sexism, homophobia, etc in there as well. But this is a comment on a forum, not a research paper, and the more dimensions we try to add to the discussion here, the more complicated it will get. So I focused on racism against black folks because it's an easily visible, and sadly, familiar topic.