Microblog Memes

'Diversity hire' is the old derogatory term that implies someone is unqualified and only hired because of their skin color or genitals, so they already openly hate diversity.

They don't know what equity means. They probably think it means equality, and they hate that too because in their minds equality requires giving up their relative standing in society.

They hate inclusion because they hate diversity.

The meme is though provoking for someone who already understands the concepts and is useful for bringing awareness to 3rd parties who are otherwise apathetic. It won't make the person who is put on the spot reconsider their opinion, but that's because they are morons who fell for the anti-DEI propaganda.

Same thing as when old people said they were against Antifa or antifa was causing violence. Anti Fascist. You don't support the Anti Fascists. Are you ok with the Fascists then? Shuts the boomers up because they remember daddy fought the Fascists even if their lead addled brains can't remember what that is

I think it's important to distinguish between diversity, equity, and inclusion as CONCEPTS and DEI as an organization and initiative.

It is possible to be pro- diversity, equity, and inclusion and be opposed to mismanaged efforts in DEI as a PROGRAM.

This post assumes that DEI as a government initiative is working perfectly and has no downsides, presenting it in a way that closes it off to criticism.

Does every system have to be perfect? Of course not. It's better to have a system pushing for good that's imperfect than none at all, but framing it like this is gaslighting and hurts discussion on both sides.

Don, Eric, Ivanka

DEI

If you're opposed to DOGE, does that mean you're opposed to efficiency in government?

Reminds me of the "Lets Go Brandon" crap.

Like, if you really dislike Biden, just say "Fuck Joe Biden.". I have zero issue saying "Fuck Trump," because, fuck trump.

Locally in Illinois there were also these signs everywhere that said "Pritzker Sucks" in huge letters, then at the bottom in tiny print "the life out of small business."

Like seriously, I am less disgusted by your stance, than I am about your pussy ass lack of conviction.

This post attempts to frame opposition to DEI as opposition to the literal meanings of the words rather than the policies built around them. That’s a false dilemma. One can oppose DEI initiatives that sacrifice meritocracy and individual achievement without rejecting the values of diversity, equity, and inclusion in their purest forms. A system that prioritizes individual ability, effort, and competence over group identity is the foundation of real progress and innovation.

We need to be fighting nepotism, not implementing DEI policies that replace one form of favoritism with another. Nepotism undermines meritocracy by prioritizing personal connections over competence, but DEI hiring, when based on demographic factors rather than qualifications, does the same by shifting the bias to identity. The goal should be a system that rewards individual ability, effort, and achievement—ensuring opportunities are earned, not granted based on who you know or what group you belong to. True fairness comes from eliminating favoritism altogether, not redistributing it.

It seems we are forgetting the folly of the greater good.

That being said, everything I’ve read about companies that implement DEI—aside from some questionable journalism in the gaming industry—suggests that they are actually about 27% to 30% more profitable than those that don’t.

I just don’t like this post in general; it seems like one large logical fallacy.

Has someone actually been on an interview panel, where you decide to hire someone because they're black?

(I definitely haven't. Although, I haven't been in a position that was in charge of mass hiring.)

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.

I broke out my thesaurus, so anti diversity, equity and inclusion would be conformity, discrimination and segregation. Does that sound about right?

A friend of mine used to do food runs for his office, where about 40% of the employees were black. The team voted on what they wanted, and they almost always chose Wing Stop because it was popular. Despite this, he was called into a meeting and accused of racial profiling for bringing "fried chicken" to a mostly black workplace. This experience reflects the way DEI programs often operate. They focus almost excessively on race, and identity, and thrive on controversy.

Originally, these initiatives created programs where people who came to companies did so to fix the issues and leave. Apparently that didn't work./ Instead, they’ve become permanent fixtures in workplaces, incentivized to perpetuate problems rather than solve them. With their continued presence, they encourage reporting and policing of behavior, creating a culture of fear and compliance rather than genuine inclusion.

DEI initiatives have failed. They've been in place for several years, yet we always hear constant rhetoric that racism and discrimination is becoming more of a problem? Instead, these programs have probably radicalized more people than any fringe political group. Many now define their views in opposition to their perceived opponents rather than on principles.

Ironically, DEI encourages prejudice. I’ve personally been told to create a bias in favor of minorities to combat existing bias, which only results in a new form of discrimination; it doesn't eliminate the existing biases. The approach based on "privilege" encouraged me to assume all black people are disadvantaged and all white people are privileged and implicitly biased. Guilt and shame are used as tools to enforce conformity, pressuring people to adopt a specific moral stance while condemning those who don’t. People are praised for being sanctimonious. It's become popular to call out others while simultaneously making self-righteous shows of one's own behavior.

Most people who are against DEI are against the "E".

They believe that equality is the end goal, not equity.

Equality = equal opportunity

Equity = equal outcome

As someone outside of the US, all I can see is people fighting over who has a right to a job and who doesn't, while the rich hoard wealth. DEI wouldn't be an issue if there was a safety net, maybe with UBI based on the minimum liveable wage, public housing, public education, public healthcare and government grants to start small business ventures.

I mean I certainly don’t oppose getting rid of DEI but let’s not be haste in assuming what something is called is actually what it is.

Is North Korea a Democracy? They are called the DPRK no? Democratic people’s republic?

Edit: Meant to say I do oppose getting rid of DEI. English is hard

This is also why "woke" becoming a common word was bad for both sides. Not only is it nonspecific, but it starts to mean different things to different people and diverges over time. It's easier to demonize something with a nonspecific meaning for exactly that reason.

There's a meme that says "everything I don't like is woke", and while it's funny, that's literally the process that happens when such terms become catchalls -- what they catch depends on what any individual speaker wants out of using it.

With DEI, the process has been the same. I wouldn't be surprised if there are many people who believe it's bad (because they were told that and lack critical thinking skills) and may not even know what the acronym stands for.

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.

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.

ok but american "dei" is generally insincere, and that's the problem

If only DEI was that literal. Instead, it allowed companies to discriminate based on race, but to those with left-leaning beliefs, that's okay as long as it only negatively affects white people, because they deserve it!

Somehow "diversity" doesn't seem to mean diversity of thinking, but of skin color, so you have a room full of left-wing minorities that all think the same way and have the same beliefs.

It's like when Reddit mods say that their subreddit is all about "inclusion" and "diversity", and then right below that they say Trump supporters or voters aren't allowed. The irony is crazy. I hope this platform is less of an echo-chamber but I expect downvotes because apparently you can't support open source decentralized platforms without being a leftist?

I would argue DEI nolonger means diversity equity and inclusion.

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.