Getting lost in the narratives at this point.

I’m worried that the pendulum will swing far past center and back to biases though.

I’m a bit of a leftie, but it has been really painful for the last 10 years watching my side be the one that is actively racist and proposing systematic racism & sexism with a bare face.

We should be mindful that inside each of us is a significant amount of value, and under the right circumstances that can be unlocked to be great- despite any political or physiological differences.

Each of these networks is open to everyone. You can be straight and a member of the LGBTQ+ network just fine. You can be white and join the Black network too.

The networks exist because people have (and are) the targets of persecution. It's nice to find other people who will understand what that feels like and make connections and advocate for less systematic persecution.

you do not support equality of opportunity if you do not account for systemic discrimination and disadvantage, support it, and enable people to be seen and heard. we are nowhere near this being true, and the moment that the scales shifted an iota away from white cishet men they all lost their collective minds.

also, recall or understand that DEI drives better products and features, especially in tech. skin colour, ability, age, gender, orientation all matter for developing things that society which includes those people use. that is also a form of merit. there is no objective function that can rank candidates meritoriously.

and fwiw, every employee is treated equally under DEI, just that a majority of the population arent treated like the only thing that matters.

tell me without telling me that you do not want to utilise empathy to understand fellow humans. it’s pretty sad, really, but not unexpected here.

We can't return to a state we've never been in.

Meritocracy has never existed - wealth, status, privilege and connections have always mattered. Colorblind hiring has never existed - race has always been a factor, and all employees have never been equally valuable to all others.

So let's be honest about where we're going - back to the status quo under which there was nothing in place, even in theory, to counteract the systemic effects of racial bias in hiring.

Yeah, let's "return" to that. Let's "go back" to the good old pre-racism days that we all remember that totally happened.

Please enlighten me as to when this period occurred in American history. Forget America, give me an example in any ethnically diverse society.

From my vantage point the US has never in my lifetime been remotely left of centre, they are moving from right to slightly further right.

DEI hiring is of course an easy target. It's a weak policy to tackle a complicated problem with obvious flaws and no track record of success. I think a truly left wing society would have quickly replaced it with more direct policies to hit generational poverty - EU style public education comes to mind.

It doesn't appear to be voluntarily "changing politics" but instead a mandate from the feds to change ideology or not work with them.

If the distribution doesn't look similar, why not? Is there a good excuse for being predominantly male, or predominantly white, or predominantly asian, or predominantly indian? What does that good excuse look like? I see people complain about these things all the time.

There's an assumption here that discrimination in the workplace only exists because of DEI which is a weird leap to make IMO. You could argue that DEI made the situation worse and that gets us somewhere but it's not clear to me whether that's your position.

Equity means just and fair allocation of resources and opportunities, not equality of outcomes.

Could you explain how you got to that definition? Being a non-native speaker, words do not have inherent meaning to me, and no matter how I look it up, this is not the definition I get. Instead, I get an explanation along the lines of "equality of opportunity additionally weighted against circumstances".

I understand that at a lot(?) of workplaces, sex and ethnic quotas did/do exist, and that there are folks who were hired over people who were better fit for the various positions (although my source for both of these is just accumulated and often blatantly biased internet gossip). But I don't see how these relate to the E in DEI necessarily, not any more than I see over-zealousness and malicious compliance towards an idea simply manifesting in this.

Shocked to see it on this forum of all places. /s

Do we still do 'citation needed' around here? Find me one serious person who has ever argued for equality of outcomes. Even fucking Lenin said "He who does not work shall not eat".