> DEI is never focused on viewpoint diversity, though, it's focused on racial, ethnic, gender, disability, etc diversity. The latter kind of diversity does not imply the former.
I strongly agree, but then, how do you measure the diversity a person will contribute before you have incorporated that person into your organization? Obviously a moving target like "viewpoint diversity" cannot be acquired in that setting, so we resort to proxy measures. I would say race and class diversity achieves that better than alternatives.
> Attributing all questioning/resistance of DEI to emotions and sensitivities is pretty condescending.
Didn't imply "all", but it is certainly a factor, just as it is a factor in literally every other concern. As well, it is certainly no worse than the bad faith, straw man arguments all across this post, so in the interest of equity let's make sure to point those out, too.
> Ideology should be nowhere near this.
Ideology is everywhere, all of the time... it's the stuff worldviews are made of. My point in the previous comment was specifically about the chronic lack of acknowledgment of that very crucial issue, and the resulting line of criticism that starts from an inappropriate place. Of course, someone who believes their viewpoint is natural, inevitable, or rational will reject this concern as irrelevant. That is the treachery of ideology -- everything you say and do is contextualized on your own personal model, so much so that it is like the stories of the fishes talking about the water. It is so all-encompassing that it cannot be distinguished until your own exposure to a critical mass of alternative viewpoints has made it clear just how few people you share a common ground with.
The backlash we see here and elsewhere against DEI is coming from those who are insulated from truly alternative viewpoints to the point that they cannot conceive of valid arguments for the other side. They judge the validity based on their brand of rationality which is of course correlated very strongly to the kinds of things they have exposed themselves to thus far.
There is no diversity in seeing a million faces and meeting a million people, if those people already think and speak with concepts derived from the same foundational framework as you. Disagreeing about how many cops to have is a policy issue; disagreeing about whether to have cops is still basically outside the Overton window, so people have not really been exposed to the substantive arguments at scale that make a conversation about that productive. The aim of DEI is to bring that conversation into the workplace, where real material consequences are felt and where everyone is together (ostensibly) working in good faith toward a common goal. It is saddening but not surprising to see the reaction to this initiative.