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Who cares about diversity?

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Re: Who cares about diversity?

#361

Post by scifibestfi »

jedberg wrote: post #180

So here's where I'm stuck: On the one hand I totally understand the objections to categorizing people based on things that won't affect their job performance per se -- skin color, gender, who they are attracted to, etc. But on the other hand, those people have been systematically discriminated against, well, forever. So the question is, where should the fix be applied? If the only people who have the skills to do the…

How do you explain the following data given your premise?

https://i.redd.it/9n4lf8f5hrc91.png

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic_groups_in_the_U...

Re: Who cares about diversity?

#362

Post by ScipioAfricanuz »

Hiring for social diversity (e.g race, ethnicity, gender, age) when the benefits of diversity come from cognitive diversity (micro vs macro pov, engineer working with computer scientist) is a very inefficient way of doing things. Yes it may be that someone of a different gender/race/ethnicity may have a different way of thinking, but it may also not be the case

Re: Who cares about diversity?

#363

Post by [deleted] »

cetahfh14615 wrote: post #81

Part of affirmative action (AA) involves addressing some of the issues specific to american society, I have no clue how diversity is handled outside the US but would love to hear someone else's experience To a certain degree prejudice is ingrained in the US. Not officially in laws, but in attitudes that some (not all) people hold. Not any one specific group of people either, but prejudice across different ethnic grou…

[deleted]

Re: Who cares about diversity?

#364

Post by tptacek »

cxr wrote: post #285
tptacek wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can rattle some off, I guess? Institutional DEI can be elitist, furthering the interests of well-off credentialed people at the expense of those it claims to help; performative; a way of short-circuiting real debates about values that are uncomfortable or that cut against elite interests; largely defined in terms relevant to competing groups of rich white people; a surreptitious way of laundering policy arguments t…

I've read and understood this response. I've re-read and tried to understand your original comment criticizing the article. I do not understand it, though (except that it highlights the article's tone—critically). Who is the opposition to Huemer (the author of this article)? What does animate their opposition to his case?

Why don't you try to rattle some of them off?

Re: Who cares about diversity?

#365

Post by EarlKing »

petilon wrote: post #311
EarlKing wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Diversity doesn't only mean race. Yes it does. It's an imperialist code-word for state sanctioned racism against the majority population of the proletariat in order to pit the proletariat against itself. Absolutely no one is fooled.

I don't think that's the case. Name a university where they ask for diversity essays in order to reduce the percentage of whites. The reverse is often true. For example, many universities use it to control asian population.

Ah, so it's not racist because it only discriminates against the non-majority portion of the proletariat. How very bougie of you. The fact that you don't see that as a problem tells me all I need to know.

Re: Who cares about diversity?

#366

Post by defen »

tptacek wrote: post #353
tootie wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the post boils down to him not wanting to spend any effort accommodating diversity. It's a valid opinion but I don't see how anything he wrote would sway anyone one way or the other. I think he's also wrong in the factual sense about what diversity initiatives are for. It's not actually that diversity is an automatic net win for companies because diverse workers are better. It exists specifically to combat bi…

He's hung up on the Supreme Court's rationalization of Affirmative Action, which is why he's wedged in this one embarrassingly narrow notion of what "diversity" is for. Even within that notion, he hasn't actually made a valid argument; by the logic he's using, you could evaluate a diversity program based on how many flat-earthers it admits.

> Even within that notion, he hasn't actually made a valid argument; by the logic he's using, you could evaluate a diversity program based on how many flat-earthers it admits.

This single sentence is a far better rebuttal of the post than your initial one which generated a lot of heat :)

Re: Who cares about diversity?

#367

Post by nimih »

disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #246
geekbird wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously. His initial premise is so far off base that the whole article reads like some sort of conservative straw man pretending to be intellectual discourse. Are there issue with some DEI initiatives? Yes, but they are often minor, and usually due to bureaucratic laziness, not malice against conservatives or white people. He is butt hurt that reality has a liberal bias, and wants academia to subscribe to his knee-…

If ensuring that people from marginalized backgrounds get good treatment is important in third level education, would the same arguments not apply in a much stronger fashion to first and second level? I always (not an American) thought it was weird that all the focus was on university while the research would suggest that interventions at primary school level (and before) would be wildly more effective.

> If ensuring that people from marginalized backgrounds get good treatment is important in third level education, would the same arguments not apply in a much stronger fashion to first and second level?

They do, which is why [primary] school desegregation was (and remains) an important policy goal for various progressive and racial justice movements during the previous century.

edit: It may not be clear to folks who don't live in the US, but the focus on affirmative action is generally driven by the people who oppose such initiatives. The people in favor of them, as far as I can tell, largely view them as a single piece of a larger project for justice.

Re: Who cares about diversity?

#368

Post by tptacek »

lazyeye wrote: post #308
blakesley wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, but it can also be true that there are so many things wrong with the points being made that it's hard to construct a response.

I would have thought this would make it easy to construct a response.

No, it doesn't! It famously doesn't! There's a whole discipline of creating arguments that are deliberately difficult to engage with or respond to: it's called "college debate".

Re: Who cares about diversity?

#369

Post by bumby »

gnicholas wrote: post #258
psyfi wrote: post #137

All diversity policies and measures are leading to Cobra effects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perverse_incentive#The_origina... The only policy that is actually right is not to discriminate against colors, ethnicities, political views, etc.. but putting pressure to try to hire african/asian/latinos/women/whatever is like putting pressure on people to buy products from someone just to proof they don't discriminate ag…

I agree that unintended consequences (a subset of which are the Cobra effect) are bad. Can you explain further what type of unintended consequences you are thinking of in the AA context? The main one that springs to mind is that some people will assume that employees were hired/promoted based on race/gender/etc. Are there other unintended consequences in this context?

Not the OP, but one example is that it may benefit the well-connected minorities rather than those with less opportunities.

If the goal is to raise opportunity for a historically disenfranchised group, this may not meet the end goal. For example, imagine a hiring goal is to increase the number of minority X. This may give additional leverage to someone of that group who already comes from a well-connected family and already has the opportunity to obtain the necessary credentials. It does nothing to give the opportunity to those in a less privileged group obtain those credentials in the first place. It doesn't mean it's wholly bad policy, but it can lead to the pattern of pointing to those successful outcomes as evidence that we're in a post-racial era. And so even less focus is paid to those who actually need more opportunity.

Re: Who cares about diversity?

#370

Post by evandale »

selwynii wrote: post #341
vlod wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I'm still waiting for an example where someone can actually vet people based on merit, fairness and equality without any of their own unconscious biases being a factor Blind auditions for orchestras.

And the pendulum has swung so far back I can recall reading "diversity" advocates trying to remove them in the last few years for being insufficiently equitable.

Yep. Toronto eliminated all skill-based admission requirements for specialized arts, athletics, science and math programs and turned them into a lottery process for admission because it's more equitable.

https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2022/05/24/tdsb-votes-to-re...

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