DOE requires plans to promote diversity from grant applicants

Remember another fact: if you cannot get a job or go to the university, that's an opportunity to start a business or go on a B2B/freelancing contract. And smart people are the ones who should do it.

Easier said than done but pressure and needs lead to innovation.

I would like to share how I've seen those policies impact people working in the DOE complex. Those policies are referred to as DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) usually, because we love our three letter acronyms. Anyway, here my experience:

  - I have seen the same woman get invited to countless hiring panels, as hiring panels need to be "diverse". Hiring panels are multi-hour endeavors and take away from her productive time, but she is afraid to say no as she feels she'd be contributing to an inequitable workplace otherwise.

  - I have seen a black woman invited to a hiring panel and when it came to ask the "DEI question" (to check for a commitment to DEI in an applicant), all of the eyes in the room were on her, her being the only "diverse" person in a room with people of four ethnicities.

  - I have seen a white man close to retirement afraid to ask questions about the diversity initiatives as he was afraid to be labelled a certain way and was "not willing to take the risk of repercussion".

  - I have seen DEI informally used to justify hires, as the hires had the right gender and/or skin color and supervisors get evaluated on their commitment to DEI on the yearly performance review.

  - I have been asked to acknowledge my "white privilege" in a DEI seminar. Attendance to those seminars is not required. At the same time there is a minimum threshold for hours spent on DEI activities on the yearly performance review.

  - I have heard of a case at another national lab where white male employees were asked to "[...] recite a series of "white privilege statements" and "male privilege statements." It concluded with its white male participants writing letters of apology to marginalized people whom they may have harmed" . After an employee protested, his protest was taken as a lack of commitment to DEI. This got picked up by right wing media and the Trump white house and was used to justify a, since retracted, executive order banning such trainings [1] [2].

  - I personally have been asked to acknowledge that "Being antiracist is different for white people than it is for people of color. For white people, being antiracist evolves with their racial identity development. They must acknowledge and understand their privilege, work to change their internalized racism, and interrupt racism when they see it. For people of color, it means recognizing how race and racism have been internalized, and whether it has been applied to other people of color." [3]

  - I have been called a "plantation owner" by a colleague because I did not support the DEI initiatives in the form that they were being taught.

  - I have seen people victimizing themselves and ascribing behavior of colleagues towards them to their own gender or skin color. I had experienced similar behavior in my career as a white male and now attribute it to things I needed to learn when dealing with people.

What I am trying to say is that whatever the intent of those policies is, this is not how they are being used in practice. They are used as a tool to exert power over people that do not share the same worldview, which in my humble opinion goes against the spirit of inclusion. For me the point of diversity and inclusion is to foster a workplace in which people feel included in conversations and their diverse opinions are being heard, with the goal to get better results out of people and not leave untapped potential on the table. I object to being ascribed attributes to based on the color of my skin. This is not how I treat people and I would prefer to not be treated that way.

I also believe that teaching people that how they are being treated is solely because of their skin color or gender leads to self-victimization, which takes away their power and agenda and leads to suboptimal outcomes for the individual.

There are a lot of assumptions being made about my person at my workplace. It is important for me to mention that I am an immigrant. I am white and I am male, but I did not grow up in this country. I constantly and repeatedly feel my lived experience being discredited. I am being shoved into a category based on my skin color by people that can not imagine that there might be differences in culture and worldview despite me being white, just so that they can feel morally superior. Please do apologize this emotional outburst after an overly long rant, but I an assure you that this is not some academic exercise to me.

[1] https://reason.com/2020/08/13/sandia-laboratory-nuclear-whit...

[2] https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2020/09/25/trump-execut...

[3] https://equityreset.lbl.gov/

Imagine if the Manhattan Project was constructed with these ridiculous requirements.

That’s not true one won’t be negatively affected. If somebody is being given an opportunity because of their skin color, that means another person is having an opportunity taken away or delayed. That’s just how quotas work.

It’s frustrating to see, especially when somebody is discriminated against for e.g. being white, but fills “other” URM boxes that aren’t visible such as sexuality or gender identity. A well-off cis-het person with worse qualifications will be given higher priority at resume review stage than a destitute queer person just because they have the ethnicity the company is looking for.