From Vox: How Democrats should respond to Trump’s war on DEI
What’s worse, certain diversity trainings promote ideas that are at once arguably racist and organizationally unhealthy. For instance, one of the most influential equity gurus, Tema Okun, argues in her trainings that “objectivity,” “a sense of urgency,” and thinking in binaries such as “good or bad” and “right or wrong” are defining characteristics of “white supremacy culture.” She therefore advises organizations to be on guard against these exclusionary tendencies.
The idea that there is something inherently racist about believing in a binary between “right and wrong” reads like a parody of liberal thought. And encouraging organizations to stigmatize a “sense of urgency” or “objectivity” sounds like a recipe for institutional self-sabotage. Meanwhile, Okun’s implication that standards of timeliness and impartiality are exclusionary for nonwhite people would be problematic, even if she weren’t herself a white woman.
And yet, her work has been used in trainings for school administrators in New York City, and recommended by the National Education Association, the Minnesota Public Health Association, the Los Angeles chapter of Democratic Socialists of America, and the Society of Conservation Biologists, among other progressive institutions.
Conservatives who deemed all this absurd would, unfortunately, have a point.
This is literally the point I’ve been making.
What fits under the umbrella of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion is _huge_.
It’s like railing against ‘Public Relations’, claiming it’s some sort of evil entity that denies real life dangers of products. A statement that has,, in fact, been true about the public relations of, for example, cigarette companies back in the 60. But it’s not a generally true statement.
Oh, and the article is straight-up lying about this, repeating falsehoods from conservatives.
Yes, Tema Okum does point out that thinking in binaries is bad. Thinking in binaries is incredibly reductive and not at all good approach to manage people. Conservatives lie about this point, trying to imply that this is saying that right and wrong don’t exist, which is an entirely different idea. She doesn’t say that. She merely says ‘Do not run around classifying everything you see as X or Y’, and one of the things she lists is right or wrong, a perfectly normal lesson to teach people and not controversial except among lunatics. You should not run around classifying all human behavior as good or bad.
In fact, this is _literally_ how you behave here, Jaybird: Talking about Team Good and Team Bad in sarcastic ways, trying to make the point that people have picked sides and see every thing that anyone on their side does through that lens. I disagree with a lot of the point you think you’re making there because the two sides do not behave identically at all, but the actual concept holds, and you can see how that would be a bad _management_ style to do that, right?
Or to put it in management terms: You don’t need to classify any employee’s request for accommodations as right or wrong. You can just do it if it’s possible, or not if it is not. You don’t need to make a _moral_ decision about it. Likewise, you don’t need to have an opinion if an employee’s boyfriend is ‘good for her’. Or judge their lunch. That’s not actually within your remit.
What has happened here is the same thing that has always happened: Conservatives have tracked down a single example of something that they can remove all context from and invent distortions about, and then repeat it over and over as if their distortion not only is true, but the entirety of the thing. So suddenly DEI becomes teaching ‘there is no such thing as right or wrong’, instead of the actual thing it’s teaching, which is ‘Why are you trying to judge if this disabled person ‘needs’ his wheelchair?’Report
These lies, distortions, and misinformations have gotten so bad that they’ve even infected Vox. Vox!
I went to look at Jacobin and The Nation and they don’t have any articles about the importance of a Steelmanned DEI instead of a Strawmanned one.
Are there no objective opinion writers out there?Report
Saying ‘This particular person’s slideshow that goes along with training is being misrepresented and lies are being told about what the training is actually teaching’ is not ‘steelmanning’.
The actual things that is being said in those courses is not some position being taken in a debate. It is a pretty objective fact, it is a knowable thing that can be known by observing reality. We have records of these courses being taught, we have material that explains what a _slideshow_ means.
Or we can read some extremely short text on a slideshow out of context and conclude whatever makes the slideshow sound the worst. Or, even better, we can just somehow absorb from the air that DEI training generally includes this.
Eric Levitz isn’t ‘unobjective’, whatever that is supposed to mean in an opinion writer. He’s just fallen for a particular conservative lie without looking into it much. It’s pretty easy to do, conservative lies permeate the very air that political writers breathe.
And his job at Vox is basically to write articles that lean left while nominally throwing a few bones to conservatives. As it says in his bio before the article, ‘He covers a wide range of political and policy issues with a special focus on questions that internally divide the American left and right.’. In Vox-speak, that means ‘Write like normal but say something nice about the right’.
And I now notice we’ve gotten into a discussion abouce this guy, _instead of_ his opinion piece or the specific claims about Tema Okum, which is the part of the article you quoted and it appeared you wanted to talk about.
Do you want to talk about the _other_ parts of the article now? We could do that instead. I mean, this part seems pretty important to me:
But, hey, why don’t you lead the discussion here. What part of this article are we talking about? I’ll let you choose.
Or are we having a discussion about Eric Levitz, a person I don’t think anyone particularly cares about and I’d barely heard of before?Report
I was more interested in how Vox, even Vox, was now publishing articles saying “Okay… some of this stuff has gone a little too far…” before explaining that we need to not throw out the baby with the bathwater.
Remember way back when we were discussing CRT all the time and hammering out what was and what was not Critical Race Theory?
We hammered out that everybody who was complaining about CRT was not, in fact, complaining about what CRT actually was but they were, instead, complaining about bad DEI.
Well, now here we are. Complaining about bad DEI instead of CRT.
Or not even. Nobody disagrees that bad DEI is bad! Hey, even Bouie concedes that DEI programs serve little purpose beyond corporate PR!
I agree that rolling back Civil Rights Enforcement would be bad. Restricting the recruitment of Black professionals? That would be bad!
But bad DEI? Bad DEI is one of those things that undercuts the entire thing.
Remember this?
I’m sure you do. I’m sure you also remember that the Smithsonian pulled it.
My argument is that the Smithsonian was right to pull it and a *LOT* of the DEI folks out there should have followed the lead of the Smithsonian and, had they done so, we wouldn’t be here talking about how even freakin’ Vox is talking about the importance of not throwing out the baby with the bathwater now.
Or are we having a discussion about Eric Levitz, a person I don’t think anyone particularly cares about and I’d barely heard of before?
I always see the whole “let’s talk about the author instead of what the author wrote!” thing as a kind of tell.
But, if you ask me, “Eric Levitz” sounds like a white name. Let me google… wait wait wait. Yeah, let’s not talk about the author.Report
The truth is that there is no baby, only bath water. It all must be banished. The only thing that’s sad is that it took election of a totally unfit for office asshat to do it.Report
I honestly have ignored 90% of what this site talks about as CRT because it is all so stupid it risks making people near it stupid by proxy. If that’s the conclusion you all came to, okay. I can see how that makes sense, and it’s not 100% wrong. (I mean, teaching kids stuff in school isn’t CRT, but isn’t DEI either.)
So now the thing that is being fought is ‘talking about race in stupid ways’? (To be clear, talking about the Tuskegee Airmen is talking about race in _good_ ways, right?) I could have _sworn_ the suppose problem with DEI was racial determination in hiring that discriminated against certain people. That’s the reason the Republicans want to get rid of it, right?
If we were having this discussion on this site, and were smart people, we’d be talking about motte-and-bailey. Oh, wait, we are having it here. I cannot emphasis how incredibly fishing stupid this entire decade-long conversation has been, at every level, from the national to this exact site.
Perhaps most importantly: DEI programs in the government literally exist in real life, and have actually done things in real life, they are not _assumptions_ we cobble together out of _other places_ like ‘Museum exhibit’ and ‘article in magazine’ and ‘What someone who writes on DEI has said’. These programs are not some hypothetical we are debating, where we try to prove what is ‘really DEI’.
Those programs LITERALLY EXIST AND DO THINGS. WE CAN KNOW WHAT THOSE THINGS ARE. WE DO NOT HAVE TO GUESS.
A lot of you are _really_ bad guessers.Report
CRT is an obscure legal theory. From Richard Delgado himself:
Whatever the heck it is that the Smithsonian was doing, it wasn’t that.
So now the thing that is being fought is ‘talking about race in stupid ways’?
No, I’m pretty sure that what is being fought is “quit talking about race in ways that cost us votes”.
If we were having this discussion on this site, and were smart people, we’d be talking about motte-and-bailey.
OMG! That’s part of the name of the essay I wrote way back when!
Perhaps most importantly: DEI programs in the government literally exist in real life, and have actually done things in real life, they are not _assumptions_ we cobble together out of _other places_ like ‘Museum exhibit’ and ‘article in magazine’ and ‘What someone who writes on DEI has said’. These programs are not some hypothetical we are debating, where we try to prove what is ‘really DEI’.
You mean stuff like Kendi’s thing at Boston University? Was that really DEI? Was it CRT?
Whatever it is, it’s at Howard now.Report
The Smithsonian wasn’t doing anything except making a museum exhibit. There’s not some magical name for ‘museum exhibits that say kinda silly things’.
And once again, we are in the ‘Are Democrats _actually_ talking about this in any perceivable way, or are Republicans just claiming that?’
Because it’s pretty easy to notice the stuff you are talking about is not, uh, anything Democrats are doing, or even anything the government is doing. (No, the Smithsonian is not part of the government, and isn’t controlled by the government, although the government provides so much funding for it that if the government wants to force something to happen, it can by threatening purse strings. But the government doesn’t control the leadership in any direct way, and there’s no indication that it was told to make an exhibit in that way.)
And yet this site has learned nothing, apparently.
I like how you are just pretending these are things we cannot know. I think I’ll give a very basic explainer for stuff everyone has talked for a decade without apparently knowing anything about. *proceeds to spend an hour on it*.Report
I’m not sure whether you’re in denial about the insane stuff done in the name of DEI, or are actually in favor of it. What are the three most controversial things done explicitly under a DEI banner that you’re willing to defend?Report
LOL. Why would I defend things I think are insane?
“I cannot think of any insane thing done in the name of DEI, so I’m demanding you do it!”
Since it’s sitting right there, and you seem to think I will always defend anything anyone is calling ‘DEI’, let me talk about some of the bad things in the picture above.
For the record, there are several things I disagree with. But possibly for the opposite reason others do…I don’t disagree that everything in that list varies by culture, but I would argue there are several things in that list that ‘White Culture’ does not actually believe, like ‘Intent Counts’, and that children should ‘be independent’. (That is, notable, something that has changed to the opposite end incredibly fast in this culture.)
And some of them are almost gibberish. Like, all cultures agree on ‘Be polite’, they just disagree on the rules of politeness. Likewise, I have no idea what ‘Must always “do something” about a situation’ is supposed to mean.
Frankly, I find the entire thing very simplified and trite, and parts very confusing, but I will admit I don’t know the target. Feel free to comment on the parts you disagree with.
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Perhaps more to the point, why are we talking about ‘things done in the name of DEI’ instead of ‘normal DEI behavior in corporations’ or ‘things that the government has done for DEI’.
No one can stop things ‘being done in the name of DEI’. We are not talking about ‘things done in the name of DEI’ being removed, we’re talking about actual government offices being removed.
Why don’t we try that the other direction:
I’m not sure whether you’re in denial about the insane stuff done in the name of fiscal responsibility, or are actually in favor of it. What are the three most controversial things done explicitly under a fiscal responsibility banner that you’re willing to defend?Report
I’m not asking you to defend things you think are insane. I’m asking you what things you think are defensible. Specifically, the outer bounds of what you think is defensible.
I’m pretty sure we’re not in substantive agreement here. It’s not that we both think that universities should be doing race-blind admissions and firms and government should be doing race-blind hiring, and we just disagree about whether that’s what “DEI” is.
I’m trying to figure out what the actual disagreement is.
My main objection to DEI as actually practiced is that it’s premised on the idea that black and indigenous underrepresentation (Asian and Jewish overrepresentation? MODEL MINORITY MYTH!) in cognitively demanding positions, both academic and industry, are largely attributable to things like discrimination, hostile environments, implicit bias, etc.
This premise is clearly contradicted by data on pre-market factors, chiefly high school test scores. Yes, yes, systemic racism, but that’s a whole other rant about the rock-bottom standards of inferential rigor in the slummier parts of academia.
Because the problem is misdiagnosed, and the obvious solutions (like not discriminating) have failed to yield the desired results, failure to reconsider the diagnosis has led, predictably, to more and more deranged attempts to root out more and more obscure forms of “racism,” like 8th-grade algebra, standardized tests, race-blind hiring, research on the genetics of intelligence, and more.
Maybe you support those approaches. If you don’t, that’s why I asked.Report
Well, now here we are. Complaining about bad DEI instead of CRT.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_race_theory#Academic_criticism
The criticism of CRT’s core is massively damning. After we establish that the core of CRT is nonsense I’m not sure why there’s the need to justify just tossing the entire thing out.
I’m sure there are some “good” aspects, but those can be redone under a sane ideology.Report
I read Delgado and Stefancic’s Intro to CRT, and one thing I found really striking is that it almost systematically went through and contradicted virtually every claim that was being made by CRT defenders in the media. Not intentionally; the book was written before that, but just by explaining what CRT is, it contradicted almost every talking point.
The people defending CRT were either lying or had no idea what they were talking about (and thus were lying by implying that they knew anything).Report
That Wikipedia citation is Encyclopedia Britannica, which itself has no citations. I’m all for examining stuff, but for God’s sake let’s put a little effort in.Report
ETA: not meant as a personal criticism.Report
I have read enough about string theory, and people critical of string theory, to form an opinion that string theory is nonsense and that science should probably move past it. It seems to be ‘Let us create a theory broad enough that it could describe anything, and then plug in random numbers with no justification to make it work’. I’m not making up an example, I legitimately think this.
What I don’t do is build entire conspiracy theories about kids being taught string theory (And people having to point out they are not) and then demand that string theory be removed from schools and then go on the internet and talk about how the criticism of it is very damning and that we should toss the entire thing.
Because, notable, I don’t really have a say in what theories that physics chooses to pay attention to. Or college courses choose to teach…I guess theoretically I could, at least for public colleges, but I think physics should probably figure that out itself.
Likewise, we don’t really have a say in what theories sociological and political scientists pay attention to. However…they do not actually pay attention to critical race theory, they barely pay attention to critical theory at all.
There are plenty of ‘sane ideologies’ in various race theories. You would probably reject them all, because almost all of them, looking at the data, assert that prejudice is best understood systemically, and [their theory] is how.Report
RE: String theory
Mostly agreed. Maybe someone will be able to do something with it but until we can make predictions there’s not much to be done.
DavidTC: What I don’t do is build entire conspiracy theories about kids being taught string theory… and that we should toss the entire thing.
If String theory were attempting to set policy then it would be quackery and not a thought experiment. Ergo all related policies could and should be tossed.
DavidTC: assert that prejudice is best understood systemically
Let me guess, they totally ignore culture, self destructive behavior, and proclaim all differences between races should be explained by prejudice?
Yes, I do reject that.Report
I don’t really have a say in what theories that physics chooses to pay attention to. Or college courses choose to teach…I guess theoretically I could, at least for public colleges, but I think physics should probably figure that out itself.
Likewise, we don’t really have a say in what theories sociological and political scientists pay attention to. However…they do not actually pay attention to critical race theory, they barely pay attention to critical theory at all.
A point that, in a sane world, would not need to be made.Report
A very basic explainer for stuff everyone has talked for a decade without apparently knowing anything about:
Critical Race Theory: If it is not taught, it cannot be CRT, period, as CRT is a sociological and political theory, not any form of action. Moreover, as the name suggests, it is a _critical_ theory. Critical theory is Marxism-based, as in, it critiquing (Hence the name) power structures. It’s not the same thing as postmodernism (Which is a different theory) or social justice (Yet a different theory)
And it is at this point I’ll admit that I don’t fully understand the theory or care that much about this academic sociological theories. Literally nothing about it is important unless you need to learn it for a sociology class or are a practicing sociologist writing papers.
But to be clear, just because something is taught doesn’t make it CRT either. A lot of people decided that what was being taught to kids was CRT because it pointed out racism was a systemic problem. Which is something CRT asserts, yes. And…so does everyone else. That’s pretty much agreed by all people who study the issue. Doing otherwise is sorta like trying to discribe a gas by looking at the movement of individual gas molucules and how they bounce of each other. I’m not here to argue that, just to say ‘This is generally accepted by people who study it’
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Affirmative action: This is generally used to mean quotas and reduced standards for minorities and women, a thing that really never caught on anywhere except higher education.
It hasn’t been legal in colleges since 2023, and has been on pretty shaky legal ground for corporations for a while, despite the Supreme Court explicitly saying it was legal back in 91. And, of course, ‘standards’ is incredibly nebulous when hiring, so about the only thing anyone could _maybe_ in trouble for would be explicit quotas.
Referring to this as DEI is…just misleading. I’m not saying it wouldn’t be under that if it was being done today, but it’s simply not a thing that’s done anywhere, and really wasn’t done anywhere except colleges after the 90s. (This is what Starbucks is alleged have done, and denies.)
The Federal government, notable, has _never_ done this with employees. With the sole exception, which was much debated, of reduced physical standards of women in the military. And I’m not taking a position on that, but regardless, it is a unique thing done in that one instance. So anyone who thinks that what we’re talking about WRT removing governmental DEI programs is misinformed.
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Now stuff that does fit under the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion umbrella and is done in the modern world. I’ll give them names so people can talk about them. First, job stuff, aka, ‘diversity’:
DEI-Job Applications: This is a company (And schools often do it.) being willing to spend extra time and effort to get minority and female job applicants, while not preferring them in the hiring. For example, a company might make a specific recruitment brochure that has Black people on it, and send Black recruiters to a job fair in a specific place they know there will be Black people at, with the intent of increasing the amount of Black applicants.
Now, you might be thinking ‘If they’re willing to do that for applicants, to spend extra effort to find Black people to hire, they surely are willing to hire them over equally qualified white people’, but the joke is on you (Well, really the joke is more on the Black applicants), because studies show this does not actually change the racial makeup who is hired, and is, indeed, nearly completely useless for race except you can list it as part of your company’s DEI program. yay?
But I used a minority as an example because this does work, to some level, for women. Companies that actively try to hire women do get more female applicants but _do_ start hiring more of them, although the field is still tilted towards men. My theory is because women are more likely to be closer to the right social networks to get hired and often just need to be made aware a job is possible, whereas minorities often are not. But that’s just my theory.
DEI-Changing requirements: Job requirements are, to put it bluntly, an incoherent mess. I think we all agree. They often requires degrees for no reason at all, a thing that doesn’t actually help anything. And is a requirement that can easily can harm minorities, may of which lag behind whites in education. So some companies have just…changed the requirements for everyone.
This is, frankly, something more companies should do anyway, not because of DEI, just because those requirements are stupid.
Theoretically, you can call these two things Affirmative Action too, because they were sometimes done with that name also, but in reality they’re more ‘alternatives to Affirmative Action’
DEI-Blind hiring: Actually hiring based on literal written requirements and testing, instead of dumbass social networks that require you have personal connections and hiring managers that are weird bigots. This is how the Civil Service and Post Office hires people, and almost no one else. You’d be startled at how well this alone results in the hiring of more women and minorities, it’s also as if there is some sort of systemic discrimination against them during hiring, _even when_ they have identical qualifications as white men.
I’m lying, that isn’t really called DEI. This is just actually an efficient way to get diversity, and incidentally has resulted in a government that _liars are asserting is full of incompetent DEI hires_.
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And now we’re at the stuff that isn’t to do with hiring, but is under DEI. First, equity:
DEI-Harrassment: Yeah, so it turns out that there’s a fairly small but significant portion of the population that will sexually harass others in the workplace, and it turns out that the courts frown on that. Some people will even coerce people into sex or relationships using the relative power they have in the company, and courts _really_ frown on that. I cannot stress how much they frown on that. And HR departments, since prehistoric times, have introduced training to make sure that, when this happens, the company isn’t legally liable. Sorry, I mean to make sure it doesn’t happen. Same with harassment based on race. And religion. And national origin. *keeps reading list* Wow, there a _lot_ of ways to harass a protected class. All of which will get us sued. Okay, so…let’s there’s this list of videos you are going to need to watch.
DEI-Accessibility: Yes, often this is under DEI, and sometimes it’s even called DEIA, like it is in the government. (Weird how everyone kept talking about how Trump was removing DEI programs instead of DEIA. It’s almost as if removing protections form handicapped workers would be massively unpopular. Please note the ADA does not _cover_ the executive branch.) I don’t think I have to explain what this is.
And last, and certainly least, inclusion:
DEI-Weird employee celebration: Basically, have odd celebrations of…um, non-mainstream stuff. I don’t really know how to describe this, it’s a very broad umbrella. It can cover everything from celebrating Pride to having a Hispanic Employee Day to the military showing a video about the Tuskegee Airmen and using it in training.
DEI-The same, but outwardly facing: Aka, having a booth at Pride. Having a video about the Tuskegee Airmen and using it in recruitment. Some of this overlaps with ‘DEI-Job Applications’, and weird ‘trying to get applications from minorities’ can loop back and be a thing to brag about to potential customers.
Basically, this is sorta saying ‘These sort of people belong here’.
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Now, I have sat down and explained what some of this stuff is. I’ve probably explained it badly, and I’ve probably completely forgotten something, but I have at least _vaguely_ explained it and presented actual terms that people can use to talk it.
Note that this is all extremely watered down from DEI, as as a theory, wants. For example, no one does actual equity. Everything they do in that regard is basically required by law, or at least risking lawsuits if they don’t. I’m not talking about some ideal form of DEI, I’m talking about what exists.Report
Is insistence on stuff like “LatinX” DEI?Report
Okay, I guess I need to clarify a tiny bit more: DEI is an _organizational framework_. It is a thing that exists within an organization to achieve a certain goal within that organization. It is not some amorphous blob that can exist floating in the world. And more important to this question, it isn’t an advocacy group telling _other people_ what to do.
So the question I would ask is: Who is insisting in this hypothetical? Is it some advocacy group saying it? Then no.
Is a business insisting on this terminology used within itself? Then the answer is yes. An organization defining what terms should be used is, indeed, DEI.
This example is an example of _incorrect_ DEI. But there’s plenty of example just like this that you wouldn’t disagree with, like a policy of referring to Black employees as Black instead ‘colored’. No one thinks that’s unreasonable. The problem with LatinX is it was made up by idiots.
So I guess what that actually shows is that DEI should listen to the people it is supposed to be helping…which oddly is already a principle of DEI, the one called equity, the one _no one does_ except as required by law.
Instead, often they hire idiotic consultants who charge too much for utterly useless nonsense, while ignoring actual problems they could be solving.
I fear at some point the people here have gotten the idea I like DEI in general. No. I do not. It’s a usually a combination of the bare minimum to look like you’re diverse, the literal minimum of equity required by law and that used to be done other places in the corporation, and a bunch of positive PR for being inclusive. I thought my dislike was implied in my post, but let me make that explicit.
But you do see that ‘equity required by law’? Well, as I said, some of that law doesn’t actually apply to the Federal government, so getting rid of DEIA is, for example, getting rid of accessibility for handicapped people. And Trump getting rid of it in the way he is sending a message that discrimination is fine, especially with the claim that huge chunks of the Federal government are DEI hires and do not deserve their positions, which is just a flat lie.Report
This example is an example of _incorrect_ DEI.
This is where I need stuff clarified.
It may be stuff that I have experienced (you know, with people giving short lectures on the importance of gender neutral language and whatnot and explaining, at length, that Spanish, as a language, is sexist).
But it’s incorrect DEI?
Does that mean that it’s DEI but someone dumb was using it dumbly?
Okay. Can we shorten this to “bad DEI”?
I mean, if the argument is that it’s not DEI because DEI can only come from the Southern region of France, we’re going to need a term for the thing that used to be called CRT, then was called bad DEI, and now is wandering around with only a referent but no reference.Report
DEI is, again, an organizational framework, an organization (Which can be corporate, government, or non-profit, or even things like social clubs, I guess) saying ‘We are going to do these goals and here is the team to do that’ or ‘Here is the initiative we have created to accomplish these goals’.
Like organizations frameworks, this is a thing that gets discussed outside of corporations and things that sorta look like standards are invented as ‘the norm’ and corporations tend to do them.
Pretending DEI is some abstract thing that exists independent of the implementation is like pretending Public Relations or Quality Assurance is some abstract thing that can exist independent of the implementation. Not…really. They are fields with some level of shared knowledge, yes, and consultants and all sorts of things, but the actual implementations are per-rgroup and vary wildly.
And just like PR and QA, sometimes DEI does something that is _manifestly_ not helpful and possibly even harmful to the stated goals of that entity exists within the corporation. A corporation announcing ‘We haven’t killed as many people this month as last month’ would be an example of bad PR. A corporation asking people to use a stupid term to refer to a group of people that don’t like or use it would be bad DEI. A corporation that assumes that large changes to the codebase do not require more testing is doing bad QA. Etc, etc.
I called that ‘incorrect’. A better term might be ‘incompetent’. The reason I used ‘incorrect’ is that DEI literally includes ‘listening to the people you are trying to help’, that’s what equity is, so failing to do that and screwing up because of that is not just normal incompetent, it’s almost incompetent at a meta level. It’s like if PR started sending death threats to journalists, that is a level past any normal incompetence.
If you mean ‘bad’ in the sense ‘The thing being done here under the banner of DEI in this corporation is not accomplishing the stated goals of DEI’, yes.
Or even ‘This thing that DEI experts and consultants are passing around as a recommendation is does not accomplish the stated goals of DEI’, yes. (This, incidentally, accurately describes 75% of what they do.)
Not ‘bad’ as in some sort of moral judgement.
Why do you think there’s some sort of blanket term for ‘people saying random and disconnected dumb things about a vague topic’? The closest you will find is ‘a term for people saying a very specific dumb thing’, like anti-vaxers. But that’s an very specific set of beliefs.
People saying to their employees ‘You should use this term to talk about a group that we have not bothered to check if actual members of the group use’ is completely unrelated to, for example, the image you posted talking about white culture. There’s not some shared beliefs behind them.
Or, if there is, it’s just vague anti-racism. I guess you could just call it that.Report
DEI as like PR or QA or other common, in some cases even necessary corporate practices, is a pretty good way of thinking about it. It also helps explain why a lot of bad DEI programs or practices are out there, why there are a ton of people out there selling easily replicated and scalable DEI programs that probably don’t do anything to promote actual D, E, or I.
The thing is, I think you’d be hard pressed to find a person who opposes DEI because of how it’s implemented, and not because they think D, E, or I are bad things.Report
“It may be stuff that I have experienced (you know, with people giving short lectures on the importance of gender neutral language and whatnot and explaining, at length, that Spanish, as a language, is sexist).”
To the extent you you have really been exposed to people saying *this* this exact same way, that “Spanish, at length, is sexist”, the exact way you described it, then you should have called your HR department then and there, because that statement is racist and discriminatory not only against Spanish, but against all romance languages. So either your trainer is a racist, or they (see what i did here?) is a moron. Or, third alternative, it was a trick question. You were supposed to react and defend your Romance languages speaking colleagues. If you didn’t, well you failed your DEI training.
Occam razor also proposes another explanation. That this absurd hyperbole never happened. That no one said, or implied, that Spanish is sexist. But that would not be in your character, Jaybird. You wouldn’t make up such an extreme example just for gigglesReport
It didn’t happen at work. It only happened online. Does that mean that it’s not DEI because DEI only happens at work and if you experience something similar to it online then it’s not DEI?
Do we have a word for that?
Because, for example, I have had people on the internet explain stuff like this.
Remember Spider-Man 2, the video game? There was a really funny video floating around because the Spanish-language version had Peter Parker explain the use of the term “Latine”. This wasn’t in the English translation! Just the Spanish one. (There was also a bit of a mix-up when some folks pointed out that Miles Morales didn’t have a Puerto Rican flag hanging in his home, he had a Cuban flag and it resulted in a bunch of people alternating between explaining that the flags are pretty close and other people explaining that Puerto Ricans are the types to have a couple dozen things around the house with Puerto Rican flags on them (coffee cups, refrigerator magnets, denim jacket pins, flags) and so the types to be flying Puerto Rican flags would know what a Puerto Rican flag looked like… but everybody agreed that the devs probably meant well).
So is there a term for this sort of Derpily Earnest Inclusion?Report
So if it didn’t happen at work, or a similar environment, where you are forced to sit at a LatinX explanation, have to at least outwardly express you understood it, and are expected, under penalty of a visit to HR or equivalent, to refer to your Romance language colleagues as your LatinX colleagues, then no, this is not an example of corporate DEI running amok.
It is probably an example that you hang out with very ignorant and insensitive friends, or acquaintances.. So, in the name of Romance language speakers, I empower you, next time, to tell your friends that calling Romance languages *sexist* is (a) deeply ignorant of how Romance languages (and many others, more languages than not are gendered) work; and (b) quite offensive. If they are so incensed about gendered nouns, what about TacXs (male), or PizzX (female). Why aren’t they fighting for Mexican Restaurants (another male word, perhaps we should say Restauranxs) to offer TacXs de PuercX. Why ignore the contribution, or sacrifice, of female pigs? Whay are we only celebrating the male pigs? It’s pure chauvinism and sexism.
You like, Jaybird, to bring LatinX a lot to these discussions, and many commenters, including me, have pushed back on you. LatinX is not a real thing in the corporate world, or almost anywhere outside of it. To the extent you keep bringing your game night friends as examples of corporate or government overlords, it’s borderline trolling, now that we know Elon Musk is not a part of it.
So please find something real on DEI that can be a real problem about which we can have a serious discussion, or not. But please do not talk more about LatinX or other similar faff.
You’ve put, Jaybird, a lot of effort and love in tis site through the years, and i am grateful for that. Don’t burn and crash it for lulsReport
this is not an example of corporate DEI running amok
I don’t know that I’ve ever used the term “corporate DEI”. In these comments, I’ve only said “DEI”.
Now you may say “well, if nobody *AT WORK* has said that you have to put up with it, then it’s not corporate DEI” and I would agree with that.
LatinX is not a real thing in the corporate world, or almost anywhere outside of it.
You know that this term showed up in a number of places on the White House website until the transition team changed the webpage, right? And there was a serious push by “the media” to get the terms to change. Seriously.
It was a thing:
It was about creation of a *SAFE* and *INCLUSIVE* environment.
So please find something real on DEI that can be a real problem about which we can have a serious discussion, or not. But please do not talk more about LatinX or other similar faff.
Okay. Given that, from my point of view, one of the big problems was that DEI means “similar faff” as often, if not more often, than the corporate stuff where people sit through some powerpoint slides before signing the paper, we’re going to need a term for the similar faff because the similar faff is, in my view, the problem.
The problem is *NOT* the steelmanned version of what DEI promised to help with in a vacuum. The problem *IS* the stuff that we still don’t seem to have a term for, now that we’ve hammered out that CRT is an obscure academic theory and DEI refers solely to HR at work.
The stuff DavidTC calls “incorrect DEI” and the stuff you call “similar faff”.
That stuff.
What is the name for that stuff?Report
The name for it is DEI.Report
I don’t mind calling it something else if enough people say “that’s not *REALLY* DEI!”
I am just going to need them to tell me what to call it because if the phenomenon is not allowed to have an official name, then I’m going to feel like there’s a deliberate game being played and language policing is one of the moves.
I don’t mind ceding the right to allow/disallow the naming of the phenomenon to J_A or DavidTC.
But if they only say “you can’t call it that!” without giving me a name?
I’d say that they’re abdicating their responsibilities and, at that point, I’d have to reluctantly take the responsibility that they have abdicated.Report
Why, it’s almost as if what other people saying things that people think are wrong is not a thing that generally has a term. And the only reason it _needs_ a term is so that politicians can rail against it.
It’s hilarious how you like to an article talking about how much a new term is catching on or not among the people it describes as ‘a push’.
Either it catches on or not. Language changes, and sometimes it changes deliberately, and sometimes more organically. And to the point, almost all terms that minority groups use to describe themselves are very deliberate terms.
For example, did you know the reason that L is first in LGBT is in recognition of the hospice work that a lot of lesbians did for dying gay men during the AIDS crisis. The term, when gay right started, was just ‘gay and lesbian’, and when they added more letters, they very deliberately put lesbians first, to thank them.
Latino people will eventually either accept or reject the term Latinx.
Are you annoyed because they are not asking _you_ for permission?
Or have you imagined that someone is attacking you because you’re not personally used it?
Okay. Given that, from my point of view, one of the big problems was that DEI means “similar faff” as often, if not more often, than the corporate stuff where people sit through some powerpoint slides before signing the paper, we’re going to need a term for the similar faff because the similar faff is, in my view, the problem.
Yes, we understand that you think ‘the problem’ is the thing that does not impact anyone in any manner whatsoever.
The question is why you think that’s the problem.Report
Latino people will eventually either accept or reject the term Latinx.
Oh, is this something that hasn’t happened yet?
I’ll keep my eyes and ears open!
Or have you imagined that someone is attacking you because you’re not personally used it?
Oh, I’m not feeling particularly attacked. Though I’d like to make a distinction for what I am feeling: I am feeling *POLICED*.
Yes, we understand that you think ‘the problem’ is the thing that does not impact anyone in any manner whatsoever.
The question is why you think that’s the problem.
For one thing, I believe that the similar faff is responsible for Trump 47.
I can show you demographic changes in voting groups, if you’d like.Report
Why?
You don’t really need to pay attention here, Jaybird. Eventually, enough people will be using whatever new term enough that it will seem normal, and you’ll just start using it.
You might have noticed, or not, that African-American has sorta fallout of use in the past decade, and that’s because a few people, specifically journalists, have started making the distinction of African-American being more an ethnic group that is ‘descendants of US slaves’, and Black for the race, and people are almost always talking about the race. (We can, perhaps, blame this on Obama? Who was the second but not the first.)
And this is so unimportant to the world at large that most people haven’t noticed. Everyone started saying Black, so they said Black even if they used to say African-American.
I think you’ve confused what is happening here with Latinx with slurs or think a new term makes the old one immediately offensive or something. That’s not how it works.
Because you…are not supposed to use Latino? Who has told you that? In what context are you using that term and people are disapproving? Or, alternately, what people with power have made it clear that using Latino is bad and that people who use it should be criticized for?
Or is perhaps what is happening not actual policing, but instead you being told you are being policed by groups that want you think people are trying to police your speech? Have ever experienced any negative consequences for using the word ‘Latino’?
I haven’t, and I’m pretty sure I hang around the sort of people who care about that a _lot_ more than the people around you. I have seen people’s language policed, including using gendered terms. Just not that one.
What was the problem that the Na.zis, in 1930s German, were put in power to fix?
Just because some ‘problem’ gets people into office does not make it an actual problem. Sometimes it’s a lie, and by lie I include ‘taking singular examples of things that might offend people, of the sort that happen all the time in all sorts of context, and blowing them out of proportion’. Aka, listing the Jewish people who own banks.
Or that trans people get healthcare in prison, like literally everyone else.
And sometimes I just mean straight up lie, because that happens just as much. Right now large sections of the Federal government are being called ‘DEI hires’ with literally no evidence that their hiring had anything to do with DEI, and in fact the government does not and never has never considered race in hiring decisions.
There is a political party in this country that will make up gibberish about anything, and asserting the other party should agree and ‘back off’ not just cedes literally the entire argument to them, but it means they will pick some new thing to lie about.
The only way to solve that is to have a media that calls out these lies, and for people like you to stop falling for these lies. Which you are still doing!Report
You don’t really need to pay attention here, Jaybird. Eventually, enough people will be using whatever new term enough that it will seem normal, and you’ll just start using it.
Like LatinX? Lemme tell ya, I seem to be the only person still carrying that particular torch. Perhaps its time for me to put it down.
I think you’ve confused what is happening here with Latinx with slurs or think a new term makes the old one immediately offensive or something. That’s not how it works.
From what I understand with LatinX, the *NEW* term is offensive. Like, People of Spanish Descent seem to get pissed off by it a hell of a lot more than they smile and nod and say “FINALLY! A change to the language for me!”
I can find you someone who finds it personally offensive, if you want.
Who has told you that? In what context are you using that term and people are disapproving? Or, alternately, what people with power have made it clear that using Latino is bad and that people who use it should be criticized for?
Academic types, mostly. Though there was a push to adopt it by various colleges. It usually came with a small description of the form “Used as a gender-neutral form of Latino/Latina”.
This was happening at around the same time that the importance of gender-neutral terms was being pushed.
Remember “snickerdoodles”? Golly, I sure do!
I kinda see it as adjacent to neopronouns. It strikes me as a power play of sorts.
The only way to solve that is to have a media that calls out these lies, and for people like you to stop falling for these lies. Which you are still doing!
I dunno. I still see a lot of the pivot between “THAT’S NOT HAPPENING!” and “But that’s good, though”.
So it’s a “my lyin’ eyes” problem.Report
“Annoyed by a term” and “offensive” are not the same thing.
I am annoyed when people confused couldn’t care less with could care less.
And you operate in a place where academic types have some sort of control over your life? Or, at minimum, have some sort of influence over your friends and social situation?
Being pushed by _whom_? With _what_ repercussions to people who did not do them?
We had a discussion here, Jaybird, about whether or not a term, I thing it was ‘dude’, was gendered. You can probably pull it up. What were the repercussions for the people who did not agree that it was?
You are using language of oppression like ‘policed’ for things that absolutely, in no manner at all, harm you. You are upset when people with absolutely no power at all over you speak, not even specifically to you, but to the world at large and say ‘This is what people should do’.
And I think you should ask yourself when it’s only when _specific things_ are talked about like that you get upset? Do you get upset when some random fire-and-brimstone preacher insists that people living together should be married?
Why is this different?
Ah, yes, the vibes-based argument.
Yes, Jaybird, sometimes the examples used are real things. For example, sometime a bank is owned by a Jewish person.
That does not actually mean the version of events being built is important or relevant.
You have brought up two _examples of things in video games that literally could not have impacted you_ in this very discussion. And I mean could not have impacted you in even the most indirect way, it wasn’t even something tell you what to do or disapproving of you or anything. One of them was a possibly inept discussion of something in a language of a game you do not play on a topic you really don’t have a reason to have formed an opinion on at all, and the other was an error.
Your complaints are f*cking _wet tissue paper_, and part of a completely manufactured backlash against…well, not being racist, I guess.Report
It’s weird how you’ve included two different things that are not related, and asked if there is a term for it.
The term for ‘People saying different things in different language version of a game’ is just called localization, which often includes not just direct language translation, but altering things to be more relevant to the target audience, usually stuff that is not particularly plot-relevant.
As for the second, that is commonly called a mistake, which is defined as an error or fault resulting from defective judgment, deficient knowledge, or carelessness. It was probably the last two, as it seems unlikely to have been done on purpose.
I’m glad we can answer these questions for you.Report
The term for ‘People saying different things in different language version of a game’ is just called localization, which often includes not just direct language translation, but altering things to be more relevant to the target audience, usually stuff that is not particularly plot-relevant.
More relevant to the target audience?
Would you mind if I gave you links to said target audience responding to having been localized?
As for the second, that is commonly called a mistake, which is defined as an error or fault resulting from defective judgment, deficient knowledge, or carelessness. It was probably the last two, as it seems unlikely to have been done on purpose.
There’s something else, though. The inclination to use this deficient knowledge mixed with carelessness to send an earnest message.
You know the thing that they were going for? And that they went for despite having deficient knowledge and being filled with carelessness that they didn’t notice?
That thing.Report
A discussion about the word Latine is, indeed, more relevant to Spanish speakers than English speakers, so, yes, that would be ‘more relevant’. I have no idea if that was a particularly _reasonable_ thing to insert, I have no idea how dialogue in Spider-Man 2 normally goes and if that was a particularly clunky thing to bring up or not.
Most importantly, I don’t care. And I bet you cannot explain why you care.
So, I’m going to pause the fact you’re incorrect in this specific example and address what you are trying to talk about:
What you are referring to is called diversity-washing. Or inclusion-washing. There’s a similar concept as queer-washing. It’s when you make absolutely token efforts towards appearing inclusive, while changing basically nothing and not even doing any real research.
The normal reaction would be to laugh and say ‘You are fooling no one’.
The political right’s reaction is, instead ‘How dare someone even _pretend_ to be inclusive!’. They’re the same people who think ‘virtue signaling’ (Which this could be a subset of) is bad because people shouldn’t have virtue, not the fact the virtue is false.
Inclusion is good. Faking inclusion is…not good. That’s not the same as bad, and in fact it’s arguable better than nothing at all, but it’s not very good.
—
That said, you are incorrect here: Miles Morales is half-Puerto Rican. Miles’ heritage is very relevant to the character. He often speaks Spanish. Him having a flag on the wall is entirely in character, and probably straight from the comics, I don’t know. But it certainly is something he could have on the wall. So Sony didn’t just ‘decide’ to put the Puerto Rican flag on the wall. They made a licensed game that has a character that would logically have such a flag on the wall and (lazily tried to) put it in the background.
Actually, back up. What ‘message’ do you think the Puerto Rican flag is sending anyway? It is art, and I would agree that it does have a message beyond the actual object it is, a layer beyond the text, but that message is clearly ‘This is someone who is proud of being part Puerto Rican, and that is important to him’.
That’s a character trait, not a message of ‘inclusion’.
Are you objecting perhaps to the inclusion of a half-Puerto Rican in the game _at all_?Report
Most importantly, I don’t care. And I bet you cannot explain why you care.
If you don’t care, why defend it? I care because it feels like a power play, one similar to those I grew up with in a fairly cloistered religious community.
Oh, if you want to hear from a Latino about why it ticks him off, you can watch this.
But if you don’t care, well… you don’t have to.
That said, you are incorrect here: Miles Morales is half-Puerto Rican. Miles’ heritage is very relevant to the character. He often speaks Spanish. Him having a flag on the wall is entirely in character, and probably straight from the comics, I don’t know. But it certainly is something he could have on the wall. So Sony didn’t just ‘decide’ to put the Puerto Rican flag on the wall. They made a licensed game that has a character that would logically have such a flag on the wall and (lazily tried to) put it in the background.
But they didn’t put a Puerto Rican flag on the wall. They put a Cuban flag on the wall.
If they had only put a Puerto Rican flag on the wall, we could have conversations about the Puerto Ricans that we know personally who have Puerto Rican flag coffee cups, Puerto Rican flag mousepads, Puerto Rican flag dangly things hanging from the rear view mirror in their car…
But you know what they don’t do? They don’t hang Cuban flags.
I don’t have a problem with them putting a Puerto Rican flag in the game.
When it comes to putting a Cuban flag in there? I’m mostly amused by the clumsiness of the devs mixed with some vague “you’d think that the inclusivity people would be appalled instead of some variant of AT LEAST THEY TRIED!!!”Report
It’s like the thing about the Barbie movie having the Nine Dash Line…but doing it wrong.Report
I didn’t defend it. I defended my use of the term ‘localization’ to mean ‘changing a conversation to something that the localizer thought was more relevant’, a thing that is, indeed, called localization. As opposed to ‘translation’, which would not do that.
This incidentally was an incredibly weird thing for you to take issue with.
I have no idea what the hell you are talking about ‘a power play’.
What the f*ck are you talking about?
The idea that the ‘inclusivity people’ said ‘At least they tried’ is hilariously wrong. You did notice me talking explicitly how there’s a term for ‘inclusion-washing’, which you didn’t know, because, uh, your people…I guess they’re anti-inclusion by default…the anti-inclusion people literally do not care about any of this except to attack people over.
Whereas the ‘inclusion people’ have been calling out purely performative crap, where companies talk up inclusivity, do the vaguest handwave towards, but then are not actually inclusive. (Which, again, this wasn’t. This was a studio with a license, they did not decide anything about Miles, they didn’t make him Puerto Rican or decide his personality to score points. But I am not saying ‘That cannot happen’, I am saying ‘This is not that’.)
You know, if we were actually having a discussion about _that_, how about talking about how Target was a _sponsor of various Prides_ and then immediately folded to Trump’s executive orders about DEI and was kicked out of quite a lot of Pride sponsorships.
And a lot of queer people who have been pointing out just how much queer-washing there has been going over the years, where companies do extremely safe-looking things to promote gay rights and then fold immediately with the slightest pushback, were proven right. In fact, it’s the second time Target’s done it, when Trump’s blacksuits attacked Pride displays in 2023 and Target removed them immediately, and there was discussion of kicking them out _then_ and everyone tried to justify it with ‘Oh, they have to do that to keep their employees safe’.
But we aren’t actually talking about how a lot of this is purely performative, we’re talking about your grievance that ‘Sometimes people screw up inclusion and that means inclusion is bad!’ Mostly because the fact that so much of it is performative really would undercut the theme you’re trying to push.Report