Unfortunately I think the problem is much deeper than something that can be fixed with a few memos. I was just Googling for examples and found this "inclusive language guide" from University of Washington [1]:
> sanity check (why it is problematic): The phrase sanity check is ableist, and unnecessarily references mental health in code bases. It denotes that people with mental illnesses are inferior, wrong, or incorrect. Using an appropriate replacement will also clarify what is intended.
There are of course endless examples. Such sentiments are so absurd on their face, and yet they abound. The first thing "actual leadership" must do is speak the truth and acknowledge that there is a problem.
Yes. But what is happening now isn't speaking the truth, it's just causing chaos for chaos sake. Forget the DEI topic itself. From a managerial point of view, does this look like good management to you? Is this leadership you would want to work for with all the abrupt decisions that keep flip flopping? Does it instill confidence in you that they actually know how to manage anything?
This does look like good management to me, but that greatly depends on one's values and objectives. If your objective is to maintain peace and order, these actions must seem quite harmful. If your objective is to root out the racism, these actions seem wholly justified. Which one of these you care about most surely determines your perception of current events.
I don't like DEI either but you're drinking the Koolaid, there is nothing "good management" about sending out a vague memo with enormous consequences on Monday and rescinding it on Wednesday.
Trump's undersecretary of state for diplomacy tweeted last fall that "competent white men must be in charge if you want things to work".
These people in power are using any good faith doubt about dei that an everyday citizen may have, and are using it to revert to White-by-default government, and tearing up the entire civil service.
If you don't know if and despise Russell Vought and Stephen Miller and their philosophy of the Constitution, you need to.
There may places where it has become discriminatory in practice by overcorrection or by demonizing certain groups.
My point is that the people you cheer on are white supremacists, and people who want to destroy the federal government while making the president completely unaccountable.
You're cheering on a serial killer being made a custodian because he's a clean freak and the halls are messy.
You think we need to start trade wars with our allies, hire white supremacists throughout government, end all DEI, cease all foreign aid, attempt to illegally abolish multiple federal agencies, gut consumer and worker protections, and institute a purge of apolitical career civil servants because you saw a stupid list of words put out by a liberal college group?
Are you serious? I'm not trying to troll. You can't separate out what is being done right now, and who is being put in charge. Trump is a package deal with no surprises. Reading your other comments I can tell we disagree but you seem to be reasonable. I simply can't see how what is happening to the US right now is worth it in order to clean up perceived problems with DEI.
University of Michigan DEI is 1100+ employees strong (!!) at a cost of over $30M/year (the equivalent of 1,800 students’ worth of tuition), and they are launching an even bigger DEI 2.0.
I am not a DJT fan at all, but stories like these are exactly what has people stark raving mad. I can’t really blame them.
While the stated goals are noble, the truth in many cases is that it is an excuse to exclude white males. And I expect downvotes, but you don’t have to look too far to see the truth.
I studied electrical and computer engineering at the University of Illinois before switching to intercultural communication, because partially, I found it a helluva lot more difficult to solve.
I think the challenge with DEI is the framing of it. If we called it intercultural competence, or intercultural teambuilding, or whatever, then it focuses on how we are a highly multicultural society in the US and that there are huge benefits to being able to connect and collaborate with people across a wide variety of cultures.
Have customers who are in a rural area? Well, sometimes it's really hard for people in the city to comprehend what rural life is like, sometimes much easier to have someone on your team from the rural area to provide that tacit knowledge. Sell beauty supplies and looking to get into the African-American market? Can be really hard for white men to know the tacit knowledge involved in managing 4c level curly hair (most white men probably have never knew there was a classification system on the level of curliness of hair).
I worked in innovation consulting for a few years. The ability to empathize and connect with people across cultures may be one of the most important skills in innovation and problem solving. So maybe it's just a framing issue.
>If we called [DEI] intercultural competence, or intercultural teambuilding, or whatever, then it focuses on how we are a highly multicultural society in the US and that there are huge benefits to being able to connect and collaborate with people across a wide variety of cultures.
And it would be a lie because DEI is not solely about race.
It might not be about race, per se, but when on the flip side the effect is to exclude people based on race or gender, it does kind of become about race, doesn’t it?
I don’t see DEI helping poor white males, for example, and there’s a lot of those in America. Even those whose families don’t own property and have never been to college.
It's interesting that you're willing to accept the anti-DEI crowd's motives on good faith, but not the DEI initiatives'
> the truth in many cases is that it is an excuse to exclude white males.
One might think that the current pushes are an excuse to exclude various minorities. Considering what DEI initiatives were born of just a few decades ago, I don't think that's an unreasonable conclusion either.
I do think there's some truth to listen to from those so opposed to the initiatives - there's some that go too far and should be reigned in - but, as others have pointed out in this thread, drinking the Kool Aid with this push isn't really going to fix anything. It's just swinging back and forth on the political pendulum. Is that really what people want?
But what’s missing is just a fundamental sense of scale. One can rightly think this is a bit ridiculous, while also understanding it’s not that big of a deal. Honestly, there are so many economic and social issues that have real importance on people’s lives, and half the country is wound up in a culture war over which words are considered polite or not.
White men feel abandoned and life expectancy for white men in the US is going down, often due to deaths of despair (suicide, overdose, etc).
Some just shrink away, others lash out with vengeance, but I do think it is a huge societal problem, especially as the demographics of the country shift and white men may no longer have the majority in a democratic society.
Many democratic societies that are ruled by a minority demographic do not tend to survive, and so I think the transition from white majority to non-white majority is actually a fundamental issue for our democracy.
I think there's a number of issues with this diagnosis, but chiefly: Trump won a second term on the back of a massive surge in non-white support. He's basically where he was in 2016 with white voters.
I'm not saying this is why Trump won, I think it has more to do with a global pandemic that hurt a LOT of people and instead of processing that pain, we blame others, and Trump is good at blaming others. But also, if you feel lots of pain and Democrats say life is great, you don't believe them because your life doesn't feel great and someone who says "Make America (you) (feel) Great Again," well, probably gets your resonance and vote.
But about why people are upset about DEI, I think that has more to do with white people, especially men, not feeling well. Unless there's a huge portion of non-white people who have such vitriol towards DEI. I think maybe some of the Asian-American population, but I don't know about other segments. But im open to being wrong on that
> sanity check (why it is problematic): The phrase sanity check is ableist, and unnecessarily references mental health in code bases. It denotes that people with mental illnesses are inferior, wrong, or incorrect. Using an appropriate replacement will also clarify what is intended.
There are of course endless examples. Such sentiments are so absurd on their face, and yet they abound. The first thing "actual leadership" must do is speak the truth and acknowledge that there is a problem.
[1] https://it.uw.edu/guides/identity-diversity-inclusion/inclus...