Supporting DEI

[livingdeb]

We can resist some of the craziness going on right now by voting with our dollars, the only language big business understands.

What's DEI?

DEI stands for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. It includes things that have also been called fairness, equal rights, and civil rights. Here is a tiny list of some examples of how to make things more diverse, equitable, and inclusive:

* equal pay for equal work
* ramps
* floating holidays
* changing stations in men's rooms
* lefty scissors
* subtitles and captions
* audiobooks
* step stools
* glasses and hearing aids
* shampoo for all hair types

It turns out that many of these accommodations are handy for all kinds of people, not just those who really need them.

But there has been a backlash from people who, well, I hope it's an exaggeration to say that they would rather live in a world where they get to have slaves and beat up their wives and roll people in wheelchairs off cliffs for fun.

The boycott

In the face of the current US president's action to end government DEI, many companies have also been rolling back their DEI programs.

In response, "Dr. Jamal Bryant, the influential pastor of New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in metro Atlanta, is leading a 40-day economic fast--or boycott--of Target in direct response to the retailer's decision to phase out its DE&I initiatives" including a pledge of $2 billion in investments toward Black-owned businesses. "And the impact of the boycott is already felt. Since Black consumers began boycotting Target, the company's stock has dropped by $11." (See The Villager's 2/14/25 issue.)

The National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA), representing the Black Press of America, is urging people to educate themselves and spend accordingly, focusing on Black businesses when possible.

The Latino Freeze movement says that so long as they freeze NIH, DEI, immigration, we freeze spending. They have lists of companies that are and are not committed to DEI and also good advice on doing your own research.

What I'm Doing

I'm not a single-issue consumer. I mean, Dollar Tree is on Latino Freeze's list of committed businesses, but they still treat their employees like garbage. Still, it feels good to see that my main two grocery stores, HEB and Trader Joe's, are on the committed side of their list.

Businesses I use on the other side include Home Depot, Ace Hardware (Breed and Co.), Google, Meta (Facebook and Instagram), and Toyota.

Target - I've heard from friends that Target has also had far fewer of the fun LGBTQ items than in the past. So I'm considering switching to People's Pharmacy, Sprouts, and/or Wheatsville Food Coop for toiletries and writing Target a letter describing my disappointment in their recent turnaround. I already buy most of my clothes at thrift shops, but I'll be looking for new places to get socks and undies.

Google - This is another company that I used to love but that has been disappointing me more and more. Now they make me sit around and wait while they put together an AI answer to my search request. I'm happier when I remember to add "-ai" to the end of my search requests, but I'm thinking of trying some other search engines. Duck Duck Go seems the obvious choice. If I don't like that, maybe Yahoo. Recommendations appreciated!

Other - In general, I'm trying to buy more things used, direct from the source, or from coops or B-corps. For example, I almost never use Amazon anymore--another company I used to love that has become disappointing. I now look for books I want from Half Price (also evil in its own ways) and Powell's in Seattle. I did some research before buying my last pair of shoes and went with REI. I bought the board game Finspan direct from Stonemeier Games, though I still like Tanuki Games for other purchases. Of course it's impossible to be fully informed and it's time consuming, so I'm sure some of my decisions are worse, but I feel that overall, things are better.

I'm also writing a lot of letters. I don't write on everything important. But I do check my emails for petitions (many of which are now actually e-mails which you can change the wording on--and I do) and occasionally write letters out of the blue. Phone calls are more effective, but ugh. I also went to the President's Day protest since I do live in one of the 50 state capitols.

Letter-writing strategies

Sometimes I get to have fun with my letters like the time I said how it was hard to think of a worse choice to lead some important health department, but "fortunately Thanos is fictional."

And my basic mantra is that we can do better. And as public servants, we rely on them to...

I like to promise my Republican Senators that if Trump decides to run an opponent in the next primary because they are being too decent, I promise I will vote in the Republican primary (you don't have to belong to a party to vote in a primary in Texas, but you are allowed to vote only in one) so that I can vote for him. Last time Trump endorsed opponents, most of them won, so I understand the fear. But someone at the protest said that although the Trump-endorsed opponents tend to win the primaries, they also tend to be more likely to lose the general election. Still, I could never hope that someone even scummier than my reps would win even a primary.

And when I'm in a position to respond in person to people who are spouting craziness, I've decided that rather than call them idiots or whatever, I will just point out that they've been lied to. This puts us in the same boat--us against the liars, rather than dividing us.

And then whenever I find myself unable to think of anything more useful to say than "I hate you so much!" or "What is wrong with you?" I know it's time for a break.

Comments

What DEI is

[mackthemike]

I think you are mistaken about what DEI is. While I'm certain that most people who support DEI also support all the items on your list, those things are also supported by most people who oppose DEI. What separates DEI supporters from opponents is that DEI entails support for active discrimination against individuals based on broad demographic categories such as race, sex, sexual orientation, weight, disability status, and others. DEI also involves requiring rigid conformity to DEI ideology. This conformity is often enforced by means of character assassination, smears, and ostracization (sometimes referred to as "cancel culture").

I've never encountered any criticism of DEI from anyone who would prefer to "live in a world where they get to have slaves and beat up their wives and roll people in wheelchairs off cliffs for fun," I suspect people have presented you with a strawman image of what DEI opponents believe. I think you should take opposition to DEI seriously enough to engage with the actual ideas rather than strawmen. To this end I recommend the following books:

• "Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America" by John McWhorter


• "The Identity Trap: A Story of Ideas and Power in Our Time" by Yascha Mounk


• "The New Puritans: How the Religion of Social Justice Captured the Western World" by Andrew Doyle


• "The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity" by Douglas Murray


• "Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything About Race, Gender, and Identity - and Why This Harms Everybody" by Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay

None of these authors are conservatives, by the way. Nor are they all straight white men. Doyle and Murray are gay, Pluckrose is a Marxist, McWhorter is African American.

In addition to the books above, you could also ask an opponent of DEI what he or she thinks. I'd be happy to answer any questions you have.

Re: What DEI is

[indigo_rose99]

You said "What separates DEI supporters from opponents is that DEI entails support for active discrimination against individuals based on broad demographic categories such as race, sex, sexual orientation, weight, disability status, and others. DEI also involves requiring rigid conformity to DEI ideology. This conformity is often enforced by means of character assassination, smears, and ostracization (sometimes referred to as "cancel culture")."

I disagree. I have not read any of the books you mention. I have attended required company DEI training year after year. DEI is against discrimination aimed at all the groups you mention. The training I get is about being kind, thinking through situations from all perspectives (not just mine). Which is not always easy or simple to do. DEI is about including people in groups and discussions of all the flavors you mention. The massive amount of work I do to ensure my company recordings have careful and correct closed captioning is one of the DEI-related pushes. It helps people who have hearing problems, but also people who better learn from visual cues. I think living_deb has the better grasp of DEI as I have seen it discussed and written about.

Re: What DEI is

[mackthemike]

I'd be careful of drawing broad conclusions from a sample size of one.

Specifically regarding the boycott of Target, the fact that your company labels its use of closed captioning as "DEI" and the fact that Target has ended a program that they labeled as "DEI", do not together imply that Target opposes the use of closed captioning. The same thing goes for all the items on Debbie's list. I've seen no evidence that Target opposes left-handed scissors, audiobooks, ramps, floating holidays, or anything else Debbie lists (all of which I support). I'm open to changing my mind if evidence to that effect comes out.

By the same reasoning, I wouldn't conclude that a company that has a DEI program is necessarily engaging in invidious discrimination based on demographic categories. I don't support any boycott without more granular, specific, and credible information.

I would say, however, that a company's use of DEI language requires one to update one's Bayesian priors regarding that company. A company that expresses a commitment to DEI is more likely to be discriminatory. That is, after all what "diversity", and "equity" mean in this context.

The use of "diversity" in this sense, dates from a 1978 Supreme Court case called Regents of the University of California v. Bakke which held that discrimination on the basis of race was legal in university admissions if the purpose was diversity. Since that time the term 'diversity' has been used as a code for race discrimination.

That unjust decision was finally overturned (or at least heavily constrained) in 2023 in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard. The Court found that diversity was being used to heavily discriminate against Asians and, to a lesser extent, whites.

'Equity' means equal outcomes among demographic groups and is often used as a justification for outright discrimination.

A company that advocates for "diversity" and "equity" is signaling its willingness to discriminate.

Re: What DEI is

[livingdeb]

The kind of discrimination you're talking about strikes me as extremely minimal. Now some people who could barely get into the college of their choice won't make it in order that someone from an underrepresented group who could almost have made it can get in. That excluded person can generally get into another college and still do well in life. (I might be wrong about Asians--I think maybe a pretty high percentage of them might get excluded from certain universities.)

But back to the original topic, it certainly before boycotting or increasing support for a business based on its claims to have DEI policies or to be eliminating DEI policies, it makes sense to figure out what that actually means for them. That's another reason why it's good to write and explain why you're boycotting, so they can have the opportunity to tell their side of the story.

Re: What DEI is

[mackthemike]

Sometimes it's not that minimal. Take a look at this thread on twitter on race discrimination at Harvard.

https://x.com/TheRabbitHole84/status/1913612301091082436


An Asian in the top top (10th) decile had less chance to get into Harvard than an African American in the 4th decile.

Re: What DEI is

[livingdeb]

An Asian *applicant* does have a much harder time getting into Harvard than a Black applicant. Which I knew. (I don't just trust some guy I never heard of on X, but other sources seem to agree with the overall results, so I can believe this more decile-separated information.) But this is affirmative action, not DEI.

It made me wonder about who applies. Per https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cge/racial-ethnic-enrollment, in public schools there are about half as many Hispanics as [non-Hispanic?] Whites, half as many Blacks as Hispanics, and less than half as many Asians as Blacks. So for every 8 Whites, approximately: 4 Hispanics, 2 Blacks, and 1 Asian.

But per https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2018/10/19/acceptance-rates-by-race/, among Harvard applicants, there are "4,910 Asian-American, 1,938 African-American, 2,082 Hispanic-American, and 8,685 white students." So for every 8 Whites, approximately: only 2 Hispanics, still 2 Blacks, and 5 Asians.

I'm not sure what I want to conclude from that.

I'm still in the middle of The Identity Trap. Definitely some scary stuff in there, that's DEI and not affirmative action.

Re: What DEI is

[mackthemike]

DEI is the name we now give for the ideological justification for racially discriminatory affirmative action.

The reason diversity became associated with AA was a 1978 Supreme Court case called Regents of the University of California v. Bakke. In that case, California was discriminating against whites and in favor of blacks in college admissions in order to compensate for the general history of anti-black discrimination in the U.S. and in order to achieve social equality of condition across racial lines. Bakke was a student denied admission. He sued and won. A 5-member majority of the court found that race discrimination intended to achieve social equality or compensate for past discrimination by other institutions violated the Civil Rights Act. Four other justices thought California's reasons were OK. (The decision is complicated, 6 separate justices wrote opinions, so I'm simplifying somewhat) However, one justice, Chief Justice Powell, said that race discrimination would be legal if implemented in order to gain the educational benefits for all the students that a diverse student body would, he averred, provide.

This provided a road map to other schools that wanted to discriminate on the basis of race. All they had to do was claim that their race discrimination was aimed at diversity. This is where the "D" in "DEI" really got started. Ever since, colleges that use racially discriminatory affirmative action have invoked "diversity."

Later, sometime in the early 21st Century, "Diversity" got packaged with "Equity, and Inclusion." That's why one can't draw a sharp distinction between AA on the one hand, and DEI on the other. They've been linked from the beginning.

Re: What DEI is

[mackthemike]

The reason to use decile analysis is to take out any effects from the rates at which students of different races apply to Harvard. One wouldn't want to just compare the average black admission rate to the average Asian admission rate because there might be some socio-economic factor that causes the highly qualified members of each group to apply at different rates. Binning all the applicants into deciles lets you compare similarly qualified applicants to each other.

Re: What DEI is

[livingdeb]

Thanks for your detailed and caring response. I have looked up the books you listed. Most are in Austin Public Library; all have their blurbs on Goodreads.

Woke Racism - They don't like the idea that being white automatically gives you privilege. I do think the word 'privilege' is problematic because it implies the kind of unfairness that Nicolas Cage was trying to sidestep when he changed his name from Coppola. And of course most white people are not automatically judged as superior based on their race. But most of the "privileges" people are talking about in this context are things I think everyone should have, like the privilege of not being negatively pre-judged based on perceived race or gender. I will admit that there are some privileges between these two extremes, like just because your ancestors were legally allowed to buy real estate, that does not help those whose ancestors nevertheless did not do so.

The book also doesn't like the idea that being Black makes you a victim. Based on what I've heard about microaggressions, it certainly sounds like being Black makes you a victim.

Woke Racism - Says antiracism has become an extremist religious idea that's illogical and unreachable and has led to policies that still disproportionately harm Black communities. This makes no sense to me, so I should probably check out that book.

Identity Trap - Says Black pride, gay pride, etc. has led to an identity trap that 'vilifies mutual influence as cultural appropriation.' I've only seen Halloween costumes and Black hairstyles labeled as cultural appropriation, a very small subset of what is out there.

Also says it 'denies that members of different groups can truly understand one another.' That's much broader than what I've heard, which is that we can't really understand what it's like to be Black or female, not that we can't understand each other at all. And there are still plenty of books--and memes--trying to help us understand being black, female, etc., anyway.

Also argues that this leads to deeply counterproductive results, which I still don't understand, unless they're talking about how it's triggering to white people.

New Puritans - This is also about identity politics (and is not at the library).

Madness of Crowds - I think this is about how we should quit complaining when things are better than ever for minorities. But they still aren't equal, so why shouldn't we still want improvements? I think (hope) this book's summary does not do it justice.

Cynical Theories - The description does not match anything I've seen. Everything seems so black-and-white. Like it asks whether I've been told that being obese is healthy. I have not. I've been told that some obese people are physically fit, some are strong, some have good blood pressure, etc. I've also been told their bodies still let them do lots of cool things. And that obese people should be allowed to wear clothes that fit and are comfortable and that they should be allowed to go out in public. And that doctors should listen to them instead of just repeating "lose weight and that will fix everything." Because obese people also have problems not caused or exacerbated by obesity, and because if they have hypothyroidism, it may actually be impossible for them to lose weight without treatment.

I will say that I'm saddened when we find out that yet another beloved creator is a self-important sexual predator. But a) I still think we should support the things they do that are good rather than shutting down all support. And b) I think there should be a path to forgiveness, a way to work toward acceptance. (Obviously not via fake apologies.)

I'm off to the library soon and one of those books is in my local branch, so I'll be checking that out.

Re: What DEI is

[livingdeb]

I've had The Identity Trap checked out so long that the library is presuming it lost. The book did give examples of horrors and I decided I should read it at home where I could write down the examples, but then I never did.

I vaguely remember the story about a kid getting permission from his Native American teacher to dress as a Native American for some event, and they both agreed it would be a good idea to increase knowledge, but then the kid got in trouble (expelled, I think). Sickening.

Then the stories of faculty getting fired or ostracized when what they are doing is interpreted in the worst possible way. Like using the n-word in a question where they were quoting another person. Or criticizing things that need criticizing but happen to involve minorities (like how some people have a problem with criticizing our ally Israel for doing horrors). You're not anti-semitic for protesting Israeli horrors. You're not a traitor for criticizing our president's horrors.

And similarly, I heard of a situation from a friend working in a woman-owned business. This company got several contracts based on being a woman-owned business, so when one of the female managers retired, they had to replace her with another woman in order to keep their woman-owned-business status. So they ended up promoting someone who was good at her job but who made a very mediocre manager. Gross. (I'm just assuming it would have been possible for them to get someone better and that it was possible to know she wouldn't have made a good manager ahead of time, but even if not, I'm sure this sort of thing happens way too often.)

So I do see that there are real problems (not just stupid, made-up problems) connected with the push for DEI. And that just knowing something is DEI or woman-owned or whatever isn't enough to know what's really going on. I will try harder to be sure to support decent actions regardless of which side of the political divide they seem to be coming from.

Meanwhile, my problem with Target stands. Though I don't know what they were doing that they're no longer doing to promote minorities. I do know they promised to spend a certain amount with black-owned businesses and then quietly decided not to. And so Black churches called for a boycott. Target still also doesn't have as many LGBTQ things, which is merely disappointing. So I'm still standing with the boycotters.

And what if that's stupid? Am I doing something even worse with my money in my ignorance? I don't think so. So far, my money has been diverted to REI, a coop, for shoes; The People's Pharmacy for multivitamins; and I've been buying books directly from the authors when possible and otherwise from Powell's used books. People's Pharmacy probably supports some fluffy-headed nonsense. None of these businesses are minority-owned, to my knowledge. So, maybe not better. but I don't think worse.

And I did write that e-mail to Target. They have not responded.

Re: What DEI is

[mackthemike]

The worst example of DEI that recall from the book was that the U.S. Government recommended that the COVID vaccines should be distributed to essential workers before the elderly because doing so would result in more white deaths. (That's not how the agency phrased it, but that's what the recommendation amounted to).

Thanks for having an open mind.

I still don't see why Target should consider the race of the owners of the businesses with whom they deal. That's racial discrimination, which I oppose. But we've made good progress in this discussion. Thanks again for your time.

Re: What DEI is

[livingdeb]

Ah, that covid horror does sound familiar.

My problem is Target breaking a promise. I can see that promising to spend money is discriminatory in a way that promising to get quotes is not. That makes sense.