r/ExplainBothSides • u/Miserable-War3390 • 14d ago
Culture question about DEI concept
Does DEI mean if we want to build a rocket to send your family to mars and we need five people design the most essential part of the rocket, instead of choosing the five most capable perosonal that can control this risk of explosion of rocket at the minimum, avoiding your family being a part of the firework. we have to choose someone from different demographic groups to make it comply to DEI?
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u/DramaGuy23 12d ago edited 12d ago
Side A would say yes, characterizing DEI as choosing a work force based on diversity above all other considerations. This side holds the view that meritocracy is the current order of the day and that job hiring decisions are now colorblind, focusing strictly on criteria like objective job qualifications and skills. This side asserts that where a certain race or gender is over represented in a given segment of the job market (like rocket engineering) it is because of real superiority of mind or ability that manifests in that race or gender. To this group, DEI is a way to upset the apple cart, requiring us to assemble a less talented group of engineers than we could otherwise have if we were free to choose predominantly or even exclusively from a certain demographic subset of the workforce.
Side B would say no, DEI stands for diversity, equity, and inclusion, and it means hiring criteria that are more fair, not less so: taking the best and most qualified talent for any given job regardless of race or gender, giving equitable opportunity to historically excluded demographics. This side holds that many current hiring decisions are based at least partly on unconscious or institutional bias, and asserts that where a certain race or gender is over represented, it is at least partly because of systemic advantages that make opportunity more available to some demographics than to others in a way unconnected with job ability or skill. To this group, DEI is a way to right the ship and get the most talented group of engineers by eliminating prejudice against some segments of the hiring pool based on demographic criteria unconnected to their potential job performance.
Basically, which side you are on boils down to whether you believe the current system is fair and objective— if it ain't broke, don't fix it—, or unfair and biased— broken and in need of a fix. And that, I think, often comes down to whether you have personally witnessed or even experienced bias or prejudice in the workplace.
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u/1369ic 12d ago
You left out one aspect, which is the idea that diversity results in a better team because it avoids something like group think. I worked in a military R&D organization and this was a consideration. You don't want a bunch of people who all have more out less the same background and the same education because they're more likely to take the same approach to problem solving and therefore come up with the same solutions, assuming they get to a solution.
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u/PaxNova 9d ago
This is why I support diversity, but am also against some types of DEI programs. They define diversity solely by skin color, and you end up with a rainbow coalition of people that think the same way and aren’t actually diverse.
We’re the ones defining the criteria we want to be diverse on. Interrogate it and make sure it’s what you want.
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u/1369ic 9d ago
Once you get past the hiring stage, the problem is leadership. I'm fine if you want to hire only certain kinds of people to get to a workforce that roughly reflects the population as a whole. But you've got to provide good leadership at the supervisory and organizational levels. That means training people and being prepared to fire some until you get good people. Leadership is hard. Some people lack the spine for hard conversations, and some of those people cover it up by being hard asses instead of actual leaders. What we're seeing now -- cronyism and nepotism -- are worse for a meritocracy than DEI because those people are bulletproof and often jump right to the top.
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u/Trick-Yellow-1332 12d ago
A real example of this that I've seen some DEI people cite is an Xbox Camera (forgot what it was called) essentially couldn't pick up black people/register them because of how it had been programmed and having a black person on the team helped them catch this then code a problem for it.
I should mention I haven't looked into this too deeply so there might be more to the story and the rebuttal to this is obviously "oh this is cherrypicked, that's one instance over the ten thousand other times it does nothing for a team/actively harms teams and makes them less competent,"
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u/wisebloodfoolheart 10d ago
I've worked with OpenCV and had similar problems. We made a product that scanned drivers' licenses, picked out the face in the photo, and made a profile and visitor badge for guests at the YMCA. It didn't fail for people of color every time exactly, but when you looked at the rejected pictures, it was noticable, especially if the picture wasn't perfect, like the eyes weren't open all the way. We tried demoing it once for a black client and it couldn't pick out his face, awkward.
We had one black team member, and one Asian team member, and they were going to an expo one time with our boss who was pasty white, and it was a pain trying to set the badge printer settings so they could all get a reasonable badge photo that wasn't too light or dark. If they hadn't been on the team, we would have probably calibrated for white faces, and all the black users would have looked like a blob of ink.
If you look up something called Yale Faces, that might shed some light on the issue. In 2004, a CS class at Yale decided to take pictures of their faces with different expressions and publish the image set for training facial recognition. It became very popular in that field due to the quality and accessibility of the pictures. Only problem was, the whole set was 20-year-old white and Asian men, because that was who was enrolled in the class. They threw in one middle aged white woman at the end as an afterthought. Now I'm not sure whose fault that was, because I'm sure those young men didn't anticipate their school project blowing up like that. The Yale admissions department? The programmers that used it? Anyway, systemic racism and sexism is complicated.
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u/PaxNova 9d ago
Reminds me of an episode of Better Off Ted. They installed sensors to upgrade their doors to automatically open. Very Star Trek. Except Black people don’t reflect as much light in the frequencies used, so doors literally were closed to them.
The episode pushes it to humorous extremes, like hiring white people to escort all the Black workers.
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u/schwarzekatze999 12d ago
This last sentence is the exact truth. I've had the (dis)pleasure of being on a hiring team who would pick the white guy over anyone else regardless of whether he was the most qualified, and my objections were overruled.
When I subsequently had the opportunity to hire a team on my own I picked the best candidate regardless of race and assembled a diverse team I was proud of. It helped that I had a recruiting team sending me diverse candidates, and I had to interview and select them. Bias was eliminated at all stages of a process, well except that there were no female candidates (this was a physical hardware IT job).
People I know IRL watch these YouTube influencers and align with Side A. I align with Side B. They've never had to hire people and haven't seen the bias in the hiring process, and don't believe me when I tell them about it. They think that discrimination laws eliminate bias. They just make it an offense - if it can be proven. The kind of bias that exists is hard to prove.
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u/Guldur 12d ago
When you claim you "picked the best candidate regardless of race", was there a risk that you could have ended up with a not so diverse team unintentionally? Or maybe in other words - was diversity a goal or happenstance of meritocracy? Because that is the root of Side A vs Side B.
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u/schwarzekatze999 12d ago
I could have ended up with a less diverse team if I had only white candidates to choose from, whether that would have been because of only white applicants or upstream bias on the recruiting team. I could have also ended up with this team if I had selected the candidates on the basis of race but claimed I was picking the best candidates. No one would have been able to prove it if I did that.
In this case diversity was both a goal and a happenstance. I wanted a diverse team, but I wouldn't have been willing to choose unqualified candidates to achieve that result. I was fortunate to have candidates who were both diverse and qualified for the job, and an experience that led me to examine and remove my own bias so that I selected the candidates weighing both diversity and qualification.
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u/Guldur 12d ago
You offered a binary scenario that was not part of my question. My question was more towards what if you had a diverse selection of candidates and your goal was to not look at race whatsoever.
First you claimed that you "picked the best candidate regardless of race", but now you are saying "I wanted a diverse team".
Side A would say there is a conflict in those statements unless you are willing to accept the possibility that you could end up with a homogenous team in order to pick the most skilled candidates.
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u/schwarzekatze999 12d ago
I don't know what to tell you. I wanted a diverse AND high-performing team, without sacrificing one too much for the other. Like with most political scenarios, my belief is that the right answer is somewhere between Side A and Side B, and attempting to find a balance between the two is the best choice. Obviously picking non-qualified candidates in the name of diversity can lead to poor outcomes. Refusing to consider candidates of certain races regardless of their qualifications is not legal and can result in blind spots, as others have argued. (In my case, I wanted a diverse team because we were serving diverse customers and in my experience you get the best customer service when your team is representative of your customers). I could have ended up with a homogeneous team because of either bias in the hiring process or a lack of availability of diverse candidates, if I lived in an area with a less diverse population or something.
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u/Guldur 12d ago
I think that's actually the distinction I've been trying to get at. What you're describing is a perfectly coherent position: qualifications come first, but diversity is also considered because you believe it has value to the team.
My objection is to treating that as simply "picking the best candidate regardless of race." If diversity can influence the decision between similarly qualified candidates, then race is necessarily a consideration in the hiring decision. That's not inherently wrong, but it's a fundamentally different position from strict race blind meritocracy.
And that's why I think the original Side A in the OP was poorly steelmanned. The strongest Side A argument doesn't require believing that racial disparities reflect racial superiority. It can simply be that race should never be a factor in choosing between individuals, regardless of the demographic outcome.
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u/cubbycoo77 10d ago
Out of curiosity, let's say you had a tie you needed to break. You have 2 equally qualified people and only one position to fill. The DEI side would break the tie with looking for the person that would increase diversity on the team. What would the other side use to break the tie? The classic "you'd fit right in with our team" which often is sameness and not diversity?
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u/SkrliJ73 10d ago
So you want someone to be judged by their race to decide the tie? Not race, disability? Cultural background? Sex? Gender? Aren't these all things we aren't supposed to be biasing? It's a job and it's not that deep, ou can coinflip.
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u/BeginningPhase1 10d ago
Wouldn't the DEI side choosing the person that would increase the diversity on their team also be using the classic "you'd fit right in with our team"? If the point of DEI is to build as diverse a team as possible, then wouldn't it assume that the more diverse candidate would "fit in with the team" more than the other?
When I hear "you have 2 equally qualified people and only one position to fill" my assumtion is that both candidates have been through the entire hiring process (including interviews) and it's been determined that either candidate could already be described with "you'd fit right in our team". As such, wouldn't using race (regardless of whether it's done to make the workplace more or less diverse) to make the final hiring decision (rather than a random number generator or some other random draw) be adding an additional qualification?
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u/cubbycoo77 10d ago
When I was saying "you'd fit right in with our team" I was thinking along the lines of "boys club" or "Yale grads" or same political leading or heterosexual or from the same home town or XYZ thing that they have in common. I guess my assumption is that people generally default to what they are comfortable with unless they are more intentionally considering that. And DEI isn't just race, though it often ends up boiling down to that.
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u/Guldur 10d ago
Well, I haven't committed to any sides, so i find your question pretty good and worth pondering. On my personal life, I'd say fitting with the team has been my goal when selecting new hires, but that doesn't mean same race/gender/country of birth. What it usually means is similar energy or personalities that cover each other's weakness.
To better illustrate - if the team is highly cooperative and you hire someone that likes to work solo, that creates conflicts. Likewise, if the team is composed of solo experts and you hire someone needy, that creates conflicts.
Like-minded people can get things done faster and lead to better cooperation. On the other end, there is benefit from having people that are more ponderous mixed with people that are more speedy, because there is a place for steady safe pace and a place for speedy risk taking. Its all a delicate balance when building a proper team, and race or gender never ever crossed my mind as considerations, despite having always worked with a diverse team anyway. I think each workforce and team has different answers, and both side A and B ignore such nuances.
I'd say thats the trap of side B - diversity for diversity sake can lead to worse outcomes if you are hyper focused on looking at race or gender. A black and a white guy going to the same school are much less diverse than a white guy from US vs a white guy from Peru. I think some folks tend to conflate cultural diversity purely with skin color or gender, when that is simply not true.
I'm not saying DEI is bad - I believe it has its place. I'm arguing that both side A and B can lead to bad results when badly implemented, but at the same time both sides feel they can do no wrong.
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u/cubbycoo77 10d ago
I think that is a fair and balanced take. I also think that when people are pushing for more DEI in hiring, it is not focused on someone like you who seems to be thoughtful in hiring amd team composition, but for someone whose default is not.
I commented this below as well: When I was saying "you'd fit right in with our team" I was thinking along the lines of "boys club" or "Yale grads" or same political leading or heterosexual or from the same home town or XYZ thing that they have in common. I guess my assumption is that people generally default to what they are comfortable with unless they are more intentionally considering that.
So I think a hiring committee being told to keep "DEI" in mind can be helpful to remember those internal biases some might have.
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u/MonAlysaVulpix 12d ago
It's not contradictory. Qualifications first. Then DEI from equally or closely qualified candidates. It's entirely possible to practice DEI and have homogeneous teams, but it's never the goal.
The example they originally gave illustrates one way this can occur; the group was did not have any feminine-identifying folks because none applied. If they did apply but none were qualified, then the same result would occur.
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u/Guldur 12d ago
I think this actually gets to the distinction I was trying to make with my original question.
If qualifications come first, but DEI is then used to choose between equally or closely qualified candidates, then diversity is objectively a hiring consideration. That's different from simply picking the most qualified candidate and accepting whatever demographic composition results.
And I agree that this can still produce a homogeneous team. The point isn't that DEI guarantees diversity. It's that diversity is an objective being considered alongside qualifications, rather than something that is purely incidental to merit based hiring.
That's precisely the distinction I was asking about. Side A would say that if Candidate A and Candidate B are equally qualified, their race should be irrelevant. If Side B says race can legitimately be a tie breaker because diversity has value, then those are genuinely different philosophies of hiring.
I think that's a much better representation of the actual disagreement than saying Side A believes racial overrepresentation is evidence of racial superiority.
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u/PM_me_Henrika 11d ago
I think there is a gap between “most qualified” and “qualified enough” and a lot of people misunderstood DEI means choosing unqualified candidates or choosing the most qualified candidate and cross your fingers about having a diverse team.
But what’s actually done with some experienced personnel is that would gather a list of “qualified enough” candidates, and then they choose from all the candidate REGARDLESS of how much MORE qualified these candidates to fulfil their DEI metrics.
This results in a team that doesn’t get the MOST qualified experts, but a more diverse set of opinion. The challenge is setting what does “qualified enough” means because you want to ensure even the least competent person in the list is still able to perform their job duties at the bear minimum.
There’re even more nuanced ways such as using weighing on qualification and DEI scoring, but I only know the methodology and am not expert enough to weigh in on it.
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u/Fireproofspider 10d ago
Also, if you've ever hired people where there are multiple really good candidates, "most qualified" becomes murky. Like you could take the one with the most years of experience, or you could take the one with fewer years but more well-rounded experience.
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u/spiralenator 10d ago
A persons specific background includes their lived experience as a minority. That is actually a differentiating qualification because their perspective will not be interchangeable with anyone else’s lived experience. I think that’s what side A misses. Different experiences, different perspectives, can make someone the better candidate.
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u/anticharlie 11d ago
This is a good summary, in practice though I think the core issue is both bias towards people who are “like you” as well as bias towards people who you know, whose work product you’re familiar with.
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u/pensiveChatter 11d ago
Another opposition to DEI is that the staff most eager to promote DEI are often most eager to promote based on other non-performance based metrics, often to the exclusion of metrics like ability.
So, supporting it depends on whether you believe that asking organizations to make hiring decisions based on gender, ethnicity, etc.. will result in those organizations losing part of their capacity to also select based on ability.
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u/Guldur 12d ago edited 12d ago
Sorry but your representation of side A is completely off. I'm yet to find anyone that thinks that an eventual non-equal distribution is caused by racial superiority. It might be that you are involved too closely with racial superiority groups if you have encountered such argumentation, but they are extremely niche. What people opposed to DEI generally argue is that using skin color as a hiring parameter is racist by definition, since one is getting a benefit due to their race and not necessarily their skillset. (or equally, one is being denied a job due to their skin color)
The main argument against DEI is that it might end up hiring less skilled workers due to a skin color preference, which connects to your meritocracy comment. The whole Jason Arday ordeal is pointed as one example of DEI gone wrong. Another popular one is IBM's CEO Arvind Krishna saying on video that executives would get financial bonuses for hiring non-whites, which is a form of racial prejudice.
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u/1369ic 12d ago
Going back to my previous comment, hiring for diversity isn't always a form of racial prejudice, sometimes it's hiring to get people of different backgrounds in the organization. We had a sub organization that could fill all its engineer vacancies by hiring from four colleges all situated around the base. That area was not especially diverse, and women and minorities are underrepresented in STEM field. The organization had good jobs, and over time the schools developed programs to feed into those jobs. At the same time, people from that organization started teaching at those schools because they had the education and background. After a while, you basically had a circular pipeline of people who all had the same background, the same education, and so they approached things the same way. This might be a plus in some areas, but not in all. So we consciously recruited people with different backgrounds.
As far as plain racial discrimination, it's still out there. I was trained to work with the media and local communities, so I could tell how people were reacting, what they seemed to be thinking, etc., especially in interview situations like job interviews. I saw good people who were not consciously prejudiced who would still lean toward people who looked like them, talked like them, had similar backgrounds, etc., just because they felt more comfortable with them. We're social animals, all things being equal we tend to associate with people like ourselves. That doesn't lead to a meritocracy, it leads to homogeneity.
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u/Guldur 12d ago
That is fair, and i want to make it clear I'm not arguing against diversity. In fact its good to police ourselves towards it because I've actually seen people from all backgrounds fall into the same trappings you described - indians favoring indians hire, blacks favoring blacks, and so on. But I also think when DEI is badly implemented, it can go too far. I gave two examples above on how it can go wrong.
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u/schwarzekatze999 12d ago
There are a lot of influencers on YouTube who spout Side A precisely. Sad but true.
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u/Guldur 12d ago
Can you share maybe one or two of the bigger ones? That would make the conversation easier.
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u/CoachDT 12d ago
Matt Walsh Steve Crowder Jordan Peterson
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u/Guldur 12d ago
Ok, can you maybe link a video of Jordan Peterson claiming racial superiority? Out of the 3 names he is the one i'm most familiar with and have not seen such content. I'll take comments from the other 2 as well if you do have them.
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u/Feezec 12d ago
https://ayaaninstitute.com/expertise/analysis/jordan-peterson-the-revival-of-scientific-racism-and-white-supremacy/ Peterson promotes a hierarchical worldview that overlaps with racist thought systems. His position that hierarchy is inevitable/justified contradicts the DEI philosophy inequality is generally artificial and undesirable.
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u/Guldur 12d ago
Yeah, that link doesn't really hit what I asked for. I wanted Peterson claiming racial superiority, and the article itself admits he doesn't, just says his stuff "implicitly" reinforces racialised views. Big difference.
Most of it is guilt by association, Tate, Murray, Farage, Trump, hoping it rubs off on Peterson. The real quotes are just him saying the Bell Curve data's worth discussing, not "race X is better."
The Ashkenazi IQ line is the one that actually fits the accusation, sure. But it's one line about one group on one stat. Not exactly the sweeping worldview the article's selling. If that's their best shot after years of interviews, that says more about the case than about Peterson.
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u/DramaGuy23 12d ago
Did my best, bruh. I am not at all involved with racial superiority groups; that part of the characterization of Side A's views comes from mainstream commentators who oppose DEI and defend a meritocracy view while trying to explain the data that show dramatic racial inequality in occupations like air traffic controllers. Like I once heard a segment on Tucker Carlson where they had an expert on to talk about this issue, and one of the questions they posed him was, "What would you say to critics who charge that air traffic controllers are overwhelmingly white?" and his response was, "Well I don't know that that's the case, but if it is, then maybe it's just because white people make better air traffic controllers." So that's the type of reasoning I'm talking about. You can't defend the idea of a meritocracy and explain existing racial imbalances without arguing that the racial imbalances are merited.
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u/Guldur 12d ago
It seems in your example, the expert is mixing correlation with causation. It is possible that racial prejudice and imbalances have resulted in poorer education for certain races which then leads to a smaller pool of expert air controllers within that group, but side A would argue that providing better education would be the preferred answer, not hiring less skilled professionals to meet a racial quota.
I feel you are not approaching Side A in good faith, instead picking extreme niche examples to represent that side instead of steelmaning the position, which is the goal of this sub
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u/DramaGuy23 12d ago
Well I apologize. Thank you for helping me understand better. As I say, I did my best to represent both sides fairly, and folks have come at me from both sides saying I left out important parts of their case. I'm learning to have a more complete view of both sides from this discussion, and so thank you for what you've added to my understanding.
That said, the "bad faith" card is really not one you have to play after one cycle of comment and response. I do my best to get both sides of any important issue, it's why I was listening to that Tucker Carlson piece in the first place back in the day, and I do my best to hold views that align with my experience in that process and that are well thought out. Excuse me for not abandoning them immediately because of one comment you posted. I haven't accused you of anything, I've just tried to explain what my view is and why. You've accused me of hanging out with racists and of acting in bad faith. So there is a definite difference in our approach to an online conversation with an anonymous stranger, and frankly I prefer mine as seeming, to me, to be the more respectful.
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u/Guldur 12d ago
I think you're conflating two different things here. I didn't accuse you of being a racist or of "hanging out with racists." I said your characterization of Side A was unfair, and I stand by that.
Your original description explicitly said Side A believes racial overrepresentation reflects "real superiority of mind or ability." That's not a necessary part of the anti DEI argument at all. The argument can simply be that hiring should be race blind and based on individual qualifications, even if that produces unequal demographic outcomes.
Your Tucker Carlson example may demonstrate that some people make the racial superiority argument, but it doesn't establish that this is representative of Side A. If I wanted to steelman Side B, I wouldn't describe it using the most extreme person who happens to agree with Side B and then present their most controversial argument as fundamental to the position.
And I think that's what I was getting at when I said you weren't approaching Side A in good faith. I wasn't making a judgment about your character or accusing you of personally holding those beliefs. I was criticizing the way you represented the opposing argument.
You also seem to be treating my disagreement with your characterization as if I expected you to immediately change your own views. That's not what happened. I was asking you to represent the opposing position accurately. We can then disagree about whether that position is correct.
So I don't think the issue here is whether you have good intentions or whether you've personally encountered racist commentators. The question is simply whether "race should not be a factor in hiring, even if the resulting workforce isn't demographically equal" is a legitimate representation of Side A. I think it clearly is, and that's the position I was asking you to engage with.
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u/DramaGuy23 12d ago edited 12d ago
Yes, but you are asking me to change my views immediately. My current view of Side A— mainstream Side A, mind you— is that they believe that if a job is held by mostly white people, then it's because those white people deserve to be where they are based on merit (or to phrase it as I did in my top-level comment, because they were superior candidates for the job). Isn't that a valid and integral part of the Side A view as you've expressed it here?
To me it seems that you are the one who is conflating two different things. I said, "superiority of mind or ability", but you have been reacting to me as if I had said "inherent genetic superiority", which I did not. Superiority of mind or ability means things like access to better education (mind), to better training and/or better entry-level opportunities resulting in superior experience (ability). You brought up those potential factors to explain apparent disparities yourself.
The bottom line is that, my view— the view of I hold of Side A, the view that I feel is well informed based on significant time listening to both sides, the view that you are, yes, asking me to change on the spot on your say-so— is they feel that if members of one race are disproportionately represented in a desirable career, it is because all of them deserve it based on merit. I have heard that view expressed often, I don't feel it's an extreme outlier view that unfairly characterizes the anti-DEI camp, and I don't feel it's a misrepresentation of Side A to say so.
I think your real objection to my original comment is that I left out what you see as a strong part of the Side A argument— that attempting to correct existing racial bias with racial quotas is itself racist— but I left out strong arguments from the Side B camp as well. Read the rest of the comments responding to me if you want that side of it.
Honestly the fact that I am getting pushback from both sides tells me I must've done at least a halfway-decent job of impartiality.
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u/Guldur 12d ago
I think you're moving the goalposts a bit from what you actually wrote in the OP.
You originally didn't say merely that Side A believes people who get jobs through a meritocratic process are deserving. You said that racial overrepresentation is explained by "real superiority of mind or ability that manifests in that race or gender." That's a substantially stronger claim, and it's precisely the part I objected to.
Now you're explaining "superiority of mind or ability" as differences in education, training, and opportunity. But those are exactly the kinds of factors that make your original formulation problematic: they aren't some inherent characteristic that "manifests in" a race or gender. They are differences in circumstances and individual backgrounds.
And I'm still not asking you to change your political views. I'm asking you to acknowledge that your original Side A was narrower and stronger than the position you're now defending in the comments. Those aren't the same thing.
As for the pushback from both sides, I don't think that necessarily proves impartiality. It could just mean you've left important arguments out from both sides, which is exactly what several people in the thread have been telling you. In a subreddit about explaining both sides, "people on both sides disagree with me" isn't really evidence that both sides were adequately steelmanned.
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u/BitShin 11d ago
I disagree with your characterization of side A. The way you posed it would imply that everyone who disagrees with DEI measures is inherently racist. Of course these types of people do exist, but it’s disingenuous to present the least favorable rationale when more reasonable explanations exist.
The backlash to DEI is typically centered around two policies: quota based hiring/admittance and raising/lowering the bar based on demographics. In practice these two measures are often inseparable. If you work in a field where you are in the majority demographic, the existence of a diversity quota effectively means you have to compete against a larger applicant pool for a limited number of spots, thereby raising the bar.
Looking closer at quotas, because certain groups are unfairly disadvantaged, we can expect that a fewer proportion of those groups will pursue certain fields or even higher education in general. Because of this, you will see fewer people from these groups in applicant pools. If you institute a quota, even if members of these groups are just as likely to be intelligent and talented as any other group, you will expect to see a smaller proportion of talented applicants to be from these groups. So by instituting a quota, you are necessarily hiring less qualified applicants.
So as it stands, if your goal is to assemble the best team possible, quotas rarely make sense. The only case where I could see it working is if you already expect severe bias in your hiring pipeline, but even then, quotas are a poor solution. This is because your applicant pool is a small sample of the overall labor market so you can frequently encounter scenarios where your applicants do not represent the overall market demographics.
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u/EverythingsBroken82 11d ago
this is kinda a biased answer in itself.
because man people advocating for DEI are not as fundamentalist as you make them out to be.
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u/BeginningPhase1 12d ago edited 11d ago
Both sides would say yes, however:
Side A would say: DEI is a smokescreen for blatant discrimination. They'd explain (in a manner coincidentally similar to Ibram X. Kendi's explanation of anti-Racism in his book: How to be an Anti-Racist) that DEI practitioners and proponents view any demographic disparities resulting from hiring policies as proof of them being anti equality and instead are a form "systemic discrimination"; and that DEI (or BRIDGE, or whatever else they choose to call it) is the solution to fixing those disparities because it supposedly acts as counterbalance to this alleged discrimination. They'd further explain that said view, however, ignores the differences in population sizes and in-group preferences between demographics (as well as individual personal preferences) that could better explain those disparities; instead opting to replace the allegedly discriminatory policies with ones that "promote diversity". As such, they'd conclude that "promoting diversity" may be a dogwhisle for anti-majority discrimination, which could lead to a comprised work force (when it comes to safety and security) when DEI inevitably has to relax hiring standards (which, again, its proponents may view as discriminatory) in order to reach the equity in hiring it's seeking.
While Side B would say: DEI is just a way to ensure that qualified marginalized individuals are represented in the workplace. They'd explain that marginalized people are underrepresented in the workforce because current hiring practices continue the historical discrimination of the past and that DEI seeks to remove and replace them with policies that promote diversity in hiring. They'd further explain that this equity in hiring doesn't lower the quality of new hires; however if it did, then the policies it replaced (that lowered it) were the inherently discriminatory ones that kept marginalized people out of the workforce. As such, they'd conclude that promoting diversity in the workplace doesn't inherently ignore (or deprioritize) the quality of said workforce; and to think otherwise is white supremacy.
Edit: Clarity
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Any requests for clarification of the original question, other "observations" that are not explaining both sides, or similar comments should be made in response to this post or some other top-level post. Or even better, post a top-level comment stating the question you wish OP had asked, and then explain both sides of that question! (And if you think OP broke the rule for questions, report it!)
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