Guaranteed if original Star Trek came out today, it would be decried as "woke" and "DEI" and there would be outrage over it from the usual culture warriors.
It's not what DEI means. It's about what it stands for.
Conservatives don't want to be told to treat people with decency. They want to treat however the fuck they want, and then tell you that you aren't treating them decently.
This is what they mean with those "My rights don't end where your feelings begin" bumper stickers. The only right they're losing is the right to being a bigoted asshole.
DEI is the current iteration of affirmative action, that’s all.
The problem with DEI is that it’s an imperfect solution that only came about because racists and other bigots couldn’t behave themselves. Forcing the hiring of specific demographics isn’t going to result in the best possible outcomes in every case but those groups also need opportunities even though they’ve been systemically given worse educations and have been generally shat upon. Removing race we’d also probably hire the white man more often but not because they’re inately better, but rather because they are simply more likely to be able to afford to have pretty looking resumés compared to disadvantaged minorities.
We wouldn’t need DEI in the first fucking place except people like an old boss, who saw an immigrant classmate of mine’s resumé come up and because of his African last name said “no thanks I want to keep jobs in Canada”, need to be forced to do the right thing. They create the problem and throw temper tantrums when we try to fix it. These people are obstacles and it’s getting tiring.
TL;DR: They feel as if they have a point because DEI can result in a more qualified person being turned away, which I get feels unfair. However, they refuse to acknowledge the fact that said person was only more qualified because we make it so difficult for minorities to fucking do anything. I’m getting so sick of right-wing bullshit.
Also, DEI is trying to diversify the points of view in the workplace. Homogeny of thought is NOT better when it comes to problem solving. Varied voices can create amazing solutions to problems one didn’t know really existed. If allowed, it builds creativity.
The issue with this is you often end up with a diverse group of people who are all very educated and grew up in upper-middle class or even upper class homes. It's a diversity of race and gender but with everyone having the same values anyway. I've seen it myself being the only person in my workplace who grew up poor, you realize how little the rest of it really matters.
In my field anyway it’s not about background, it’s shitty managers not listening to anyone and only wanting to hear about how great they are. I am a tall white man and they still don’t wanna here even the littlest bit of polite feedback. I handled them more carefully than children and they still moaned and cried.
Diversity is good, and I do not think my experience is a reason to not care about it, but removing those worthless bosses is the only thing that will actually allow real change to actually happen.
From 2020 on we’ve seen that telling people “hey wear the most basic of facemasks when you’re out in public because the morgues are running out of space all over” causes them to start screaming at the Walmart greeters and throwing tantrums like children. We are still stupid apes in a lot of ways
The outrage the far-right spun over DEI is by trying to portray it as hiring vastly underqualified applicants simply because of their belonging to an underrepresented group (often even being portrayed as vastly underqualified because of their race as white supremacist rhetoric). Of course in reality this wasn't true and it was just a foghorn for racism/an ethnic slur, but that's how it started.
Yeah, I’ve heard it called “Didn’t Earn It” and the idea is that people are given preferential treatment in job or services based on their ethnicity and not their qualification. As with all things the truth is somewhere in the middle.
Just out of curiosity, what do you think is more progressive: a spaceship where all female crew is forced to wear miniskirts, a bridge crew that has exactly one woman, the part in the pilot where "Orion sex slaves" are introduced in the horniest possible way, or the married producer who was cheating on his wife with the only two relevant female cast members?
The 1960s was a long time ago. While there are a lot of TOS that aged very well, the idea that the show would be decried as woke is straight up delusional.
Counterpoint: As long as they consider the women "hot" they will accept them as part of the franchise.
Nichelle Nichols I think was probably hot enough to not draw their ire.
Those culture warriors are somehow always okay with women they view as "fuckable." Women only have value in their eyes if they want to sleep with them by their looks alone.