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You know what, let's give it a shot. 3 things I dislike.
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Equity based on gender or skin color. So many people pretend that somehow one average working class person should be put ahead in line compared to another, if the other person has the same skin color as some unrelated asshole slaver whose descendants still profit from their riches.
Most of you would probably agree that a world where the majority are exploited by a few billionaires is not equitable just because the billionaires are diverse. So why push policies that pretend all is equitable as long as you give a few minorities preferential treatment.
Not only does it not make any real sense, but more importantly, it is divisive. No person struggling in this f**ked up economy wants to hear they should be even worse of, because they have the same skin color as the billionaires exploiting them and they should feel ashamed for that. I would not be surprised if these ideas are intentionally pushed by the rich to divide the working class people and turn them on each other.
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Bringing people down in the name of Equity. Equity is definitely what we should strive for, but by lifting disadvantaged people up, not tearing "privileged" people down. The whole message that you should be ashamed for not being disadvantaged is ridiculous to me. Maybe you should be ashamed if you are in a privileged position and you refuse to use it to help the disadvantaged, but just be ashamed of privilege period is a wild take to me. We should be aiming to make everyone privileged enough that they don't have to fear being shot every time they see a cop, that they can make a living wage, ...
If your movements/policies are hostile towards the very people whose support can help you most, then no wonder you can't make any progress and radicals like Trump take advantage of the divisiveness.
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Low quality diversity in media. Adding diverse characters to media should ideally be like adding trees. You add them when it makes sense without even thinking about it and don't add them when it doesn't make sense. We should work slowly and carefully towards that goal. Unfortunately, so many movies, shows and games have tried to awkwardly add diversity with no regard for how it negatively affects the enjoyability of the product. So your goal presumably was to make diverse people feel included and to normalize diversity in peoples mind. But the result for minorities often is that they repeatedly see character like them being badly and lazily written, either by having no proper character beyond being diverse or conversely feel like straight cis white character that just happens to mention they are diverse. On the other hand, the majority just sees these poorly made products and associate diversity and DEI with bad products. So failure on both goals. The answer is of course quality over quantity. It may take a while to get where we want to be, but it will get there without making things even worse with good intentions.
By the way, there of course are great examples of well made diverse shows, but they are drowned out by the slop. My favorite example is the Owl house. The plot of the first episode is literally about being captured and placed into "the conformatorium" for being different and then escaping and dismantling the place. And it did this so smoothly I did not even realize there was any messaging in it until long after seeing it.
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So how do you account for the fact that, in many instances where a white person and a black person have the exact same qualifications, the white person will be far more likely to be hired?
How do you account for the fact that many people who are racial minorities aren't born into families that can afford things like living in a house that doesn't have leaded paint on the walls, meaning that a black person who has the exact same qualifications as a white person has had to work a lot harder to overcome their disadvantages to get those qualifications?
How do you account for the fact that diverse teams of individuals simply produce better results in the free market than homogeneous ones as a result of their more varied viewpoints?
There are so many reasons why "equity based on gender or skin color" for hiring and college applications and so on is absolutely necessary to address the inequities in our society, and why the baby steps that we've made since the civil rights movement haven't been nearly enough to address the problems that they were meant to address. Frankly we should be talking about reparations in the form of just straight up giving large swathes of land and fat stacks of cash to certain groups, especially African Americans and American Indians, not these piddly little affirmative action programs that only kind of exist in colleges but everyone assumes exist everywhere else too.
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Nobody is brought down in the name of equity. What is brought down are the systems that privilege certain people based on aspects of themselves that they cannot control. If you think that tearing down white supremacy and patriarchy is the same as tearing down white people and men, then you need to ask yourself why you think that those groups of people are inseparable from their privileges
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No argument here, Hollywood has always had lazy and awful shit and their attempts at lazy and awful inclusion are bad. Often the very groups that Hollywood directors purport to represent come out hard against bad representation too - like that french trans cartel leader film that just came out where the director said he didn't bother researching Mexico or Mexican culture before making a film that takes place there and where everyone speaks Spanish really badly.
Nobody is brought down in the name of equity. What is brought down are the systems that privilege certain people based on aspects of themselves that they cannot control.
I'm not sure if this is a "DEI" issue or not, but businesses are bringing people down in the name of equity. A lot of colleges are charging $200k+ for tuition now, and they have programs where if your family's income is low enough they (supposedly) will waive a lot of it, but if your family is middle class you have to pay full tuition, which is something many of them cannot afford. Meanwhile this is not a barrier for wealthy people, so it's effectively making most people equally poor and barely able to afford CoL while the rich get richer rather than actually fixing the problem. I've heard that other businesses are starting to use similar tactics as well.
So how do you account for the fact that, in many instances where a white person and a black person have the exact same qualifications, the white person will be far more likely to be hired?
By making policies to prevent that. Color blind policies. Just don't swing all the way to racist in the other direction.
How do you account for the fact that many people who are racial minorities aren't born into families that can afford things like living in a house that doesn't already have leaded paint on the walls, meaning that a black person who has the exact same qualifications as a white person has had to work a lot harder to overcome their disadvantages to get those qualifications?
I answered this question in my original comment. By helping people based on their situation, not skin color. There are rich black people. There are poor white people. Extremely poor people need support, rich people don't. Skin color is irrelevant.
There are so many reasons why "equity based on gender or skin color" for hiring and college applications and so on is absolutely necessary to address the inequities in our society, and why the baby steps that we've made since the civil rights movement haven't been nearly enough to address the problems that they were meant to address.
Sure, baby steps are slow. Cheating with this "affirmative action discrimination" hides the underlying issues while making them significantly worse. The white people they discriminate against are largely not the same people who profiteered on slavery and discrimination. You are just creating a new group of disadvantaged and oppressed people and push them towards raising up against your policies and to hate the people who benefit on their expense. This is what Trump took advantage of to win despite most people knowing what a shitty person he is.
Frankly we should be talking about reparations in the form of just straight up giving large swathes of land and fat stacks of cash to certain groups, especially African Americans and American Indians, not these piddly little affirmative action programs that only kind of exist in colleges but everyone assumes exist everywhere else too.
You are not entirely wrong, but there is a reason statues of limitations exist. Good luck finding the people who perpetuated and profited from racism and slavery or the people that were directly hurt. And making random rich white people, or even worse working people pay for it will cause so many more issues than it solves. I think it is too late to do this.
Nobody is brought down in the name of equity.
Maybe you don't do that, which, good for you. Many people do that. I don't like people who do that. If you don't do that, why are you so defensive?
What is brought down are the systems that privilege certain people based on aspects of themselves that they cannot control.
I explicitly wrote we should do that.
No argument here, Hollywood has always had lazy and awful shit and their attempts at lazy and awful inclusion are bad. Often the very groups that Hollywood directors purport to represent come out hard against bad representation too - like that french trans cartel leader film that just came out where the director said he didn't bother researching Mexico or Mexican culture before making a film that takes place there and where everyone speaks Spanish really badly.
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Color blind policies.
I don't think you understand. A color blind policy will, by definition, be unable to address issues which are not color blind.
Color blind hiring policies. We were talking about hiring.
If there are issues not related to the hiring process that make disadvantaged people less qualified, you fix those issues at the source. Ignoring them at hiring just hides the issues making it less likely to be fixed while creating new issues I pointed out.
Besides, what issue is actually not colorblind? Race is basically always a proxy for a different cause. You should not be lazy and identify the real cause, then solve it based on that to ensure people don't fall through the cracks.
France has always been officially colour blind, and they're the most racist and racially i equal country in Western Europe.
Colourblind policies don't help as people in authority's implicit biases get freer reign.
"Badly implemented colorblind policies didn't stop racism in this one country, so let's have explicitly racist policies."
If they are still racist, they are not colorblind. Make stronger colorblind policies and enforce them. Color aware policies don't do anything either if they are only on paper.
Besides, you ignore the point of my criticism. Color aware policies don't prevent inequity, they shift it elsewhere. They keep some places and aspects of life racist while having other be reverse racist. On individual level, the inequity increases, but people pat themselves on the back because when you only look at it based on color, it averages out. It is like saying we should increase the pay of Billionaires to increase average wages. The statistic looks better, but it did not help most people.
Make stronger colorblind policies and enforce them
Any suggestion of such policies and ways to enforce them?
I have general ideas in what direction to look at, but I don't see how I could post them without this inevitably devolving into off-topic discussion of hiring policies.
I think we may be operating on different suppositions, so addressing that rather than wasting time clarifying details about France's choice to never record demographic stats for things would be best.
Do you think systemic racism exists and is a large problem in the USA or France?
Do you think systemic racism exists and is a large problem in the USA or France?
Yes.
OK, we agree on that.
To what extent do you think that implicit or unconscious bias cause visible minority groups to need to have to work harder and be more exceptional to get a position, role, or responsiblity, or a n on-category specified grant, assistance, or similar?
I appreciate your comment. I feel that DEI in its current form has a lot of things to hate about it. However I usually don't say anything because I'm worried someone will just call me a Nazi or something.
I'm a Jewish democrat, but as a white man I feel like I'm basically guilty of original sin in these types of conversations.
I know what you mean. The whole being incredibly hostile to like minded people over minor disagreements is it's own massive issue, but let's only open one can of worms at a time.
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