this post was submitted on 26 Feb 2025
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It seems ironic that all of trump’s picks are what conservatives complained about being DEI hires.
Accusations, confessions, etc.
I feel like this isn't visceral enough.
It's so insanely true, but people don't understand... When they accuse someone of something, they're about to do it, if they aren't doing it already
I think this is why I found myself sobbing when my personal AI assistant called me human too many times...
Holy fuck, today I heard Trump say, "we're going to go into Fort Knox and see if someone stole the gold" and without skipping a beat, my brain immediately went to "this guy is literally going to steal gold from Fort Knox." Because of course he is
Yup. I had the exact same reaction - there's no way they come out of there and say anything other than "some amount of the gold is missing"
The only question is are they going to follow that up with "and so we're moving it to the Whitehouse for safekeeping" or are they going to walk out of there with $ print sacks
And the insane part is I can say the first part, and most people will agree. Everyone knows on some level that Trump will "find" any problem he goes looking for, reality be damned.
But say "he's totally going to steal the gold" and suddenly it's a bridge to far. He's a billionaire, why does he need it? That's absurd, the president wouldn't rob fort Knox. He's just auditing for corruption.
And honestly, solid chance a lot of the gold is missing already. But either way, in a few months we're going to see him using a gold brick as a paperweight and a lot of people will still try to explain it away
My other brain just thinks he wants a photo op with the gold, and is taking cronies with him for bragging rights. Or for some quid pro quo
I mean, I'm sure he'll also use the photo op... But there's no way he says all the gold is there. And honestly? It might not be, there was a lot of fuckery in how we transitioned to a fiat currency. But either way, he never falls to say he found a problem
Best scenario? He's going as a distraction. He's kinda been at the kiddie table, they're keeping him busy - he's interviewed or does a press event every day, he's gone to an event every weekend, and he's been going up and back between mar a Lago and the white house like twice a week. He could blame the economy dying on the missing gold instead of DOGE or something...
But one gold bar is worth hundreds of thousands of dollars... They're also quite heavy though. He might not steal them because he would probably hurt himself trying to lift one... There's no way he doesn't consider it though
You're not a human. You're a fox.
You're not so bad yourself, Genius. 😉
They live a life of hypocrisy. They're the in-crowd allowed to do all of the things the rest of us are not, because we're not part of the cult.
Not at all. The difference is that DEI puts race/sex/etc before merit (e.g. hiring the best person of a target demographic you can find rather than the best person in general, which may or may not be the same person) while old fashioned nepotism ignores both merit and demographics entirely and picks based solely on connections with the boss.
In other words, it's even worse but since Trump is generally going to pick mostly white dudes and the occasional white woman MAGA will eat it up.
This is what DEI is claimed to be by the same people who concurrently find kakistrokracy and nepotism acceptable as long as it favors their in-group and as such, perhaps we shouldn't go with their definition on DEI.
So what's your definition then? What is the difference between hiring in accordance with DEI and merely hiring the best candidate available regardless of race or sex?
You can't claim to be actively trying to increase representation of some demographic in hiring without biasing the process specifically in their favor, which requires at some level treating membership in that demographic as a positive qualification. The farthest from doing that you can meaningfully get is doing something to increase that demographic in the pool of candidates
You might point to something like blind hiring, in which those doing the hiring don't get to know the race or sex of candidates, but whether or not that's a valid DEI policy depends entirely on outcome (for example a public works department in Australia took up blind hiring as a means to improve gender equality, then cancelled it because not knowing which candidates were women was causing them to hire fewer women). Because that's at the very heart of what DEI is - attempting to engineer a specific demographic distribution as a final outcome and whether or not a given policy is a valid DEI policy is about whether or not it helps approach that goal demographic distribution.
When I was a hiring manager the DEI directives I received weren't "pick a minority over a more qualified person" it was "be cognizant of your biases and consider the benefits a different perspective will bring to your team when making a hiring decision". I had to take a training course that exposed me to some things I hadn't really taken into account before and I found it to be beneficial. I was never forced to make a decision in a particular way or questioned after the fact.
So, care to give an example, how that example is executed in policy or decision making process and how that results in more women, LGBTQ or POC being hired? "Consider the benefits a different perspective will bring to your team when making a hiring decision" certainly sounds an awful lot like corp-speak for "consider how being a member of a demographic underrepresented in your team is in itself a qualification and should be treated as a point in their favor over other candidates who are not."
Like repeatedly mentioning that the institution is a historically black college and emphasizing a "need to fit in with the college community" as code for "we want to hire a black person" or companies listing literally impossible job requirements as a pretense for getting H1B visas (because "we want employees we can abuse because we can threaten to deport them if they don't play along" doesn't technically fly as opposed to "we cannot find qualified employees domestically" because all applicants are either under qualified or lying because the qualifications are impossible).
Instead, you were taught essentially what was expected of you draped in corporate sensitivity speak, and expected to do your job as intended. Had you not in a broad sense started hiring more in line with whatever demographic alterations the training was meant to get you lean more in favor of (for example, if it was gender-focused and you were not broadly speaking hiring more women than before) there would have been further training. No direct calling out of specific hiring decisions for being the wrong race/gender/whatever. Because the layers of indirection and "awareness building" and "implicit bias training" and the like is done the way it is because a direct corporate mandate to to hire a specific number of a specific demographic would be illegal discrimination so instead you have to walk around the subject until you've worn a "hire more of this demographic" shaped trail.
The training I took was literally just "think about why you prefer candidate a over candidate b. Is it solely because of their qualification or is it because of subconscious prejudice you have against them and is there anything about their background that would bring something extra to the team?" and it wasn't just women, LGBTQ, or POC that were mentioned. It included neurodivergent people, people with disabilities and even specifically pointed out that heightism was a thing.
No, I wasn't. I was taught exactly what I said above. There was no demand to hire more X and less Y explicit or implied. The composition of my team and my hiring decisions was never questioned by anyone even when it was heavily tilted towards white males. I voluntarily brought in more diverse people because if you already have a team of 9 white dudes who all have similar interests and backgrounds they are going to think about problems and respond to them in the same way. Adding women and POC to the mix gave more perspective on issues and just broadened the conversation topics in the office in general, which I think helped morale greatly. There was also a side benefit of bringing a light on a racist individual on my team and two creeps that I was able to weed out after their behavior towards the new hires.
Firstly, I take great suspicion in the honesty of someone taking right wing talking points at face value in the very thread proving right-wing dishonesty about the criticism of DEI.
Secondly, you imply that the DEI(+accessibility) aspects of hiring inherently uses representation as its primary hiring criterion overriding competence and qualifications, which is simply not true. You're also, in my opinion erroneously, subscribing to the notion that there are "absolute best" applicants rather than "best fits".
Thirdly, while we could have an honest discussion about what role demographic representation in hiring should play in what industry/field, I'd argue if you are distributing shared public resources, those resources should benefit the public evenly and equitable hiring is an important aspect.
Fourthly, your example of blind hiring is a very good example as to why it's not a fix: it doesn't take into consideration "invisible labor" women are subjected to. Etc.
I'm not, there's not some sort of generically absolute best applicant, there's only ever best fit for the given position. Unless you are implying that being a specific demographic or demographics makes one a better fit inherently?
Explicitly not being able to make a decision based on race/sex/etc because you do not know the race/sex/etc of the applicant and thus it cannot be a factor is itself not a fix for racist, sexist, etc hiring practices because it does not allow you to give members of certain races or sexes additional consideration because of their demographic membership? And proof of this is that not knowing candidate's race/sex/etc doesn't necessarily increase the likelihood that you will pick women, non-white, etc candidates?
This actually demonstrates the point though - it's not about removing discrimination in the hiring process, it's about targeting a specific mix and coming up with whatever policies help you approach that desired mix without doing anything explicitly illegal (like outright saying only to hire [or not hire] a certain race/sex/etc for a given position). It's the difference between saying "we want to hire a black person for this job, if possible" and heavily emphasizing that your institution is a historically black college and the "need to fit in with the college community" when hiring for this position. I'm not saying but I'm saying and all.
Again, you imply that some of the potentially valid criticism of poorly executed DEI hiring practices are universal, pervasive and absolute, whereas in reality that is your projection only. There are no "inherent" fits, there are dynamic groups, that benefit from different perspectives.
I seriously have no idea what you are talking about here. You ask two circular questions, then self-high-five to make the claim the second time that historically black colleges have "racist hiring practices bordering on illegal". I personally know a lot of non-black professors/faculty from HBCUs, so again, your implied universality of your prejudices aren't supported by my personal experiences. Personally, I work in clinical research that usually demands 60-80h workweeks, and based on the research outputs stalling I can tell when people became parents. Women take a much bigger hit by this, and I can draw the conclusion that men are better qualified, but it's just untrue. Additionally, and it's something I've seen in medical resident recruitment before, certain programs push very hard to recruit white, US graduates, even if they might be less qualified.
But we can go on and on about this, if people's criticism came from an honest/valid place, they wouldn't put up with trump blaming air traffic incidents on DEI without any supporting data, because it's called prejudice. Etc.
That’s exactly what he’s doing. Race: white.
No, it's not. Because he's not hiring competent people that are the right race over equal or better candidates that are some other race - he's hiring based on being in his circle, regardless of competence. We wouldn't be calling out his picks nearly so much if he was picking someone qualified and white over someone potentially more qualified and black rather than picking someone totally unqualified because he knows them.