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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   32893 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 5, 2024

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DEI is still pretty popular as a basic idea - https://thehill.com/homenews/race-politics/4727744-americans-favor-dei-programs-poll/

Now you can argue people don't know what DEI really is or just not believe polling, but just throwing it out there isn't a boogeyman outside of right-wing circles.

people don't know what DEI really is or just not believe polling

California of all places voting against affirmative action comes to mind. People like things that sound nice, people do not like the reality behind the mask.

The Washington Post-Ipsos poll also asked about companies taking up “programs to hire more employees from groups that are underrepresented in their workforce, such as racial and ethnic minorities and people with disabilities and to promote equity in the workplace,” to which 69 percent said was “a good thing.”

Sounds like the wording of the poll was biased to get the answers WaPo wanted. Because, at least the last time I checked, this is essentially affirmative action which has always been unpopular even among African Americans

I'd argue that wording actually does matter. There might be some misrepresentation all over the spectrum, but people do think differently about e.g. a program that deliberately goes out and seeks underrepresented groups and helps them prepare better for applications, and e.g. a program that sets a soft or hard quota for hiring a certain amount of underrepresented people, or even sets aside individual positions for certain people explicitly. Sure, you can argue that they might be roughly morally equivalent. But the shades of meaning do matter to people. In my examples, both technically fit the goal of promoting equity, but one is much more palatable than the other.

So yeah, though it doesn't make for snappy debate, you do actually need to define DEI at some point, and people define it differently. But if we're talking about the "basic idea" then Outlaw is completely correct, the basic idea IS popular. People are almost hard-coded to value "fairness" and so if DEI shows up with that framing, people will go for it.

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