They're the fastest growing states, with incredibly dynamic economies. Texas is currently defeating Russia through replacing oil production. Miami is the recipient of a lot of people leaving the Bay Area.
You may not agree, but what they're doing seems to work.
I’ve no idea about Texas but if there’s one thing that Florida doesn’t have is a dynamic economy. Per capita pay is pretty low compared to more developed states, even in areas where salaries are usually good, like tech.
It’s great if you have a remote job that pays well, otherwise you’re in for a surprise for what people offer here.
Texas is #2 and Florida is #8 for the most diverse states in the the U.S. [1] - maybe it's worth looking at this issue with more nuance if we actually care about equality.
Diversity is hardly surprising since they used to belong to Mexico and still share a long border with that state. It would almost be impossible for them not to have a large Hispanic population. But what is their ranking for abortion rights? LGBTQ rights? Mass shootings? Quality of energy grid? Etc.
I don't understand your metrics. What could be a better metric for gauging how diverse groups feel about living somewhere than looking at where those groups actually live? Certainly not abortion rights, mass shootings or energy grid metrics. Your implication that immigrants willing to change countries are unwilling to change states seems like a very weak argument as well.
Please don't take HN threads into regional flamewar, or ideological flamewar, or any flamewar. Such threads are predictable and nasty. That's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
The article doesn't seem to explain what, exactly "tenure reform" is and just says that the law here codifies what tenure means. Does anyone know what specific reforms were contemplated that are now blocked?
I was honestly curious to see what TX universities would be forced to do to compete without tenure. I imagine there may be plenty of academics who would take a pay raise without tenure, but only at an institution that has no tenure at all.
It'll be curious what attracting and retaining professors for political hot-button topics becomes like for Texas, but I expect making it harder to find faculty to teach some subjects was part of the intent...
Banning DEI offices is great news. I personally find the idea of striving for “equity” abhorrent (meritocracy is the gold standard and no, I do not believe that we need to make up for an “unequal start to life”) and reducing administrative headcount makes it a win win.
Banning people from stupid, harmless stuff is bad news though?
It annoys me too to see DEI people make stacks off of weaponized bullshit while us engineers keep the lights on, but that's a free business transaction. Why should the state be involved?
It’s actually pretty easy to argue for “equality of opportunity” (i.e. reducing or even making up for an unequal start of life) from a meritocracy viewpoint.
You should also help black children, no matter their economic status, because they are discriminated against compared to their economic peer groups in many facets of life, including education.
Luckily for my argument there are relatively few people who are Will Smith's kids (2, I guess) and relatively many who are, for example, black middle class kids who face significant challenges that their white middle class peers would not. A strictly class-based DEI type program would not acknowledge this reality.
Are we talking about in the present day US? If you can find strong evidence of modern comprehensive anti-slav racism and discrimination then sure, if not then no.
Yeah, of course, there is a lot of hatred against the russians. Depending on the politics, ukranians too. Also against the chinese during covid not that long ago.
On the other hand, if someone got preferential treatment because of his skin color, and took my spot for something, I'd hate him too.
I live in a former socialist country, but most of the system has not changed a lot.
Most of what USA does, from affirmative action to preferential hiring based on race or any kind of born-with status would be seen as very racist and/or sexist here.
Even to get into college, points (from grades and standardized testing) are the only thing taken in consideration in most colleges (visual arts, acting, and music being notable exceptions).
Depends on what you consider a continent... considering where we slavs came from originally, we did kill a bunch of people before we settled here, and we've also been used as slaves by other cultures, then killed a bunch of other cultures, also killed a bunch of our own cultures, and in more recent times, a bunch of germans, took away almost everything from everyone, gave it to the government, then a few decades of peace then a bit more of killing ourselves again.
So basically the same as any other country.
edit: but it seems you expect people who never owned slaves to give their spot to people who never were slaves.
The issue with slavery is that the children of slaves and victims of racism are still affected by it economically.
I consider myself middle-of-the-road on most of this stuff, but if everything were fair there'd be an equivalent wealth distribution when comparing races. There's not.
Ergo, it's kind of like the British plundering everyone's stuff, sticking it in the British Museum, then declaring "We're done with all that racism stuff, but we're keeping all this stuff that's ours."
But does your theory include slavs too? I mean.. the word 'slave' is similar for a reason. What about the irish? Italians?
What about young british Bobby or Billy, whos alcoholic single mother moved to USA, and now they both live in a trailer park in bumfuck arizona? Should he be excluded since someone somehwere did something, and that someone lived on the same island as his ancestors did?
Since you've already admitted that you aren't actually from the US, which of the following do you believe / not believe:
1. The US has social programs and educational programs that assist economically underprivileged people in racially independent ways
2. In the US, there are particularities of racial relations and history that make groups like Native and African American populations particularly underserved even when accounting for economic status
3. Social programs that attempt to address (2) are morally objectionable, even if there are particular racial issues unique to the US's history and culture that make race a distinct class in addition to economic class.
(One thing I find particularly odd is that people seem to generally favor anti-caste-discrimination regulations on HN, but find anti-US-race-discrimination laws. But both of those stem from the same underlying recognition: caste and race in the US are both strongly correlated with economic class, but even restricting to equivalent economic situations, lower-caste people in India (and subcultures where there is significant Indian cultural influence), and African American people in the US are more likely to face discrimination).
It's rarely useful to ask a person to simplify their opinion on something complicated into yes/no answers to a few questions. It's usually a form of leading/framing (even if we don't intend it to be).
Yes, but the problem is that the British have options for fixing that situation that are both effective (just give it back, if those governments want it) and don't do too much collateral harm. It's an oversimplified comparison. The effects of slavery can't just be undone, and the indirect steps we can try to take (force diversity in business/education) do other harm, which some of those harmed will (totally understandably) not tolerate. On top of that, we can only try to force a theoretical ideal - as you say, "if everything were fair there'd be an equivalent wealth distribution when comparing races". But many things are not fair, and the effect of slavery is only one thing contributing to that, so it's an ineffective indicator that the effects of slavery have been undone. And frankly, even if we magically fixed everything unfair, there could still easily be racial differences in wealth distribution by simple correlation of harmless factors (i.e. if there is any racial correlation in types of jobs preferred).
It's practically an impossible problem - both to completely fix and even just to discuss. Of course we should do what we can and what is reasonably fair, but ultimately, voters (who are at no fault for the historical situation) must largely agree to what "fair" means. Good luck on that one.
I picked the British Museum because they aren't even willing to give things back. Low hanging fruit and dual-purpose example.
The way I look at it is that if ones goal is equality of economic opportunity, and one accepts that (a) education is the strongest method to create economic opportunity & (b) that access to education is gated by factors that are heavily influenced by family economics, which are historically influenced by race, then you arrive at affirmative action.
It's absolutely a racist policy. It's absolutely unfair to those not advantaged by it.
But it's also the only way of getting from (everyone not in these groups has generational advantage) to (equality of economic opportunity).
It's impossible to afford direct redress of ~200 years of lost wages and restriction / destruction of economic opportunity for ~15% of the US population.
Advantaging still-disadvantaged members of those groups for a few generations seems the next best thing.
I can't look at the racial wealth inequality statistics [0] and feel ethical about advocating anything less.
I do think that it should be done in a meritocracy within advantaged groups, rather than lifting the minimum and applying to everyone within the advantaged group -- that is, we should broaden those with access (i.e. +X% should go to college, versus non-advantaged) and outcome (i.e. success should be +X% successful, versus non-advantaged) but there should still be winners and losers within the group.
> meritocracy is the gold standard and no, I do not believe that we need to make up for an “unequal start to life”
In labor markets, sure. But isn’t merit for a youth largely built through education? Certainly feels like full-blown meritocracy without accounting for equality of opportunity is for some a self-fulfilling prophecy and for others a catch-22. At any rate probably a recipe for supercharging wealth inequality.
Here's the corollary of that: how does typical DEI actually help equality of opportunity? Put another way, do you think a black student from a wealthy family in San Jose or a poor white student from rural Alabama needs more help? Now show me a real-world DEI program that would help the white student instead of the black one.
If the programs are based on race instead of eg. financial status, access to education, etc., then yeah, banning them would help little white Bobby from a trailer park, because he currently can't get that help because of his skin color.
I used to think this way too; until I recently noticed it was a false dichotomy!
There is plenty of room to be spent on money for impoverished youngsters of any background and we should be petitioning our politicians to spend MORE OVERALL on youth, education, and nourishment programs. It doesn't have to be a zero-sum, but our politicians don't want us to realize this...
American in particular needs nourishment funding for all socioecon/demographic classes.
The argument there is that people from under-represented populations have to face discrimination regardless of their economic status. This is why DEI looks at the whole cross section of socio-economic status, and not just the economic part.
To put it simply, a poor white student from rural Alabama only needs a proper accent and a good suit to blend in with the upper-classes. However, a black student only needs to lose access to their parents money and they immediately have a longer harder uphill battle to fight against racism which will presume them to be uneducated, underperforming, and generationally poor unless they work 2x as hard to prove it wrong.
That said...
I do think there's a danger in supporting DEI programs simply because they have good outcomes (which other posters are doing). If a group achieves your end-results but doesn't have your philosophy, then my life experience (e.g. MAGA) has shown that they will become the enemy that you don't see until it's too late.
How about helping poor kids (no matter their race or gender) with their education, helping them come to the same starint level for the 'rest of their lives'?
And this is exactly what a DEI office would be necessary to make happen (you could call it a non DEI office, but that's what it would be).
Just because you disagree with a particular form of DEI (and to put my personal cards on the table, I am somewhere between indifferent to moderately against race based affirmative action) doesn't mean the concept of DEI is not important.
In fact, as we can see in this thread here, most people who say they are against DEI are in fact in favor because they do recognize that, at the very least, current higher educational practices are highly tilted towards those who are rich and those whose parents already have college degrees.
But that's not DEI, that's just a form of social security.
Maybe you guys need colleges looking only at grades and SAT scores, and no questions about race on any of the forms. This is how most of the world does it, and there is no need for DEI offices.
If the student loans were cut down a bit, prices would probably go down too for everyone. (or maybe even have a taxpayer paid education system, like most of the rest of the world).
No, people who say they are against DEI are actually against what DEI has become, which is NOT DEI. Nowhere in a true DEI system would they conspire to blame whites or men for all the ills of the world, put more emphasis on long-past crimes than current ones, make certain groups not responsible for their actions, or claim gender is a social construct and totally up to the individual while maintaining that race was not, after decades of maintaining that it actually was.
DEI isn’t only focused on race. And even if so, if there are more statistically distributed poor people of one race getting by than another, that is a problem.
> Black and Hispanics make up just 14 percent of students admitted from outside the automatic threshold, even though they make up 60 percent of Texas high school graduates. Meanwhile, white and Asian students make up 73 percent of non-automatically admitted students, while they make up 39 percent of Texas high school graduates overall.
DEI is about what you "are", and reduces what you do/did/can/... to stuff that was decided when you were born. In a perfect "DEI" world, your status would be decided the moment you are conceived and would be utterly unchangeable. It's fundamentally a status game. It's about "blood", what blood, skin, hair, ... you're born with.
DEI has advanced in society to the point that, ironically, it's not tolerant of other viewpoints. And the ideology doesn't see this as a problem, in fact like all zero-merit ideologies (meaning they don't value individuals at all, and certainly not on personal achievement), they're actively proud of being bullies. Except this is a bullies club where entry is based on your genes.
DEI as "let's make a meritocracy more meritocratic" is great. Fantastic even. And it certainly was a necessity. DEI appears to not be that, anymore.
And even this is disregarding that DEI is at least partially a coverup for dumb spending cuts by government. Or that it's failing. The advancement of DEI is certainly not making the poor better off.
Isn't IQ both highly inherited and highly correlated with achievement? And if both those are true then isn't the idea of meritocracy ultimately mostly still down to luck of birth?
This is one of those things that we can't really talk about anymore. There are racist connotations, ironically to both sides of the argument.
To say it has a strong genetic component could be construed to mean certain races have IQ differences.
To say it does not have a genetic component can be construed to saying current members of races are largely responsible for their own IQ, which is denying the effects of unequal treatment of races.
As for science, there's a problem with heritability. Do you mean genes? Or do you mean "average" attitudes to the intelligence and education of children, which can correlate with race and location? Or do you mean environment in other ways (such as money and available resources, divorce status of parents, ... which again correlates with race)?
Genes alone (from split up twin studies), explain about half the variability in IQ (which translates to about 4 IQ points). The environment you had as a child explains the rest.
Specifically: here's an article where Rachel Dolezal clearly states she would like to identify as black, to escape her parents' upbringing. She was accused of being a "race faker", which to me indicates, less-than-subtly, that changing your race is not accepted by DEI groups.
(Ironically the "reason" this is unfair strikes me as paticularly ironic. She claims to take on a black racial identity to escape the suffering her family inflicted on her. This suffering appears real, and there's certainly enough elements to indicate it's an ongoing issue in her life even now. According to the "African American community", this is unfair, because they suffered centuries ago, but not personally)
More the half the comments here are mentioning helping the poor in a colorblind way. Also, those big headline tuition numbers are only paid by the rich which basically subsides those with financial need.
This seems to happen with many philosophical ideas: Christianity has become staunchly capitalist, the direct opposite of everything that Jesus taught; Communism, the dictatorship of the working class, became the dictatorship of the non-working elite class, etc.
I agree that meritocracy is the gold standard and that diversity programs usually have problems in direct proportion to how much concrete action they actually take. However, equity is obviously good, and is not mutually exclusive with meritocracy. You kind of imply agreement there, using quotes to imply that people strive for a false kind of equity, but then you say "no, I do not believe that we need to make up for an 'unequal start to life'", which is exactly the type of equity that is compatible with meritocracy.
It's the key part of your post, but it doesn't really stand on its own without some kind of explanation. It's kind of like saying, "There is no such thing as an 8-foot-tall bird. And no, ostriches don't count."
I internalized why affirmative action and equity are awkwardly unjust in the short-term but more just and better in the long-term, but I don't think that we, as a society, are convinced that the ends justify the means.
It feels good to try to be colorblind, for example, even if critical theory would blackpill you that you can't really be colorblind and you're lying to yourself. But any alternative is socially unsustainable precisely because we resent racism.
As a society, I don't think we can psychologically afford social engineering projects like affirmative action. The insecurity and resentment they breed feel really bad and are huge powder kegs for political strife. So it's probably better to not do them.
I don't care about DEI. Not an American either. Just the whole "meritocracy" argument seems like it's a bit problematic.
In arts merit is really problematic but even in sciences and math. A person with the "right connections" can find himself collaborating with the best scientists and in the best labs. Whereas a person with bad connections might be unable to afford the networking even if they do get a scholarship to the best school.
Even in "objective" grading. Is the grade of the student who worked all night to afford school equivalent to the one who had a private tutor and all the free time to study?
To be clear: I don't have the answer for this. But I don't think anyone has. It seems to me that a lot of people use this word as a cudgel rather than use a more nuanced individual distinction. Which I agree, doesn't scale well.
For those who may have been confused, The Texan[1] is not to be confused with The Daily Texan[2]. For a moment I was cheering to see the student paper on the front page of HN. Alas.
Considering the affirmative action weights for college applicants, wouldn't meritocracy favour asians? Or is there another reason they get pushed so much down by the policies?
"meritocracy" doesn't exist. "merit" is a purely objective social construct, contingent on political, cultural and racial hierarchies designed to favor the status quo - which in the US is the power of white upper class Christian men. It will simply be used as a means of justifying entrenched power structures and prejudice.
Because what people who object to DEI and equality programs always claim is the problem is too many minorities and too many women - the implication that minorities and women systemically don't deserve equal status to whites and men, and that in a fair system, they wouldn't have it.
I'm not blaming white people, I'm blaming white supremacy - which white people can be victims of as well.
But I've had this conversation with people more than enough times to know you won't appreciate the nuance. You have to make this about me and about victimizing white people, rather than a prejudiced system. I understand, but I'm not participating.
How can pushing asians down in favour of black people be white supremacy? If there was white supremacy, there would be no asians nor black people there.
> Because what people who object to DEI and equality programs always claim is the problem is too many minorities and too many women - the implication that minorities and women systemically don't deserve equal status to whites and men, and that in a fair system, they wouldn't have it.
Well it seems some minorities aren't fan of DEI either:
> Campus Diversity Is Campus Jew-Hatred
> How DEI is openly attempting to marginalize and silence Jewish students
> status quo - which in the US is the power of white upper class Christian men
Did you know that the White House staff is 154 [1]/474 [2] Jewish, and 44% ethnic minority [3]? That means Jews (2.4% of US population [4]), are 32% of White House staff, while non-Jewish whites (55% of US) are just 24%.
For perspective, Asian-Americans are 5.9% of the US, so if they were as well represented as Jews, White House staff would be 78% Asian.
Would you care to re-evaluate who the US status quo favors? If you're not convinced, I encourage you to apply the same analysis to the Ivy League. You'll find similar numbers.
Thank you for saying this. White supremacy has always been the fabric of the US. There was a brief moment in time where it seemed like we were making some progress but now white supremacy taking points have become very mainstream (you see a lot of them in this thread).
White kids who can’t academically compete against Asians will get more slots. Asians will be relegated to their racial percentage regardless of academic acjievement.
How do they legally ban DEI offices? Aren’t universities basically businesses in the US? (Not an American.) Even if not, aren’t they allowed to do as they see fit?
Really surprised the government has the ability to do this, but I’m not super well educated here.
IANAL, but US states tend to have broad powers while the federal government is specifically limited by the constitution on what they can do. The supreme court could later find that these states banning DEI is illegal per the constitution, but for now the states typically have the authority to do as they please as long as it's not something already found to be going against the constitutional clauses that grant citizens rights.
That reads a bit confusing, but basically the constitution exists to give citizens rights and specifically limit the federal government. States can do more than the federal government but can't trample on the rights of citizens.
Also, "public universities" (the ones this affects) in the US are state-funded. If parent was from the UK, believe there's some public/private terminology difference.
DEI folks are primarily grifters, anyways. But can someone explain more on the tenure reforms? Are those changes good or bad from the perspective of faculty?
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[ 4.1 ms ] story [ 178 ms ] threadYou may not agree, but what they're doing seems to work.
It’s great if you have a remote job that pays well, otherwise you’re in for a surprise for what people offer here.
[1] https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/most-divers...
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
It annoys me too to see DEI people make stacks off of weaponized bullshit while us engineers keep the lights on, but that's a free business transaction. Why should the state be involved?
You should also help black children, no matter their economic status, because they are discriminated against compared to their economic peer groups in many facets of life, including education.
Luckily for my argument there are relatively few people who are Will Smith's kids (2, I guess) and relatively many who are, for example, black middle class kids who face significant challenges that their white middle class peers would not. A strictly class-based DEI type program would not acknowledge this reality.
On the other hand, if someone got preferential treatment because of his skin color, and took my spot for something, I'd hate him too.
Most of what USA does, from affirmative action to preferential hiring based on race or any kind of born-with status would be seen as very racist and/or sexist here.
Even to get into college, points (from grades and standardized testing) are the only thing taken in consideration in most colleges (visual arts, acting, and music being notable exceptions).
So basically the same as any other country.
edit: but it seems you expect people who never owned slaves to give their spot to people who never were slaves.
I consider myself middle-of-the-road on most of this stuff, but if everything were fair there'd be an equivalent wealth distribution when comparing races. There's not.
Ergo, it's kind of like the British plundering everyone's stuff, sticking it in the British Museum, then declaring "We're done with all that racism stuff, but we're keeping all this stuff that's ours."
What about young british Bobby or Billy, whos alcoholic single mother moved to USA, and now they both live in a trailer park in bumfuck arizona? Should he be excluded since someone somehwere did something, and that someone lived on the same island as his ancestors did?
1. The US has social programs and educational programs that assist economically underprivileged people in racially independent ways
2. In the US, there are particularities of racial relations and history that make groups like Native and African American populations particularly underserved even when accounting for economic status
3. Social programs that attempt to address (2) are morally objectionable, even if there are particular racial issues unique to the US's history and culture that make race a distinct class in addition to economic class.
(One thing I find particularly odd is that people seem to generally favor anti-caste-discrimination regulations on HN, but find anti-US-race-discrimination laws. But both of those stem from the same underlying recognition: caste and race in the US are both strongly correlated with economic class, but even restricting to equivalent economic situations, lower-caste people in India (and subcultures where there is significant Indian cultural influence), and African American people in the US are more likely to face discrimination).
It's practically an impossible problem - both to completely fix and even just to discuss. Of course we should do what we can and what is reasonably fair, but ultimately, voters (who are at no fault for the historical situation) must largely agree to what "fair" means. Good luck on that one.
The way I look at it is that if ones goal is equality of economic opportunity, and one accepts that (a) education is the strongest method to create economic opportunity & (b) that access to education is gated by factors that are heavily influenced by family economics, which are historically influenced by race, then you arrive at affirmative action.
It's absolutely a racist policy. It's absolutely unfair to those not advantaged by it.
But it's also the only way of getting from (everyone not in these groups has generational advantage) to (equality of economic opportunity).
It's impossible to afford direct redress of ~200 years of lost wages and restriction / destruction of economic opportunity for ~15% of the US population.
Advantaging still-disadvantaged members of those groups for a few generations seems the next best thing.
I can't look at the racial wealth inequality statistics [0] and feel ethical about advocating anything less.
I do think that it should be done in a meritocracy within advantaged groups, rather than lifting the minimum and applying to everyone within the advantaged group -- that is, we should broaden those with access (i.e. +X% should go to college, versus non-advantaged) and outcome (i.e. success should be +X% successful, versus non-advantaged) but there should still be winners and losers within the group.
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_inequality_in_the_Uni...
In labor markets, sure. But isn’t merit for a youth largely built through education? Certainly feels like full-blown meritocracy without accounting for equality of opportunity is for some a self-fulfilling prophecy and for others a catch-22. At any rate probably a recipe for supercharging wealth inequality.
I would agree that most would probably fail that test, does they mean we need blanket bans on equity programs or more effective ones?
American in particular needs nourishment funding for all socioecon/demographic classes.
To put it simply, a poor white student from rural Alabama only needs a proper accent and a good suit to blend in with the upper-classes. However, a black student only needs to lose access to their parents money and they immediately have a longer harder uphill battle to fight against racism which will presume them to be uneducated, underperforming, and generationally poor unless they work 2x as hard to prove it wrong.
That said...
I do think there's a danger in supporting DEI programs simply because they have good outcomes (which other posters are doing). If a group achieves your end-results but doesn't have your philosophy, then my life experience (e.g. MAGA) has shown that they will become the enemy that you don't see until it's too late.
Just because you disagree with a particular form of DEI (and to put my personal cards on the table, I am somewhere between indifferent to moderately against race based affirmative action) doesn't mean the concept of DEI is not important.
In fact, as we can see in this thread here, most people who say they are against DEI are in fact in favor because they do recognize that, at the very least, current higher educational practices are highly tilted towards those who are rich and those whose parents already have college degrees.
Maybe you guys need colleges looking only at grades and SAT scores, and no questions about race on any of the forms. This is how most of the world does it, and there is no need for DEI offices.
If the student loans were cut down a bit, prices would probably go down too for everyone. (or maybe even have a taxpayer paid education system, like most of the rest of the world).
DEI isn’t only focused on race. And even if so, if there are more statistically distributed poor people of one race getting by than another, that is a problem.
https://www.texastribune.org/2016/06/23/race-and-admissions-...
> Black and Hispanics make up just 14 percent of students admitted from outside the automatic threshold, even though they make up 60 percent of Texas high school graduates. Meanwhile, white and Asian students make up 73 percent of non-automatically admitted students, while they make up 39 percent of Texas high school graduates overall.
DEI has advanced in society to the point that, ironically, it's not tolerant of other viewpoints. And the ideology doesn't see this as a problem, in fact like all zero-merit ideologies (meaning they don't value individuals at all, and certainly not on personal achievement), they're actively proud of being bullies. Except this is a bullies club where entry is based on your genes.
DEI as "let's make a meritocracy more meritocratic" is great. Fantastic even. And it certainly was a necessity. DEI appears to not be that, anymore.
And even this is disregarding that DEI is at least partially a coverup for dumb spending cuts by government. Or that it's failing. The advancement of DEI is certainly not making the poor better off.
This is one of those things that we can't really talk about anymore. There are racist connotations, ironically to both sides of the argument.
To say it has a strong genetic component could be construed to mean certain races have IQ differences.
To say it does not have a genetic component can be construed to saying current members of races are largely responsible for their own IQ, which is denying the effects of unequal treatment of races.
As for science, there's a problem with heritability. Do you mean genes? Or do you mean "average" attitudes to the intelligence and education of children, which can correlate with race and location? Or do you mean environment in other ways (such as money and available resources, divorce status of parents, ... which again correlates with race)?
Genes alone (from split up twin studies), explain about half the variability in IQ (which translates to about 4 IQ points). The environment you had as a child explains the rest.
Can you find some concrete examples of prominent proponents of diversity, equity, and inclusion programs making the claims you attribute to them?
https://www.insidehighered.com/admissions/article/2021/10/25...
"Admissions experts ... agreed that lying is a problem"
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/when-employee-lies-race-there...
https://www.askamanager.org/2022/07/my-relative-is-lying-abo...
https://www.foxnews.com/media/white-woman-caught-lying-race-...
https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/columnists/story/2020-0...
Specifically: here's an article where Rachel Dolezal clearly states she would like to identify as black, to escape her parents' upbringing. She was accused of being a "race faker", which to me indicates, less-than-subtly, that changing your race is not accepted by DEI groups.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/dec/13/rachel-dolez...
(Ironically the "reason" this is unfair strikes me as paticularly ironic. She claims to take on a black racial identity to escape the suffering her family inflicted on her. This suffering appears real, and there's certainly enough elements to indicate it's an ongoing issue in her life even now. According to the "African American community", this is unfair, because they suffered centuries ago, but not personally)
And likely anyone who values true freedom of speech: https://themissingdatadepot.substack.com/p/is-dei-destroying...
Meritocracy is a dystopia that we somehow warped into its opposite, a utopia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rise_of_the_Meritocracy
This seems to happen with many philosophical ideas: Christianity has become staunchly capitalist, the direct opposite of everything that Jesus taught; Communism, the dictatorship of the working class, became the dictatorship of the non-working elite class, etc.
It's the key part of your post, but it doesn't really stand on its own without some kind of explanation. It's kind of like saying, "There is no such thing as an 8-foot-tall bird. And no, ostriches don't count."
I internalized why affirmative action and equity are awkwardly unjust in the short-term but more just and better in the long-term, but I don't think that we, as a society, are convinced that the ends justify the means.
It feels good to try to be colorblind, for example, even if critical theory would blackpill you that you can't really be colorblind and you're lying to yourself. But any alternative is socially unsustainable precisely because we resent racism.
As a society, I don't think we can psychologically afford social engineering projects like affirmative action. The insecurity and resentment they breed feel really bad and are huge powder kegs for political strife. So it's probably better to not do them.
Honest question.
I don't care about DEI. Not an American either. Just the whole "meritocracy" argument seems like it's a bit problematic.
In arts merit is really problematic but even in sciences and math. A person with the "right connections" can find himself collaborating with the best scientists and in the best labs. Whereas a person with bad connections might be unable to afford the networking even if they do get a scholarship to the best school.
Even in "objective" grading. Is the grade of the student who worked all night to afford school equivalent to the one who had a private tutor and all the free time to study?
To be clear: I don't have the answer for this. But I don't think anyone has. It seems to me that a lot of people use this word as a cudgel rather than use a more nuanced individual distinction. Which I agree, doesn't scale well.
[1] https://thetexan.news [2] https://thedailytexan.com
And what's wrong with meritocracy?
Because what people who object to DEI and equality programs always claim is the problem is too many minorities and too many women - the implication that minorities and women systemically don't deserve equal status to whites and men, and that in a fair system, they wouldn't have it.
On one hand you have black people who benefit the most, asian people who lose the most, and people like you, who blame white people for that.
But I've had this conversation with people more than enough times to know you won't appreciate the nuance. You have to make this about me and about victimizing white people, rather than a prejudiced system. I understand, but I'm not participating.
Well it seems some minorities aren't fan of DEI either:
> Campus Diversity Is Campus Jew-Hatred
> How DEI is openly attempting to marginalize and silence Jewish students
https://www.commentary.org/articles/seth-mandel/campus-diver...
> The Uncomfortable Truth About Affirmative Action and Asian-Americans
https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-uncomfortable-t...
None of these articles are from the perspective of "white upper Christian men".
Did you know that the White House staff is 154 [1]/474 [2] Jewish, and 44% ethnic minority [3]? That means Jews (2.4% of US population [4]), are 32% of White House staff, while non-Jewish whites (55% of US) are just 24%.
For perspective, Asian-Americans are 5.9% of the US, so if they were as well represented as Jews, White House staff would be 78% Asian.
Would you care to re-evaluate who the US status quo favors? If you're not convinced, I encourage you to apply the same analysis to the Ivy League. You'll find similar numbers.
[1] https://twitter.com/WhiteHouse/status/1658519373881933833
[2] https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/July-1... - these are roles such as policy advisors, director of congressional outreach, director of labor engagement, etc., not security or housekeeping.
[3] https://www.reuters.com/world/us/women-make-up-60-white-hous...
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Jews
Really surprised the government has the ability to do this, but I’m not super well educated here.
That reads a bit confusing, but basically the constitution exists to give citizens rights and specifically limit the federal government. States can do more than the federal government but can't trample on the rights of citizens.