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University of Florida terminating all diversity, equity and inclusion positions
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 02 Mar 2024
309 points (98.1% liked)
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Soo let me get this right. These programs made it easier for people of certain races or gender to apply to the university? And they got rid of that? How is it bad in any way?
Privilege is a thing you know. Being fair doesn't mean letting the one with the headstart just run and wait for others to catch up.
Instead you give people a head start based on the color of their skin or the genitals that they posses. Both things irrellevant to academic progress.
They're not irrelevant though and thinking they are shows that you don't understand the issue.
In the case of gender, DEI programs should actually be helping men at this point because women are attending and graduating college at a much higher rate than men. But the programs haven't caught up.
As for race, imagine a foot race where a white runner and a black runner are competing. The white runner starts 50 feet ahead of the black runner because the white runner isn't dealing with the effects of socal inequities (things such as school funding, quality of teachers, extracurricular activities availability, stable home life, jobs, etc). So a black student of equal talent, but worse grades on paper has had to work much harder than the white student to get ahead. DEI programs are trying to make up for the fact that a black student has had poorer access to proper education.
Because without DEI, those white kids who statically have access to better schools would always come out ahead when strictly comparing test scores.
These programs also affect white students in poverty by helping them out too.
The entire thing is based on their refusal to think anything other than the starting point is equal. When you base your view on that, everything they are crying about makes sense. It explains a lot. They think being gay or Trans is a choice too.
And yet in the end, someone with worse grades gets the job because of the color of their skin. Fuck that. Reward people based on their achievements, test scores and grades. You wouldn't let me into the olympics on the basis of the fact that I wasn't a runner for 99% of my life. You wouldn't give me a gold medal when I come in last, just because I was never a runner.
It's not about someone coming last making first place. It's about recognizing that grades and school performance is very much a function of the opportunities you're afforded, the quality of education that's available to you, and the support you receive. Hundreds of years of institutional oppression have prevented that kind of quality and support from reaching POC communities.
Except it is about giving prefferential treatment based on some arbitrary set of rules to silence the collective guilt. Nothing more. It's good that the thing is outlawed now.
Just go away. You're either a troll or someone who is incapable of seeing beyond their little bubble.
Ah yes, the everpresent "I don't like what you are saying so I'll gatekeep you". Look at Europe and how it works there, and compare that to the US. A lot of countries banning prefferential treatment based on race, ethnicity, gender. The only allowed affirmative action is diverting more funding to schools that are in poor areas (therefore poorer schools). You talk about my little bubble and you can't see that it is only present in the US, nowhere else, and inherrently unfair.
Grades aren’t the only thing that determine your potential. Being in a diverse school with others from different backgrounds helps expand your viewpoints and actually prepares you for a larger life after academia.
One of the many problems with our rural states and towns.
Of course not, but we’re more likely to put you on a Wheaties box over someone with similar results because you’ve overcome more adversity. It was more difficult for you. You achieved more.
We also might be more likely to start up a running program in your town, because clearly we’re missing out on great runners, who were never able to succeed because they were never able to get off the starting block.
Yes, and starting a new program, investing in poorer schools is fine. What doesn't need to happen, is someone going over the map, circling predominately black neighborhoods, investing in just schools there, and adding points to applications of black people.
Simply don't look at factors like race, gender to determine who can go into a university or not. Look at skills, look at a person that comes in now. I mentioned in a different thread Finland, where they need Swedish speaking doctors and lawyers. So they prioritize those people. The choice is based on an additional skills that are required to the betterment of society. They gain more points for something more that they can do that's needed.
So, that’s the actual problem. If you don’t look at factors like wealth, race, primary language or gender, you can congratulate yourself in your process not being biased, but you will see biased results. Like it or not, people start in different places and face different obstacles, and the goal is to try to adjust for these so the results will be merit based or at least fair, and not racist or sexist.
If we’re playing baseball and I start off third base and score, is that the same merit as you getting up to bat, getting on base, working your way around the bases, and also scoring? Any coach would judge you to have shown higher merit despite our scores being the same
Your example doesn't make sense. Being a specific race doesn't make you better at science, or in your example doesn't make the guy be 3 bases behind. This is just discrimination mixed with wishful thinking i.e. "if this guy would have lived with millionaire parents he would've scored higher" you don't know that, nobody knows. So your example is completely inverted, where a kid from a wealthy family starts at the start and has to work hard, and the kid that had a poor family starts 3 bases ahead. Except now it is based on subjective reasoning and imaginary scenarios of "what if".
Exactly, so why are the results so lopsided? Being brought up in an environment where you had less education opportunities for whatever reason, less opportunity to show your worth, can make you appear worse at science, when if you had the same opportunity, you might show our were as good or better. Why should we settle for good scientists being left behind by the circumstances of their birth or upbringing. If they’re good, they’re good.
Ok, fine, maybe a better example is:
You didn’t score, so should you be cut from the team? I scored and helped the team win, so do I deserve more credit? I didn’t show whether I could bat, get on base, or work my way around the bases. Am I better because I scored, or are you better because you showed more merit at more things, overcame a more difficult challenge, show a better likelihood of more contribution to the team over the season? The coach should consider all the facts before deciding who to cut, not just the score of one game
None of this is meant to give anyone a free ride, only an adjustment and only where appropriate
I recently had this conversation with my brother where he voiced a similar opinion to you.
In the end, what should matter is skills of a specific person and recruiting based on getting the best of the best. Otherwise it is lacking objectivity. Your brother's example comes to mind - would the situation be better if they didn't push unqualified people based on a less represented gender?
Overall what I am saying is this. You can take action, or you can decide not to. Taking action and it resulting in incredible bias, misogyny, misandry, racism is in the end worse, than if someone hadn't prefferred employees / students based on the characteristics that make those things appear. Not having special programs based on background means it's everyone for themselves, and the best candidate is selected. It seems extremely hard to have a perfect program that changes the hiring / enrolling students process. Otherwise I see two sides of the same coin - a company not hiring a 25yo woman, since she's part of the demographic most likely to have maternity leave, and a company doing the exact opposite and hiring women because they are underrepresented in the field.
Please explain to be the need to have women in engineering / leadership. What's a difference between a woman that knows CAD, went to study engineering / mechanics, etc, and a man that knows CAD, went to study engineering / mechanics etc. I see none. I wouldn't hire someone because of their sex, had everything been equal (which we all know never are). If a woman has great work ethics and has the knowledge / expertise I need, I hire a woman. If a man has the knowledge / expertise I need and great work ethics, I hire a man. It doesn't matter what sex they are, what they like to do in their own time, how they dress (maybe only when it'd be a customer facing job). What matters is how good of a worker they'll be.
Starting with the assumption that women are equally capable of succeeding at engineering jobs, we should generally expect similar numbers of successful women engineers as men, but there aren’t.
That means we are missing out on a huge pool of potentially successful engineers and they are missing out on some well paying jobs. Why should we settle for choosing new candidates mostly from half the population? Think of all the excellent engineers we missed out on!
Yet you’re willing to miss out on that person with great work ethic and the skills you need if they’re discouraged by discrimination, harassment, societal expectations?
No, you even the field for everyone so that academic progress can happen based on talent and work.
Sure, but that isn't going to happen overnight. School DEI programs are the best we have until schools are funded equally across the board. But that's never going to happen, especially not if the Republicans get their way with Project 2025 and the school voucher program they want to implement.
Sooo achieving higher scores and being overall more deserving of a position isn't a level playing field, because the other person is a different race. There isn't any talk of talent or work here. It's prefferential treatment based on stuff that isn't possible to be controlled.
You're very silly.
Guess we don't fix racism with more racism. Meritocracy FTW. It is already illegal to discriminate by race, Federally. Smart people can come from any race.
If I am reading the source right, it is not stopping people from applying for jobs. It is getting rid of DEI departments. Which could or likely have white hires, too.
In Harvard, they were making up lies about Asian applicants and their characters in order to prop up black student's lower scores via personality traits, which was well, DEI in action. This part did not make the news much.
This was found in the court case through discovery, everyone should read it. It was wild, and seemingly the main reason and drive why Affirmative Action was cancelled and overturned.
Road to hell paved with good intentions and all that jazz.
The sad part is, people here seem to not agree with that, instead supporting what essentially is racism and prefferrential treatment.
It's not about preferential treatment. Because if it was preferential treatment, well, white folks have had that for centuries.
It's about leveling things up. Yes, smart people come from all backgrounds. But if that smart person has a cognitive burden of worrying about basic stuff that other smart people don't have too, he/she will be at disadvantage when seeking opportunities to advance.
I'm not saying I'm an expert, and that you're totally wrong and I'm totally right. It's just that the topic is not that simple as black and white (heh.)
It is that simple. In the other comment you made, I brought up Europe as an example on how to do things right. You are trying to argue semantics, when the thing is very simple. You don't call it prefferential treatment, you try to make it sound better to the reader, when it is exactly that. Prefferring candidates that are of a specific background, decided by people arbitrairly choosing the amount of leeway someone gets, or who those people are. It's downright immoral.
If I would complain, that my company failed when making a product because I went bankrupt, and then pointed a finger at a millionaire, saying "give me this contract instead of him because I come from a poorer upbringing", I would be laughed at everywhere. And this is exactly what this is.
Europe is not some utopia in which discrimination does not exist and everyone is equal.
But it is better than the US when it comes to giving someone an advantage based on race or gender.
In which contexts? Because I'm sorry, you seem to be against affirmative action, and affirmative action definitely gives more advantages to minorities in the U.S. than Europe, which has none of that.
You're now contradicting yourself. Is preferential treatment the problem or not? (and it's spelled preferential with one f.)
So clearly you're talking about something else. Please elaborate, if you'd like.
Stop lying, you know full well that's not what's happening
Just read the comments. It's full of people arguing that universities should preffer people based on their race.
I'm okay with them considering things other than strictly academics. It should be up to the uni to decide what kind of institution they want to be.
Would you be okay when they said "whites only" then?
If someone wants to doom their university, I wouldn't support using force to stop them. I don't think that means I'm okay with it.
I feel like there's a limit in there somewhere that I'd change from meh to "fuck those guys" on the racism front. A degree from a uni that doesn't focus on academics should warrant a reduction in the perceived value of their degrees.
I kind of think we've been distracted here, though. We're not talking about DEI or the ideologies that drive their activities. We're talking about AA. You can have AA policies without DEI staff or their question begging theories.
Well I technically said "if they said whites only", while it could be clothed in "you get -30 points out of 100" with the bar being 65 or something.
Except for the fact that affirmative action isn't all that nice and dandy either. Like, quotas are straight up bullshit and often are banned in countries in Europe. The only affirmative action that makes sense for the community, is when they have a skill that is in demand in the market. Like, reading wiki, in Finland, they let Swedish speaking people have worse grades to advance in legal and medical, because the country has a need of Swedish speaking lawyers and doctors.
I was referring to any amount of racism from 0-100. I'd just consider them all pieces of shit at 100 and only a little misled towards the other end.
I guess I feel like I'm willing to let peeps experiment a bit with their own shit so we can see the outcome. When what you're doing leads to more kids failing, that's obviously a bad policy.
I mostly take issue with the ideology that leads us to use AA that harms pretty much everyone, including the people it's designed to help.
The thing is - there are usually people who have done better. I don't mean "fail everyone, don't fill the seats". The entry bar gets naturally lowered when nobody can join. What I am saying, is that if there are 30 candidates for a spot, and a person gets in because of their race or background, and someone who scored higher gets rejected, then that's plain wrong.
In state funded schools I agree. Oh. That's the context of this post and I should have been more clear on that. For private institutions I don't think it matters much.
Well, yeah, public schools. They should be at a level where private schooling isn't required that much.
Do you think that people's behaviour is due to culture or genetics?
Both, actually. Genes and experiences are both responsible for elements inside human behaviour.
That doesn't have to do with the topic at hand. Universities should be meritocracies, with the best of the best earning doctorates / degrees / positions. There shouldn't be a situation where someone goes "well, your scores are better, but he is black so he gets the position"
Your theory does not account for systemic racism, history of oppression, and socio-economic disadvantages that minorities face in America.
If the only race who gets a fair shake in America is white people, albeit rich white people, then those will be the only ones to get into College based on meritocracy.
Why would it account for those things?
Maalus sees uni as a place to learn and expand human knowledge.
You see it as a tool of social and political change.
What a giant load of right wing bullshit you're spewing.
You know full well what's wrong with this, stop lying, stop pretending