The insinuation that if you see any woman or person of color in a position of power, prestige, or even competence, they got there because of identity politics and not their own merit, is directly bigoted, not even concealed by the first or second degree. The corollary, of course, is that you can only trust white men to do these important jobs correctly.
this post was submitted on 11 Feb 2025
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This idea is so gross that I don't even want to entertain it mentally.
Thank you for your lucid and crystalline explanation though, internet stranger.
That’s sexist! They also think SOME jobs can be done by women but only if they are cis-women
But if you get too good at that job, the insinuation changes and you must've had sex with your manager in order to get a raise/promotion.
Someone (I think at Do) literally said the “we need white men in charge” line out loud in those words.
So, white men got there only based on their skin and gender? So therefore they are incompetent?
DEI, Woke, Left, Commie, etc are all the same word to them. There will be a new one too don't worry. It always means "stuff I don't personally like for either a religious or hateful reason and you can't convince me otherwise" and it's just a boogeyman of stories and ideas that never actually happen irl but somehow get quoted and shared around as if it were a real thing and then uninformed people get scared and vote for strong daddy man.
It's so dumb and telegraphed, make it stop already.
Meanwhile, people on the Left will spend weeks arguing the difference between Socialist and Social Democrat.
Yeah... the nitpicking in-fighting from people that spend waaaaay too much time delineating groups rather than working for a common cause was particularly fun in the last election. "We're not the Judean People's Front! We're the People's Front of Judea!"
Yet god forbid you recognize that fascism cones in different flavors than Nazism. Mussolini was not a nazi nor was Peron yet both were fascists
If you're going to put words in my mouth, please serve them with fries and a side salad.
My point is how leftists will spend a lot of time differentiating between the various types of leftism but seemingly don’t get that all fascists are not Nazis.
I think I understand your point now.
I saw a lot of people going off on how Genocide Joe was as bad as Hitler, and they could never vote for him.
Haven't heard too much from them lately.
Haven’t heard too much from them lately.
The bot farm has moved on.
It’s more how if you point out Trump’s actions are more in line with Orban and Mussolini rather than the Nazis you get called a Nazi sympathizer rather than just being better informed on fascist philosophy/beliefs/delusions.
I wouldn't bother; it's a distinction without a difference.
Exactly. The necessary actions are the same regardless of which flavor of fascism Trump is serving up.
If I say "There's a raving maniac pointing a Glock at my head," the last thing I want to hear is "Well, acksualllly, that one was manufactured under license in Serbia..."
There’s a significant difference as most fascists do not engage in attempts to eliminate parts of humanity in order to facilitate the creation of a master race. Not all fascists are that level of crazy.
Reminds me of an old joke.
They ask Brezhnev about Stalin. Leonid says that Stalin was completely insane and that he'd let 50 million people die before he changed one of his policies.
"If five million people died because of me, that would make me reconsider."
You're absolutely correct, but I prefer "Nazi" solely because that word specifically has it's own level of disgust to me, and I want to convey that level of disgust for republicans. No other shorthand carries the proper emotional connotation for me.
What's there to talk about? Leftists kept trying to tell you that the Democrats were going to lose the election if they didn't start listening to their base. The Democrats didn't listen to their base, and got walloped everywhere.
And if you're a Leftist and didn't go all in helping the Dems, you've got exactly nothing to be proud of.
I donated to Bernie in 2016 and 2020 and 2024 and every time the Left managed not to organize and get him nominated.
There's a tradeshow a client of mine is attending where the DEI talk has been rebranded "Justice, Equality, Diversity and Inclusion" — JEDI.
Thought that was kinda clever actually.
They ALWAYS think DEI means hiring an inferior, less qualified person instead of the superior, more qualified white man.
That is because they cannot and will not believe any other race or sex could ever be equal to or better than the lowest white man.
They are certainly racist, they always have been and always will be. As far as I am concerned, every Republican is racist, and if they ever hire or appoint a POC or a woman, it's tokenism, not because they truly believe the hire is the best person for the job.
They mean civil rights. Our rights are being taken away.
The GOP’s DEI panic is just recycled bigotry with a thesaurus. Trump’s crew rebranding exclusion as “anti-wokeness” — a moral panic for donors and pundits to feast on. They’re not defending merit; they’re erasing history.
Republicans framing equity as oppression is peak gaslighting. Every crusade against “divisive concepts” reveals their real fear: a future where their cultural monopoly crumbles. DEI isn’t the threat—their irrelevance is.
This isn’t policy. It’s a smokescreen for institutionalizing resentment. When they scream “reverse racism,” what they mean is “keep the hierarchy intact.” The roadmap’s clear: manufacture enemies, sell outrage, cash checks. Democracy as a looted storefront.
They're doing it because organizations run by white males aren't viable unless propped up by the power of the state.
I had the opportunity (OK, I was paid some serious money to do it) to run a team of software and systems people who were all gentile cis males, mostly white. I'm one of those myself. It was an international gig with some other peculiar restrictions as well. It turned out to be an interesting management challenge, of the "slow horses" variety. These were not the ultra-high-talent outliers, for the most part, though many were graduates of universities associated with the elite. Having such a restricted talent pool forced me (and my management team) to think hard about the work we were doing and how to minimize the risks of fuck-ups. We were successful, but it was like trying to ride a motorcycle with both eyes tied behind my back. Before that, I'd been on a job where I was empowered to recover a failed project, and I had carte blanche on hiring decisions and anything budgetary that wasn't outright silly. So this was a shock. When I finished the (very long) project, everything seemed easy afterwards.
All DEI is, in essence, is not going out of your way to support the current dysfunctional legacy hierarchy. Even now, I'm cautious about hiring from organizations and institutions that are frequented by the well-connected and privileged. Cronyism is a pig of a problem, and if I see someone operating an old-boy's network, their ass is gone. And that's not just true of WASPs. The elite recruitment and clannishness problem is also severe in many other countries.
As an aging white male myself, instead of whining about DEI, I used a different strategy to advance at work: I made myself able to compete with anyone in the world. If you're not prepared to do that, you shouldn't be in a global business. And rigging the system to protect your homies just leaves you fat, complacent and easy pickings for people who know what they're doing. Why do you think Musk is sucking up to Trump? It's because he knows that, in a fair fight, his ass will be handed to him. Even without his ketamine issues and egomania, he's not up to the job.
The crux of your argument is spot on: cronyism and insular networks are cancers to any system claiming meritocracy. Your experience managing a restricted talent pool highlights how fragility thrives when privilege shields mediocrity. But here’s the rub—your disdain for "old-boy networks" doesn’t just apply to WASPs; it’s a universal issue. Yet, the backlash against DEI disproportionately comes from those who’ve benefited most from these rigged systems.
You’re right that global business demands competition on a level playing field, but the resistance to DEI isn’t just fear of competition—it’s existential dread about losing cultural dominance. Musk pandering to Trump is a perfect example: a desperate bid to preserve a rigged status quo. The real challenge isn’t DEI; it’s dismantling the entitlement that masquerades as merit.
"DEI" is GOP's hard 'r'.
Remember my friends, when Nazis started to control the Jewish population of Germany, the first restrictions inacted were limits to where the Jewish people could work, specifically it limited a Jewish person’s ability to be hired for a government position based on the bullshit notion that Jewish people weren’t as reliable as a German person. This was known as, “Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service" of April 7, 1933.
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/anti-jewish-legislation-in-prewar-germany
The R in republican stands for racist
When they say "DEI," they mean no more affirmative action for the dimwit sons of rich and well-connected white people.
That's why I keep saying banning a word or making a world "not professional" doesn't do anything as long as people's though doesn't change. Like saying "don't say black, say african American" doesn't make them suddenly like them, they'll still be racist. Changing words will just make them use a new word to mean the same thing.
Yeah there might be emotional things about certain words and not wanting people to use it can be understandable. It might be a step is a direction if it's to be less humiliating or be inclusive. But just saying "don't use this word, use this word instead" will make the new word mean the same thing with same derogatory meaning if people use the new word derogatorily. Now DEI has become that new word, and instead of claiming the word back, owning it, people might go "don't say DEI" and come up with a completely new acronym while trying to "heal" from the past administration.