I'm trying to actually figure out what his points are. None of it is making much sense because he just seems so far off in his own thinking that it's not connected to DEI at all. Still trying to untangle it, but here's my lol as I work through what he's saying.
1.1 When did we start pretending to care about diversity?
He says 1978. What? He's fabricating a story to prop up his flawed belief system.
1.2 Diversity is intellectual?
It's good because it promotes a good education. What? It's far more about that: representation, opportunities for historically marginalized groups, challenging the status quo with ideas of how things should be done, etc.
2.1 The argument for affirmative action
How did we get to affirmative action? Are we back in the 1980's view of how we are supposed to level the playing field?
> by diversifying the racial composition of the student body, we will be indirectly producing intellectual diversity.
Yikes. He's totally missing the point around opportunities, exposure to diverse backgrounds that force you break out of your own stereotypical thinking...
2.2 Idealogy
> The most “woke” people are the ones who aggressively try to silence all dissent and to exclude conservatives, libertarians, etc., from the Academy.
This is a myth. Conservatives tend to get excluded because their whole goal is to exclude others based on their religion, their desire to prevent others from being able to become self actualized (ex against same sex marriage), their support for laws and institutions that maintain the status quo...
2.3 Other countries
> the most diverse people would naturally be those from other countries.
Yikes. He's totally gone off the rails now. Completely misses the point of what DEI is about.
2.4 Other races
> Affirmative action would also apply more strongly to, say, immigrants from Iran, or Korea, or Israel, than to black people (or anyone else) from our own society.
face palm that is just so painful to read. Yes, on the surface it's true, but not what DEI is actually trying to address in the US.
2.5 social class
> rural white people would get more affirmative action points than middle class suburban blacks.
lol this guy doesn't understand racism very well.
2.6 Proportionality
His point: you don't need a proportional representation for diversity.
And...? Not sure why this is even here. Seems pretty obvious.
2.7. Non of this is happening
> Conclusion: By and large, they don’t care about diversity. They’re just lying, in a really transparent way, because they think it gives them a patina of legal legitimacy.
lol my god how did we land here?
3. Conclusion
> “Diversity, inclusion, and equity” refers to ideological uniformity, exclusion, and discrimination.
Sigh. He really has no clue what he's writing about or how this works outside of his world view. I can't shake the feeling how sad I from having slogged through this. I'll chalk this up to being useless noise that's out of touch on what's going on in the larger world.
Seriously. His initial premise is so far off base that the whole article reads like some sort of conservative straw man pretending to be intellectual discourse.
Are there issue with some DEI initiatives? Yes, but they are often minor, and usually due to bureaucratic laziness, not malice against conservatives or white people.
He is butt hurt that reality has a liberal bias, and wants academia to subscribe to his knee-jerk conservative fantasies instead.
He essentially trying to argue that a completely straight, cis, white, male faculty and student body would still be "diverse" because some were poor/rich, some were rural/urban, and some were old/young. Sorry, that's not diversity, it's simply variations on a theme.
If ensuring that people from marginalized backgrounds get good treatment is important in third level education, would the same arguments not apply in a much stronger fashion to first and second level?
I always (not an American) thought it was weird that all the focus was on university while the research would suggest that interventions at primary school level (and before) would be wildly more effective.
> If ensuring that people from marginalized backgrounds get good treatment is important in third level education, would the same arguments not apply in a much stronger fashion to first and second level?
They do, which is why [primary] school desegregation was (and remains) an important policy goal for various progressive and racial justice movements during the previous century.
edit: It may not be clear to folks who don't live in the US, but the focus on affirmative action is generally driven by the people who oppose such initiatives. The people in favor of them, as far as I can tell, largely view them as a single piece of a larger project for justice.
> They do, which is why [primary] school desegregation was (and remains) an important policy goal for various progressive and racial justice movements during the previous century.
Sure, but that doesn't really solve the problem. Given that the funding of primary schools is predominantly driven by property taxes, one could argue that this is actually been made worse (assuming lower prop taxes => less weathly parents => structurally disadvantaged races).
“The most “woke” people are the ones who aggressively try to silence all dissent (https://fakenous.net/?p=2932) and to exclude conservatives, libertarians, etc., from the Academy. So they not only fail to value intellectual diversity; they are just about the most stridently anti-diversity people in the entire country.”
1.1 When did we start pretending to care about diversity?
He says 1978. What? He's fabricating a story to prop up his flawed belief system.
1.2 Diversity is intellectual?
It's good because it promotes a good education. What? It's far more about that: representation, opportunities for historically marginalized groups, challenging the status quo with ideas of how things should be done, etc.
2.1 The argument for affirmative action
How did we get to affirmative action? Are we back in the 1980's view of how we are supposed to level the playing field?
> by diversifying the racial composition of the student body, we will be indirectly producing intellectual diversity.
Yikes. He's totally missing the point around opportunities, exposure to diverse backgrounds that force you break out of your own stereotypical thinking...
2.2 Idealogy
> The most “woke” people are the ones who aggressively try to silence all dissent and to exclude conservatives, libertarians, etc., from the Academy.
This is a myth. Conservatives tend to get excluded because their whole goal is to exclude others based on their religion, their desire to prevent others from being able to become self actualized (ex against same sex marriage), their support for laws and institutions that maintain the status quo...
2.3 Other countries
> the most diverse people would naturally be those from other countries.
Yikes. He's totally gone off the rails now. Completely misses the point of what DEI is about.
2.4 Other races
> Affirmative action would also apply more strongly to, say, immigrants from Iran, or Korea, or Israel, than to black people (or anyone else) from our own society.
face palm that is just so painful to read. Yes, on the surface it's true, but not what DEI is actually trying to address in the US.
2.5 social class
> rural white people would get more affirmative action points than middle class suburban blacks.
lol this guy doesn't understand racism very well.
2.6 Proportionality
His point: you don't need a proportional representation for diversity.
And...? Not sure why this is even here. Seems pretty obvious.
2.7. Non of this is happening
> Conclusion: By and large, they don’t care about diversity. They’re just lying, in a really transparent way, because they think it gives them a patina of legal legitimacy.
lol my god how did we land here?
3. Conclusion
> “Diversity, inclusion, and equity” refers to ideological uniformity, exclusion, and discrimination.
Sigh. He really has no clue what he's writing about or how this works outside of his world view. I can't shake the feeling how sad I from having slogged through this. I'll chalk this up to being useless noise that's out of touch on what's going on in the larger world.