Nice excuses. I won’t be making them though. Those excusals got America to where it is right now. Turn the other cheek, nothing is bad because everything is bad. No progress, no looking back.

Just anger, right now.

Could your point be shortened to “what about it”? I think so…

Yeah. Take someone else’s.

Depending on you goal.

For leaderless anonoymous protests, and you want to stay alive, sure.

For organized groups that are willing to take some risk and be martyrs, its worth considering.

Use a custom OS (like Graphene OS), turn on airplane mode, use bluetooth to communicate via brair. Its much harder (but not impossible) to track people this way.

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I work for a university department, and our programs strive to make “DEI” and “merit” literally the same thing. We want the best and the brightest, so we try to overcome the barriers that keep them down, such as family history and economic circumstances. Those factors disproportionately affect people from minority groups because of historical reality, and that’s the only reason that race even enters into it. Many of the people in our programs are white people from poorer backgrounds. We don’t control the admissions process, we just try to get the best people to apply.

Put another way, the people with the family and cultural background (i.e. money, knowledge, and connections) to get into grad school are not always the same people with the best scientific minds.

Put yet another way, if the result of your hiring process is all weathier, white men, that’s prima facie proof that the hiring metric was not merit.

Let’s establish some frameworks here.

First, I want to clarify that I am not “fighting for DEI.” Instead, I am dismissing the narrative that frames the current situation as a conflict between DEI and merit. This perspective is not only misleading but also fundamentally incorrect.

It’s important to recognize that the existence of one initiative does not preclude the existence of others. For example, free school lunch programs do not conflict with disaster relief efforts. Similarly, DEI initiatives do not conflict with other movements aimed at creating a more merit-based system.

In terms of my personal opinion, if pressed, I would find it challenging to label DEI as simply a “good” thing, likely for reasons similar to your own. Life is complex and nuanced, and we rarely encounter straightforward solutions. However, I do see DEI as a significantly “better” approach, which brings me to why others might “fight for DEI” as you say.

Life is inherently complicated and often an uphill battle. When starting in the muck, seeking a solution that keeps your boots clean is unrealistic. While we may desire perfect solutions and easily identify them, implementing those solutions is a different challenge. The powers that be often resist change because they benefit from the status quo. Therefore, when pursuing progress, we sometimes need to consider compromise for the sake of achieving meaningful impact.

So, we are not discussing merit versus DEI; we are comparing the status quo to DEI. In this comparison, DEI represents greater opportunities for a lot of individuals who have been unfairly excluded. Yes, this does not solve the greater problem nor does it address it in an equally or means-based way and yes this potentially introduces additional disparties; these things are true. DEI does not solve social inequity nor does it suddenly represent a “fair” system. But it pretty objectively is an improvement on the deep cronyism and gatekeeping of the existing status quo. It’s not good, and it’s not fair. But it’s BETTER, and it’s MORE FAIR.

We may not be reaching the summit of the mountain with DEI, but we are certainly elevating our position.

I hope this provides some clarity. However, you may find a more passionate advocate for DEI can offer a more satisfying answer.

Nope, that’s how fascism tries to turn diversity on its head.

Without diversity programs, racist bosses were free to prevent minorities from rising to the levels they deserved. Those diversity programs enabled freedom to finally begin ringing.

So do I.

“I think America must see that riots do not develop out of thin air. Certain conditions continue to exist in our society which must be condemned as vigorously as we condemn riots. But in the final analysis, a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it that America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the plight of the Negro poor has worsened over the last few years. It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice, equality, and humanity. And so in a real sense our nation’s summers of riots are caused by our nation’s winters of delay. And as long as America postpones justice, we stand in the position of having these recurrences of violence and riots over and over again. Social justice and progress are the absolute guarantors of riot prevention.”

“Let us say boldly that if the violations of law by the white man in the slums over the years were calculated and compared with the law-breaking of a few days of riots, the hardened criminal would be the white man. These are often difficult things to say but I have come to see more and more that it is necessary to utter the truth in order to deal with the great problems that we face in our society.”