If you're all about diversity ...

We need to get over the oppression Olympics and stop endlessly trying to categorise people in how much of a victim they arez and just work towards a society that has opportunity for all.

This obsession with 'white male privilige' is nothing more than racsim in fashionable attire

I think you are mixing up 'accessibility' and 'diversity'. Or, in other words: 'equity of opportunity' and 'equity of outcome'.

In your example, training people to be aware of neuro divergence gives neurodivergent people access. Access is allowing all people the same access to opportunity.

'Diversity' is more about equity of outcome, so giving quotas that need to be filled. This means people might get jobs not because of merit, but simply because they fit in a certain category.

Western institutions are world leading in part because hey have always been a meritocracy.

White working class boys are the most underachieving group in society.

I agree with you.
An organisation that doesn't do "diversity and inclusion" and has a lot of staff thinking white men are the most disadvantaged group won't be a very fun place for a woman to work

https://www.socialmobility.org.uk/employerindex

This isn't true. Lots of employers take action to increase opportunities and representation of working class people now because they know there are barriers.

Also discrimination is a neutral term that has recently become considered inherently bad. To discriminate is to make choices, distinguish, identify.

It's fine to discriminate against toddlers if you're recruiting for the fire service. It's fine to discriminate against arsenic if you're making a salad dressing.

Illegal discrimination is bad. But that's cos it's illegal.

DEI does not appear to me to include older people of any race, ethnicity, cultural heritage , gender preference, religion, dis/ability or sex.

When Channel 4 moved its offices out of London to be more diverse and inclusive of regions, women, mothers and BAME employees were the ones who disproportionately lost their jobs.

TikTok has been an incredible weapon for the Chinese.

I feel like diversity is a tactic being used on western countries to further divide us and make our societies weaker. It weakens our institutions and makes us less robust countries

Least inconvenient for men, the ones in charge. If it makes life more difficult, intimidating and potentially dangerous for women, they don't care.

Inclusion is not an unqualified good but people talk as though it is. Diversity is trumpeted everywhere but often it's the limited type of diversity that focuses on the most visible and the least inconvenient aspects of diversity.

Here's an example of DEI gone wrong: when adapted/disabled toilets, which took decades and decades of campaigning by disabled people, are re-labelled as 'gender neutral' toilets so able-bodied trans people have an option if they choose not to use the toilets appropriate to their biological sex.
A hard-won advance by people with disabilities, handed over without a thought to able-bodied people because transgender people are at the top of the Hit Parade of marginalised groups at the moment..

A bit of both?

The ‘firsts’ argument become different though in a changing population.

I'm unsure if you're commenting on the items I quoted or building out.

The ‘firsts’ argument become different though in a changing population. As recently as the 1950s the black population of the UK was less than 0.5% so even if a totally equal society it was much much less likely for a black person to achieve a position than today. And the UK is not an equal society, even more so in for before the 1950s when class was an even more impervious barrier. The black population of the upper middle and upper classes, despite what the BBC portray, was much less than 0.5%. So even without considering racism it was likely that the number of black firsts wouldn’t take place in the UK until the last decades of the 20th century.

Too often people look at America and simply apply the same thinking to the UK when these are very different population histories.

We had DEI training at work recently. It was fine on the whole, but in the discussion I could not hear what was being said. I stood up and suggested that using the Mike (or speaking more clearly- looking at you, muttering 20 Yr olds) would be more inclusive of us older people who are beginning to lose some hearing. Said it lightheartedly, but meant it. Cue titters. All went on as usual.
So not at all equal or inclusive actually.

I rather not to be hired than given a job to tick a box. I would be extremely uncomfortable and I am not anyone’s underdog project.

The fact that someone can tick a box doesn't mean that that's the only reason that they were hired for the post. That can be a comforting fiction for some people.

"Denying that it was social engineering, [Helen Mountfield] recalled how she had once discussed with a judge positive discrimination for female lawyers wanting to join the bench. “He said, ‘You know, I think it would be dreadful for women. They would feel they were only there because they were women.’ And I said to him, ‘Does it undermine your self-confidence that you’re a white man? Do you ever think, maybe I’m only a judge because I’m a white man and if I was a woman I wouldn’t be here?’”"

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/education/article/state-pupils-flock-to-oxford-college-and-degree-results-soar-q96p7bxj0

Kaitlyn Greenidge:
When someone manages to rise up through our hobbled alleged meritocracy and is crowned the first to hold a position, I know that does not mean that they were the only one who possibly could. I'd assumed everyone understood this, but it has become clear to me in the last few years, as these news of firsts in media and publishing and film and sports came rolling in, as people wrote and agonized over what felt like a shift in culture, that that was naive. People in power, the ones doing the crowning, generally believe that there is no one else qualified until they happen to decide to bestow the crown. It's easier that way, isn't it? To think that the first happened just because the right person finally managed to emerge and break through, and not because there was a whole system put in place to make sure no one who looks a certain way or comes from a particular background ever has a chance to do so in the first place. I am reminded of a Chris Rock quote, one he gave during Barack Obama's second term as president. "To say Obama is progress is saying that he's the first Black person that is qualified to be president. That's not Black progress. That's white progress. There's been Black people qualified to be president for hundreds of years."

https://www.harpersbazaar.com/culture/features/a34426455/the-bind-of-being-first/

I think part of the problem is that idea that ‘diversity is good’ so more diversity must be better. So an 18% BAME target is good but 40% is better. Whereas on a population level anything above 18% indicates discrimination against the white population. Or the BBC considers itself ‘inclusive’ when it has a trans workforce far exceeding that in the population.

I am in fact shocked to hear how some people refer to white people these days. Even in books and movies and of course newspapers. I can also imagine the negative repercussions this has. How this can make things much worse. How is this ok? Do they not realise that this can contribute to hate crimes?. At the very least incites division.

I’m really sad to read this and I hope this isn’t how most people on fwr think. Diversity as an employer initiative isn’t always done well, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth having. I look at the world and democracy is being done pretty terribly in lots of places but I think that’s worth having too. My company did a session recently on working with neurodiverse people, wasn’t in my Timezone but I am going to watch the recording. We have other dei initiatives too. I love that we have all this stuff which is thinking about how to work with people who are different from us, as they bring different perspectives and ideas and that’s valuable. I don’t think diversity should exclude white men and socioeconomic background is relevant too.

Diversity is a double edged sword, encouraging moral relativism among other things

Yes, it's all about the sacred caste. After all they can identify as anything.

My nephew’s employer moved a significant chunk of its business because the population of the area they were based in was too white for them to meet their 40% BAME recruitment targets. It left a huge hole in the local, mostly poor working class, economy.