Is this racist

[Whoiam]

I am seeing many posts about Charlie Kirk being racist. I also note that there are references to his stance on DEI.

I am interested, is this racist nowadays?

https://youtube.com/shorts/8HDYrISA1TY?si=m7vBABFnGn-6uqBy

YABU- yes
YANBU-no

there are people who have a head start in life from birth, and that it is not wrong or discriminatory

In your example, it’s quite clearly discriminating against someone based on the school they went to. It’s blatant discrimination. It completely fits the definition of discrimination, you could say you think discrimination is acceptable for your social engineering aims but you can’t say it’s not discrimination.

Well that's reassuring. Although I am sure there are places and examples of it being well run and places and examples where it was poorly run. Could vary across states, regions, employment sectors, decades etc.

Rev. Dr Martin Luther King, Jr was the lead activist for the civil rights movement and the EEO laws for DEI in the USA were written as a direct result of his activism and success. To paraphrase a quote from him to imply he would not have supported DEI is a disgusting perversion of history and an insult to his memory and sacrifice. He was assassinated while fighting for DEI to be put into law.

What it meant in his time, and what it has become since, are very different things.

as a woman of colour, I cannot tell you how much I miss the days when things were normal.

I don't think Charlie Kirk was being racist, but i'm of an age where I've suffered every one of the crazy societal stages that we went through to get to this one. As he was clearly an intelligent man, I think those stages have fed into his response.

I never took up any DEI opportunities and was annoyed with them as soon as they were available about 20 years ago

There was an excellent play on at the National Theatre maybe 12 years ago? Great Britain with Billie Piper. The playwright attracted some ire because of one character who had been the token hire.

I knew exactly what he meant and I knew why he included that character because it is so fucking frustrating to work with that person.

normally on MN when I see the thread title "is this racist?" I guess my answer my answer would be yes before I've even read the question.

Interestingly, we've come all the way round to a time where I'm automatically expecting my answer to be no.

I really wonder if we'll ever see any kind of restoration to normal. The race Grifters have done their absolute best to ruin race relations and it seems to fucking worked it's so sad. I just didn't think so many people would go for it. But it's such a huge business now. I actually have reached the point where I'm not even sure how I'm supposed to refer to myself. I think when the term BME originally came out, I said "can't I just go with non-white?" Due to having a mixed appearance. Let's face it -that's what all of these things mean.

I didn't think about the colour of my skin much 20 years ago. Now it seems that people who are employed by the DEI obsessive behemoth want us to think about it all the time. It pisses me off so much. It has fed into every aspect of culture and it makes me so angry.

I miss normal <cries> I genuinely find myself focusing on my skin colour every day now. It's utterly mad. It's been forced on me by other people, by popular culture. I had a solicitor faffing around around with sensitive comments today. Like she thought I might have some particular requirements because of the colour of my skin.

Sorry OP - I realise you asked a genuine question and were not prepared for an emotional outburst! But I am just so sick of all this.

And so are a lot of people - as I think we can probably see from Saturday's numbers.

sigh.

There are of course exceptions ,and I can't speak to shortlists for Labour (but they bloody needed them) - though I have a feeling EDI law actually applies to businesses and employment so a political party or orgnisation might be exempt (but I am guessing here I would have to check - I should read my own links!!).

Agree with what you say about it being done well (quite rare) and badly (more often), and that there are definite improvements in some areas and protections in the law from discrimination and many of the principles are very sound. - I was quite impressed by that government web page. Absolutely agree also that all protected characteristics cannot be treated the same and have their own unique issues to be addressed. So I try not to make comparison or analogies or claim expertise in the discrimination of other protected characteristics for example.

However, I think that EDI in relation to race remains problematic quite simply because of widespread, unexamined, entrenched racism (eg the disingenuous start to this thread - with as another PP pointed out that "nowadays" doing a lot of work!) - perceived threat about what EDI is and does, which is why I mentioned the quote about priviledge. So much EDI training in recent years has been about crappy "unconscious bias" training, whereas I would like to term it "haven't bothered to think about it ever and didn't think it was important bias".

Just to note, I am not sure that people with disabilities, and from poorer, even women backgrounds would agree EDi serves them better (setting aside intersectionality here). It would be very difficult to make a comparison. But what we are talking about here is racism.

I have to sleep soon, but thank you for the discussion.

Even if that’s the case, I suspect it’s never led to an unqualified person being hired to fly a passenger plane. So really no need for Kirk to say that he would be worried to have a black pilot, because he’d worry they weren’t qualified.

This thread is giving: show me you’ve never watched through Charlie’s WHOLE debates with context, without showing me.

Maybe get off MSM, Yahoo news, CNN, BBC News etc etc and the rest of the diabolical left wing media sources.

There are thousands of black women and men coming out providing videos of how he wasn’t racist so maybe understand and believe them instead of being offended on another races behalf.

Same for the homophobic labels, plenty of gay men and women have come out in support to say he in fact was not in the slightest homophobic.

‘He didn’t spout hate speech, it was just speech they hated’

Of course nothing is well run everywhere, that is an impossible standard.

But the whole mythos of his that we should live in a perfect meritocracy where economic advantage, nepotism, racism, sexism, ageism, ableism, classism etc etc don’t affect decisions that affect every human being’s life opportunities is a more of a crock of shit.

DEI may be imperfect, but at least it acknowledges these disadvantages due to a circumstance of birth or accident exist and tries to even the odds.

The assumption is that all the straight white men get there because they’re the best but a “DE&I hire” gets there because of preferential treatment. You only have to look at who’s in the majority of the positions of power in the world to see what BS that is.

It’s a scheme that is only open to people of a certain race, there’s not a lot of room for misunderstanding.

I think the US has gone full circle and regressed to where a second MLK is now necessary.

DEI is preferential treatment is it not?

No. Again, it is not

In what way?

I don’t believe he was racist and you’d better believe that as a Black woman I have met many in my time. In fact he spoke a lot of sense. His death is such a waste.

I agree with your points. You’ll notice that the “Charlie Kirk was definitely a racist” people on this thread rely heavily on mocking and derision and misrepresented ‘quotes’ rather than honest points or facts.

Talking about the failings and issues with DEI or EDI or ‘affirmative action’ is not racist.

Choosing a candidate based on their skin colour over their skills is not necessarily a good thing for the candidate or the job.

No. It’s making sure people from different backgrounds with the same abilities as the straight white men get the same opportunities as they do.

LOL. If you’re giving preference to one group of people over another group of people, they are receiving preferential treatment.
You can say ‘giving preferential treatment to one group over another group is okay if it’s in pursuit of well intentioned social engineering’ maybe? I don’t think you help your cause by denying the meaning of words, you’ve got a hard enough sell on your hands for this nonsense as it is.

By restricting opportunities based on sex, sexual preference and race?
You must understand how this comes across?

I disagree with blind recruitment processses. Why shouldn’t I know where the applicant went to uni? I’ll be impressed if they’ve been to Oxbridge and even more so if they’ve done so from a bog standard or deprived comp.

What are they getting?

Who?

the people you say get preferential treatment. What are they getting? It’s not preferential unless they get something, is it? Any of the examples you’ve poo poo’d here, what are those people getting?