If you're all about diversity ...

[tobee]

are you not always excluding someone? So it not possible to be truly diverse ever?

Pretty sure I'm preaching to the choir here (😃) but I was thinking this a lot over the last few days. Since the furore over the apparent depiction of The Last Supper at the Olympics opening ceremony offending Christians and my thoughts meandering around lots of other things in and the news atm.

Basically, inclusion and diversity become oppositional. And yet it's the done thing to trumpet your inclusivity and diversity.

Or am I reading it wrong?

This week has been an Eisteddfod, a Welsh festival of culture, poetry, song, etc., in South Wales. Usually attended by mainly Welsh speakers as most of it is in Welsh. The poster features four characters, which I can only assume hit the DEI quota but sadly completely miss most of the actual demographic of Welsh speakers attending. The characters are a child POC, a woman in hijab and POC, a white boy in a wheelchair and a bearded white man.
I am not represented.

Something I think is never really addressed is that if eg a company is to fully embrace diversity then it needs to accept the full diversity of views and beliefs held by the population. And some of those people will hold views that those pushing diversity will disagree with, or find very uncomfortable.

When people push for diversity they’re often advocating for a particular type of diversity. My workplace is a pretty left leaning liberal organisation. If it actually wanted to be more diverse we should aim to employ more Reform voting, Brexiteers. Funnily enough that’s never mooted in discussions on how we increase diversity.

Quite. I've worked in tech for a long time and this is true

🤣
I don't think its possible to include "political views" in diversity stats.
That's tickled me 😂

It’s about recognising, and taking action to address, opportunity gaps - not skills gaps.

Your comment reads as actually pretty racist, implying people of colour in roles as pilots and doctors are unsafe and incapable.

Would you say the same about women in the UK parliament, some of whom were empowered to reach that position via DEI initiatives like all women shortlists?

The underlying principle of DEI is to ensure equality of opportunity by noticing and addressing places where opportunity has previously been unequal.

It’s not an erosion of meritocracy - quite the opposite. It enables merit to win out no matter what skin colour, ethnicity or sex it comes packaged up in.

The problem with this is that it is the same reason most of the kids who aren't white are disadvantaged - they are poor and working class.

The underlying assumption in a lot of these initiatives is that if there are disadvantaged people who are black, it's because they are black, and so programs target that. When in fact the problem is working class boys struggle. There are lots of middle and even upper middle class kids who are not white, and they do very well. (In some cases, these are primarily the kids making use of special programs, even though they don't particularly need the help.)

What they have done is cause a division among those working class kids, and it is absolutely transparent to the kids.

They should be targeting kids who need the help in programs with no racial component. It means helping those who need it, across racial lines, it doesn't stoke racial divisions, it doesn't direct money to kids who actually have plenty of advantages already.

I kind of wonder when white wc men were top of the heap? It's not just glib, it's inevitably trotted out to justify racial discrimination.

So, just trying to follow your logic:

It's sensible to reduce requirements for doctors and pilots in order to increase diversity in terms of race (because black candidates can't meet the old requirement? I guess?)

If someone thinks this is a bad idea, they must be a racist who thinks black people can't make good doctors?

That is some pretty odd logic.

ive been reading this thread and im sorry but i think you've misrepresented what the earlier post said?
They talked about increasing opportunity, nothing about reducing standards?
My own workplace started advertising jobs in a wider range of publications as we felt we weren't reaching all of our possible applicants by using the standard/traditional industry tools, we now have more applications from a wider demographic. We haven't changed our requirements one bit, but we feel we have a much stronger pool to choose from now

And did you have a problem when the Conservatives voted to axe "Sure Start", a strategic investment to do just that?

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-68763942.amp

I feel like to some there is a dog in the manger element to this - "why should they get special treatment?" rather than any actual concern about dealing with the issues at hand

Strawmanning is quite a widespread problem on here

It’s odd logic because you invented it. My post doesn’t say anything like that.

Do you even have a single shred of evidence of this supposed reduction of requirements that you say results in under-skilled black people flying planes or treating patients?

The post being responding to talked about reduction of standards in certain professional certifications, justified in order to bring in more non-white candidates.

The poster mentioned doctors and pilots. I can't speak to those but I know it's gone on in the military, and for a time with air craft controllers, though I believe that was eventually reversed.

It's very similar to the trend, in US schools, to reduce math standards because of uneven performance across racial groups.

Is that really your answer? You know it is no wonder people think you are disingenuous, play the ball, Cassie.

Yes !!! In my work place (large firm in the City), when they were looking for a replacement for my boss, it has been made very clear that firm wanted to hire a women and only women for that position. Shocking.

You said the poster was racist for saying that black people couldn't be good doctors or pilots. She said nothing like that. You were the one that misrepresented what was being said. If you wanted confirmation of her factual claims you should have said that.

Here's the kind of thing I imagine she was thinking of:

View from the Wing - Diversity in the skies

The poster was deleted so obviously was saying something against guidelines.

You can imagine all you like but unless you’re a mind reader or a sock puppet you’re just inventing things so you “win”

Thats not what I said - and my post is still there so people can see for themselves that I said the comment read as racist by implying unqualified black people were positions as pilots and doctors.

mnhq presumably also felt the post I was commenting on came over as racist since it’s now been deleted (I did not report it)

How is this shocking? It’s one tiny correction to begin to claw back from the hundreds of years of women being actively excluded from boss positions in the city.

Have we stepped through a looking glass into a board where feminists don’t want women to have a chance at the same opportunity the blokes have been enjoying all this time?

Women were restricted in the formal workforce due to structural (legal to fire a woman when she married) and practical barriers (eg non stop pregnancy). Almost all of these have been swept away. The divide now is between people who believe in equality of opportunity and equality of outcomes. Equality of opportunity mostly exists in terms of ethnicity and sex, but not social class. Addressing equality of opportunity for poor people is really difficult, so employers fixate on the easy things (race and sex) which have more or less already been solved. Pivoting towards equality of outcome inevitably means either reducing standards for particular groups or encouraging people into areas that don’t interest/suit them. Again this is weirdly selective: no one is pushing for equality of outcome in terms of women on oil rigs or men in childcare, for example.

I am 100% a feminist but I think we have got close enough to equality in the workplace, apart from a few specific issues (eg pregnancy discrimination). Obviously discrimination still happens, but much much less systematically than in the past. We do need to ensure that people have access to legal redress which is certainly an issue. My area of focus now is violence and sexual violence against women where there is still a really long way to go.

There's outward diversity then inward imo. I worked for a company that was very racially diverse (recruited from all over the world) but ended up with just the MC people from all over, so we all thought the same, went to the same places on holiday (e.g. in 2015-19 i feel like everyone went to the Chedi in Muscat 🤣). There wasn't a lot of diversity of experience because it was all the same "sort" if person who had been to all the same big unis. I loved it there as i easily connected with everyone but it was an international MC bubble. The sector in general is very like this.

I agree. Diversity of thought is as valuable to a company as any other diversity.

Women CEOs in FTSE 100 UK companies : 8%

Black CEOs ditto: 2% and falling

Gender pay gap 14% (with men on the upside, in case you weren’t sure)

Not even close to equality, and in fact getting worse.

FYI there are initiatives to get more men into caring roles, and more women into offshore oil posts.

@Bananaspread does it not occur to you that having more women in positions of power, as decision makers, will go a long way to getting policy and legal change that better protects women and girls from male violence?

The cart can’t come before getting the right horses.

Getting more black and brown women into positions of power as decision makers in healthcare is absolutely connected to reducing the mortality gap for back and brown women in childbirth, and the associated infant mortality rate.

Multiple studies have evidenced this.

Presuming you’re not OK with black and brown women and babies dying at 5 times the rate of white women and babies, that’s an area where diversity initiatives are not only welcome, but vital.