No, it was decided to chastise the downtrodden minority class.

Yes - allowing blacks in America to attend college and move into neighborhoods without the threat of being killed was an act designed to chastise them.

I think posts of this nature (including OP) reflect a fear of not belonging to the dominant ‘caste’ and of being seen as either losing status (dominant caste men not getting jobs they are ‘the best’ for); or, alternatively, lower caste men wanting to be seen as valuable in a space they continually feel they do not belong in.

I say this as a someone who is a minority who regularly is discriminated against - and who has easily attained markers of success. There is no way to avoid feeling like we do not belong, but returning us to poverty and shutting us out of jobs is definitely not a way to attain a feeling of belonging.

Finally, DEI initiatives are very public - nepotism, alma mater connections etc are not. Let’s be careful in assuming that the only non-LEET code metric used to hire people is the color of the skin or their biological sex.

Thank you for pointing out that last part. I think folks forget how vital that foot in the door is/was, whether it's the school on your resume or the reference from the internship your uncle got for you. You might get 99% of the way there by hard work but if the other applicant's essentially grandfathered in (analogy intentional), what have you gained?

> Please take a moment and reflect on why these sorts of initiatives exist.

These sorts of initiatives are trying to cure a racial or sexual bias with a different sort of racial or sexual bias. How does the question "why they exist" help those of us who think, in Kant's deontological terms, that racial or sexual biases are wrong?

Very respectfully, I do not read Kant - and I wish I had the opportunity to do so in the very poor high school I attended.

Please consider an old house you may buy if you live in New England or Europe. Sure, if you were building a new house everything should be plumb and level. But the house you’re able to buy in old cities is not brand new. So what does one do if you wish to have a level floor? We add shims to obtain some objective reasonable result, accepting that to get to a this result we must try to address systemic problems that are not our fault, but are now our responsibility.

> So what does one do if you wish to have a level floor?

Let me offer you a different metaphor about levels :-) In Greek mythology, there was a character named Procrustes. He had an iron bed of a certain size, to which he strapped his captives, and if they happened to be taller than the bed was long, he cut off their legs to fit the bed; whereas if they were shorter, he stretched them to fit the bed tearing their sinews and muscles. That's what I think of when I hear about arbitrary levels applied to living people.

I appreciate your analogy and I will politely remind you that in American history, members of certain classes did indeed have limbs cut off or their body parts stretched for arbitrary reasons.

In fact, this practice only really ended in the 1960s; controversially, one might even say that this practice continues to today.

So what do we do when confronted with an anecdote from antiquity versus system inequities from our modern era?

> So what do we do when confronted with an anecdote from antiquity versus system inequities from our modern era?

I guess, in the spirit of the analogy, your options are to either stop cutting off body parts from anyone, or to start cutting them off those who look like people who engaged in body cutting two or more generations ago. DEI prefers the second option. Some people would rather see the first.

I imagine that there are lessons in antiquity where a famous Greek or Roman thinker chooses a pragmatic option instead of a spiteful or absolutist option.

I really like your phrasing:

problems that are not our fault but are now our responsibility

That’s a very nice, concise way of summarizing the essence of the issue.

I don't know enough about the subject, but I will say that arguing on the basis of the purported reasons for creating a movement is totally irrelevant to the movement's effects.

For example a white friend in South Africa has a daughter who years ago, when looking at university applications, was distraught because to study to be a doctor she had to hit over 90% in her exams, vs 70% for her black South African classmates. Does it matter to her that this wasn't meant to happen? Or is reality also worth talking about?