Racism against black people is different altogether. It’s not rooted in prejudice. Instead the prejudice arises from the unique circumstances of ADOS people being brought here in slavery and then society trying to unwind that and make up for it. That racism, which is accompanied by economic and social gaps that aren’t narrowing, much less closing, is a completely different phenomenon than the ordinary prejudice which exists between pretty much every group everywhere.
Failure to understand that fundamental difference is one reason why the prospect of cabining affirmative action to logical and legitimate ends is unlikely.
You actually could and should abolish the police in certain kinds of terminal states where crime was eradicated - the eradication may be due to a genuine shift in the way people behave (due to some other underlying reason.) One falsifiable condition would be “surveys show a fundamental shift in sentiment by the public towards the motives that have historically led to crime.” If you’re going to condition the abolishment of the police on a scenario where we need to also prove that this won’t regress, then in a scenario where the underlying motive of crime is systematically gone, the police will exist and seek out ways to regenerate it to ensure they have a purpose, among other toxic phenomena.
For a generation or two, sure, but eventually it will come back unless the cultural training continues. I mean, there's a reason for historic cultural universals such as racism, dueling between men, and talking down to lessers.
I think the best case scenario is that DEI eventually gets rolled up into regular HR.
And why do you assume the generalized tribalism will persist based on particular initiatives? The old initiatives used to be hire from the gentry. Attitudes amongst the many do change. It doesn't matter if some vocal minorities keep the same attitudes going.
DEI initiatives and targets are measured periodically: https://hbr.org/2021/02/research-how-companies-committed-to-...
Concretely, if your own perspective is taken as the standard, we ought to expect that without any motive or standard to dictate we unwind DEI goalposts around (for example) racial groups, we should expect those goalposts to persist, regardless of the general presence of the phenomena which motivated their creation in the first place.
Once DEI systematizes enough it can be incorporated into whatever HR eventually turns in to, instead of being a separate division.
Ironically, programs seeking to reduce discrimination which characterize the former phenomenon as entirely irrational is what helps perpetuate the latter, because it undermines any sense that there is a good faith engagement going on.
> "Ironically, programs seeking to reduce discrimination which characterize the former phenomenon as entirely irrational is what helps perpetuate the latter, because it undermines any sense that there is a good faith engagement going on."
From what I recall I don't believe these programs generally characterize implicit bias as entirely irrational. I see them characterize it as problematic. So I don't see how the "undermine good faith engagement" follows from this.
On a total tangent I think the main problem with counteracting people's biases is that it can lead to people totally discounting their gut reactions. Which has lead to people getting murdered, raped, etcetera, by bad people.
Problem is, this is a social process that takes centuries to complete. You are never going to hit a point in a single institution where you can say "We fixed our diversity problem, let's go home", because it can just come back as you hire more people and older hires leave.
Furthermore, society is frustratingly prone to generating new discriminatory attitudes. America is pretty conscious of a handful of very specific racial minorities, and we have a vague idea of what sexism looks like, but we have little knowledge of things like caste discrimination[0], colorism[1], classism and so on.
To fully explain why this is a problem, try re-reading your original comment, but pretend it's talking about the police instead of DEI initiatives. What's our falsifiable condition where we say "ok, all the crimes are solved, let's abolish the police?"
[0] Discrimination based on the occupation of your ancestors, typically driven by religious beliefs. India is the poster child for this though Japan had a form of it too.
[1] Skin-color discrimination within a specific race. We don't see this in the US or Canada all that often because the mix of European ancestry that we brought over and called "White" is universally one skin color. Latin America has this in droves.