Why not measure on diversity of thought then?
Because measuring diversity of thought is much more difficult, and thought isn't a legally protected class.
Re:MIT abandons use of DEI statements
by commandlinefan on Monday May 06, 2024 @02:16PM
(#40277743)
> thought isn't a legally protected
So the law justifies the law?
All I meant was that all companies ultimately care about is what is legally required, everything else ends up just being lip service and PR.
To your question though, the law justifies the law unfortunately. That's one big reason I'm opposed to laws and government in general. Something is legal because we said its legal, or more often its legal because a prior generation said it was legal. Put worse, something is punishable because we once wrote down that you would be punished for a specific act.
Re:MIT abandons use of DEI statements
by underlipton on Monday May 06, 2024 @10:15AM
(#40274960)
That's the goal. But you can't get there, under our current system and circumstances, without some DEI-like anti-filter. It's not either-or; "Measure diversity of thought," is step #2, after, "Counteract the social gravity of tribalism in its myriad forms."
>Yet if some HR person would interview me, a white-skinned guy, and then my best friend, a black-skinned guy who has African/Japanese ancestry, I'd definitely be placed in the same "bucket" as the white Dutchies around me and my friend with the black Dutchies, despite him and I actually having identical experiences and mindsets and not really having anything in common with the Dutchies.
If they're putting you two in different buckets, how likely is it that it's to do something with one bucket and something else with the other? I imagine that, on average, the white-people-who-have-nothing-to-do-with-each-other bucket is going to fare better than the black-people-who-have-nothing-to-do-with-each-other bucket.
DEI is meant to counteract that. It's concerned with the initial surface-level nonsense because the initial surface-level nonsense, driven by socioeconomic and political structures and implicit bias, is what keeps HR et al. from being able to reach deeper and make conscientious calls vis a vis diversity of thought.