DEI, affirmative action, and quotas are well intentioned to offset systemic disadvantages. How this is implemented and executed on in practice varies a lot. The results of these measures to enable societal change are mixed.
Instead of using race as a proxy for disadvantaged groups, using quotas for people from poor districts, people with non academic parents, etc. directly might be more beneficial and more broadly accepted in society. The problems in the US, and elsewhere, start with access to and quality of education from childhood on. Trying to fix that with racial quotas for universities seems to be the wrong end.
Have 60 years of affirmative action fundamentally changed the success of African Americans? How much longer should these programs be used?
What about the poor whites who now vote for Trump? They are not part of the good old boys white elite club either. The US is obsessed with race and should move beyond it.
There’s research on affirmative action and it’s effectiveness and overall the results are a bit meh. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/…/ejsp.2991
ivanafterall@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Exactly, I heard this from people from literal NASA. It changed my whole perspective. It’s about ensuring the maximum number of viewpoints around a given table, because that’s how you avoid blind spots. You want as many perspectives as possible on a problem.
Samskara@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
Diversity in a team has lots of advantages, but that’s not directly related to DEI, affirmative action, and quotas.
ivanafterall@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Diversity isn’t directly related to DEI (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion)? Oh. Ok.
Samskara@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
Yes, I didn’t phrase that well. DEI is more than its three components. You can have diversity without equity and inclusion. You can have equity and inclusion without affirmative action and quotas. Diversity, equity, inclusion is a desired outcome with typically quotas being the main tool. So DEI as a term is mostly interchangeable with affirmative action and quotas. People opposed to quotas aren’t necessarily opposed to diversity.
Banana@sh.itjust.works 2 days ago
There’s an episode of Reply All about this where they talk about efficiency and how more diverse teams are not necessarily more efficient at the beginning but over time greatly increase efficiency because more diverse life experience results in more ideas.
I think the episode is #52: Raising the Bar
Basically, when faced with a difficult problem, a more diverse teams gets better results, which makes sense because different life experiences = different knowledge bases = fewer gaps.
Flax_vert@feddit.uk 2 days ago
So it doesn’t apply to pilots then? Kinda just meetings?