You’ve got to give Trump “credit” for one thing: he publicly expresses all the most vile racist tropes embraced by the MAGA movement. His attack on Kamala Harris as a “DEI” candidate is on a par with his constant assertions that people of color are either criminals or bums (or “not the finest” people…). Too bad America doesn’t get more immigration from Norway…
One of the most persistent accusations that bigots like Trump level at efforts aimed at erasing the structural effects of decades of discrimination is that such efforts necessarily disregard merit–that attempts to diversify a workforce or a student body inevitably result in a less-effective workforce or a “dumbed down” classroom.
The problem with that accusation is that it rests on a deeply-held conviction that merit is something that “those people” obviously lack, rather than on an accurate understanding of what constitutes merit and how we measure it.
Persuasion recently featured an interview between Yascha Mounk and Simon Fanshawe on just that topic. Fanshawe does a good deal of diversity work rooted in the philosophies of John Stuart Mill and other Enlightenment figures, and Mounk asked him how his approach differs from other diversity efforts. Fanshowe responded that “diversity inclusion” is about trying to understand what people’s different experiences bring to joint enterprises.
What organizations or businesses really have is a bunch of strangers brought together to achieve a common objective, whether it’s making pizzas or teaching a course at university or putting a man or woman on the moon. And my proposition to them is that it’s through their differences, what they each differently bring to that task and its different components—that’s why diversity matters. And one further thing that I would say is that there’s a key difference when we think about this notion of diversity. We think about the deficits. In other words, you can look at data and you could look at where the imbalances are between different groups of people. But there’s another element of this which is the diversity dividend, and that’s what happens when you start to combine the differences. Diversity is absolutely a talent strategy if you’d like to achieve common objectives.
When Mounk questioned him about the widespread notion that diversity efforts necessarily downplay merit-based hiring, Fanshawe’s response was, in my opinion, exactly right.
What I would say is that you need to think about what you mean by merit. In other words, what do you value and what people are able to bring it into organizations? Typically what you have is that merit is largely based on a technical notion, on a professional skill notion. They will bring that technical skill. But the truth of it is there’s a kind of skill threshold when you’re trying to fill a job or create a team. But then the question is, what else is that person bringing? And I’m not suggesting, ever, that people should be recruited because of who they are. I’m saying that, actually, it’s not who they are that matters. It’s what they bring through who they are…
So what I would say is that if we start to think of merit as being that combination of skill and then also the knowledge of that and the experience you bring through who you are and your personality, then what you start to do is to combine a number of things with other people. So it’s important to recognise that the members of certain groups and certain members of those groups experience disadvantage. But it’s not a uniform experience. It’s not an all-day experience. I often say that the thing about prejudice for lesbians and gays is we might experience discrimination every day, but we don’t any longer experience it all day.
Let’s reevaluate merit, because what you often have in jobs is that people have an assumption about the merit that’s required for the job. They then recruit to that assumption and that assumption is never challenged. And in effect what it can do is cut out people who actually have got enormous amounts of talent they could bring to that job but they’re just not perceived as being suitable for it.
That last paragraph really speaks to the issue of prejudice. Not prejudice for or against certain groups of people, but the “pre-judging” that so often occurs in formulating job descriptions. What are the skills this job really requires? If that skill list is too narrow, the business or organization will overlook applicants who would be enormous assets.
Of course, the MAGA cult doesn’t consider such possibilities.
Like Trump, they define “merit” as White skin, a penis, and a “Christian” label.
For some reason I cannot find the words to explain, this blog brought back memories of a family I met while living in Florida in the mid- to late 1990s. The young couple (I have forgotten their names) were intelligent, interesting, funny and we were living under the rule of Gov. Jeb Bush, George W’s baby brother. I met the husband’s parents who lived nearby; they spoke only fluent conversationalist hillbilly and were difficult to understand but were two of the wisest people I met in Florida. They certainly would fit the “diversity” qualification but would never be considered as meeting the “merit” qualification to be considered as an applicant anywhere. Diversity is too often used to deny equal opportunities to learn if they merited consideration.
This country, including the higher-ups in the Democratic party used ageism diversity to turn on President Joe Biden in unkind ways; he certainly merited their support, their donations and their votes when he was 78 years old. Did they believe he would not become 79 the following year, then 80, and reach 81 years of age and suddenly didn’t merit their continuing support. I DO SUPPORT VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS; IT IS THE WAY AND THE REASON THEY USED TO OUST THE MAN WHO HAS WORKED NEAR MIRACLES IN 3 1/2 YEARS AS OUR PRESIDENT.
What do they consider MERIT to mean? He met the DIVERSITY requirement regarding his abilities at an advanced age. Many of us on the blog would not qualify for the time and interest in what we have to say if our age was the consideration for MERIT to be allowed space here to comment. Thinking back to Marv Kramer; whose conspiracy theory went so far as to accuse widely acclaimed author John Grisham of writing an entire novel, “The Chamber”, only to cast veiled personal threats against him. He drifted into near radical rants on Jewish issues and left us. None of us are always totally on target with what we have to say; we are certainly a diverse group of commenters 7 days a week on every issue of the day put before us by Sheila Kennedy…who certainly merits our consideration for her diversity.
We spent much time at Gonzaga discussing diversity in my master’s of organizational leadership. It wasn’t necessarily merit-based but more about perceptions. One of the US’s strengths is its diversity. Obviously, that diversity has grown dramatically in the past two decades.
Any company with a human resources officer should know and understand about diversity in the workplace. Leaders should know how to build a diverse team to achieve various perspectives—multiculturalism. It has less to do with color and more to do with a person’s background and what it can bring to the team. The more diverse the team, the better the outcomes. DEI became a business strategy.
I think the problem occurred when the #BlackLivesMatter movement triggered a refocus on DEI but more so from a “demanding role” in business and education. This just fueled the bigots and racists. They firmly believed that hires through DEI programs were more like affirmative action forced upon the business world by government “quotas.”
Instead of a pure business strategy component to help your business, it became another quota to hire people of color, gays, foreigners, etc., who would normally not get the job, but because of the government quota, they had to be hired. This is why the DEI term is getting blasted by racists across the country. It was accepted as a business norm in the 90s and 2000s. However, many white leaders in government overreacted to the BLM protests in 2020 and tried to reemphasize the quota mentality (this is where the new definition of wokism comes from). In my community, they made a position for Deputy Mayor to be filled by a black person and created a black chamber of commerce to appease the BLM protests. Neither of which addressed the issues of racism.
what trumps mob wants is a goverment near like a chinese goverment, authoritarian,hostile to individualism, and being able to think beyond the goverment. read their newspapers, it always has Xi as the forefront. racist, yes, unless you have lotsa money,and a hard blow if you step outta line. seems American corp greed is willing to support this also, look at who donates to the mob. corp America has become the push for clock in,shut up,work go home and dont be late for work,there is no merit. while patronizing you with cheap bling like a ball cap with their logo on it. instead of a bonus for bustin your ass to make a dead line. after all, we wouldnt want to sour the shareholders with our trivial needs. but that what a trump movement is about. his backing is the billions and greed style while smiling between its fangs. there is little merit. the working class has been dumbed down for 40 years now, and its industry is being run by those who complain about lazy etc workers. hense, words used to belittle and intimdate without regard to recognition who made the profit they steal and bury in their stock portfolio. merit, mmmm maybe in a suit, whereas i see a suit as a uniform telling me im above you.. merit, whos buying the beer. Id like to say immigrants from Norway wouldnt tollerate our social programs today or our goverment under trump. maybe some immigrants from russia or hungry or china would be better suited to trumps mob.. you oughta see the stack of hats i have..
When does anyone rise to the occasion? Persuasion, race, Creed, gender, all categories used to define humans. If you removed the skin, you couldn’t tell any of these things.
Bigotry is taught, ignorance is taught. Of course, it helps to dumb down educational resources because it makes it easier to lie with impunity. I saw an interview with an individual who had immigrated from South America, and he actually said he only graduated third grade, but he could tell that Harris did not have the intellectual faculties to accomplish anything. Now from what did this guy actually get his opinion from? Well, you can guess, and you’d probably be right.
There’s a definite religious element to a lot of this stuff, but that’s religion, religion is a man-made thing, it has nothing to do with God. The Old testament discusses when the Israelites decided they needed to have a king, and, they were told they had to take the good with the bad if they had a king. Living by the law was not good enough. But they could see a king, they could touch a king, but Kings made the life of the Israelites miserable on most occasions. Instead of living by the law, they lived under the edicts of a king. A king is not God, but a king will attempt to make himself a God. And that’s exactly what happened.
Did the Israelites merit this sort of thing? Obviously they didn’t think it through completely even though they were warned.
Did the Germans merit what happened after world war I? Well, they started the conflagration. The penalty was too severe so they claim, and the first thing they did, was to blame the Jews, the German Jews and Jews worldwide for their misery. And their mind, the Jews merited extermination. They also added gypsies they added Jehovah’s witnesses who were called Bible students then, there were certain Catholic priests that they went after, also, the black descendants of world war I soldiers, the disabled, and the elderly, they all merited the gas chamber.
BLM, They carried a certain amount of political capital, but all they would do is criticize authority. They would criticize police, claimed to fight against police brutality. So black lives mattered only to fight against police brutality, other than that black lives obviously didn’t matter.
When the inner city gangs are fighting, and kids as in Chicago and other areas around this country are being gunned down in the streets for initiations and sport, do those lives matter? I posed that question, and the response was quite telling. That they were designed to go after the police, and not protect youth and prevent murder on the streets by other black folk. This would destroy the carefully constructed narrative, and obviously those being murdered by their own did not have the merit to live. They weren’t important enough obviously, compared to The construct of their political edict which is exactly like all politics. Zealotry is powerfully persuasive, especially to the gullible. If you’re looking for an appealing bandwagon to jump on, zealotry is usually involved.
Common sense is not actually very common, and logic is usually illogically used. It isn’t really that difficult to pull the wool over somebody’s eyes, it seems to happen quite often and becomes just another brick in the wall of society. It creeps in slowly enough, where sometimes it’s not even sensed. But isn’t that the way rot starts in anything?
Do all humans deserve to be treated equally? Or are their only certain humans that merit human rights? It seems that there are attempts to distinguish humans that deserve rights and others that do not. That is a road that’s been traveled quite a bit in humanity’s history. The authoritarian governments throughout history were quite adept at finding that road.
What do the scriptures say? “Narrow and rocky is a road leading to life, there are few finding it. Broad and spacious is the road leading to destruction, and many find it.”
Reds believe in meritocracy, defined narrowly by skin color, religion, class, or gender. They believe that the notion of diversity does the same. That’s an important blindness they share.
The diversity that liberals honor just recognizes that we live in an extremely connected, overcrowded human world, so every solution needs a wide range of perspectives to arrive at an optimum solution.
Gee, those B-17 and B-24 bomber crews certainly appreciated those fighter pilots flying antiquated P-40s and, finally, P-51s that helped save their asses from German fighters. Oh, but the red tail squadrons were flown by men of color and recorded the best kill to loss ratio of any fighter squadron in WW II. I’m going to guess that those white bomber crews understood merit better than anyone.
The point, of course, is that bigotry is a loser. Trump is the prime bigot on America’s stage right now. He is a serial loser who also happens to be a psychopath. Those carrying their false grievances abhor this creature because they are him and he is them.
My late spouse had a theory about merit and ability. Those who are extraordinarily gifted in one area are likely to be deficient in another. It may have been more to do with some folks being on the spectrum or just able to think and act in dimensions beyond general understanding.
By discounting some by using superficial criteria such as race, gender, educational status or sexual orientation to judge merit, companies and economies dismiss creativity, competence and skills that are not readily apparent to the eye . Look at the potential that political and religious patriarchies around the world disregard and demean as without merit.
DEI as an employment strategy broadens the ability of businesses of all kinds to uncover hidden resources. Putting people in positions of power based on superficialities is a losing strategy in a global reality that reflects the growing numbers of diverse groups.
History has taught that people will only tolerate dictatorship of any kind for so long before they realize that they have nothing to lose by demanding a right to have a say in deciding who has merit to serve them as leaders.
You vote merits consideration. Not voting means that you have given up your merit, your right to have a say in who does merit your consideration in choosing a leader.
Spellcheck error. The correct word is ADORE, not abhor.
The Ubuntu “I am because we are,” rather says it all…out of Africa, I add.
Scholarships were the first DEI acts. Our wonderful HBCUs — for all their racist births — have proven the value of DEI. You could argue that Brown v Board was DEI.