It’s TUESDAY🎉What a charming group🤯 Call your Senators and tell ‘em vote NO on Gabbard and Kennedy. Call your Rep and tell him/her to stand strong and don’t help Mike Johnson on the budget.
While I daily practice “visioning a kind and beautiful world”, focusing on solutions over problems, I recognize their plan, sinister beyond belief. It becomes all too clear as they dismantle agencies and protection- the billionaire class has determined that they must drastically reduce the world population, plunge us into complete economic chaos , climate crisis destruction, survival wars amongst the huddling masses while they hide in their billionaire bunkers with their “chosen slaves” and hand picked immigrants, sex trafficked instead of deported. This is the world they have visioned into potential reality.
And so, again today, I will vision a kind and beautiful world, call and write those two damn PA senators, my reps, continue the Postie Project and speak up at every opportunity.
Thanks, Lisa. I'm wishing there WAS a cavalry to call in...but the cavalry is us. I'd rather not have Musk build prison camps on Mars, but that's just me...
With that said, I believe in the power of intention, and envisioning that kind and beautiful world is, I think, both a positive action and will potentially make it happen.
If someone complains about DEI we should make them SAY IT. No acronym. Make them say I oppose diversity equality and inclusion. Because it’s ridiculous. 🩷🙏
Great idea, Jenn. Say it, also, because it's already come to mean so many different things. Hanania is talking about something legal and very specific, and also a system that could use improvement. Trump is using it as a stand-in for ethnic slurs. Most MAGA use it the Trump way, I think.
Much of this fervor comes from an assumption about what DEI means, as well as an assumption about the talents of women and minorities. When trump first rescinded EO 11246 I googled it. The AI came up with "prohibits employment discrimination and requires affirmative action by federal contractors and subcontractors." I thought huh? As far as I know what we now think of as "Affirmative Action"--a quota system, or even a preference for minorities, isn't practiced in the federal contracting system. So I read the EO.
What the EO does is list all the discriminatory practices in the act, forbid them, and says that "The contractor will take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and that employees are treated during employment, without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin. " In other words, he can't close turn his head and pretend that he just doesn't see.
It doesn't say ZIP about quotas or preferences.
"Affirmative Action" as a term of art referring to PREFERENTIAL hiring of minorities or imposing quotas only came later. It didn't really work; many members of minorities disliked it because it raised the same slur as "only a DEI hire" does today--an assumption that if they were hired they MUST be inferior because, well, their group is inferior.
All DEI tries to do is widen the pool of potential hires. It is possible that some HR departments took it further and imposed preference hiring; that as far as I know has never been the spirit of DEI. I'm pretty sure the name was chosen to get away from the negative connotations of "Affirmative Action" in providing an approach that didn't use the practices that raised those connotations.
Part of the problem, of course, is that being "qualified" for a position has many aspects. Consider two data entry people who are equally fast and accurate. But one also is a loudmouth who it is clear would never get along with co-workers. The other is pleasant and good-humored.
I'd hope any HR person would chose the pleasant one. But if the pleasant one happens to be a woman or minority, UP go the shrieks of "used race or sex to choose. "
What this is about is a bunch of white males who can't STAND to think that anyone can be better than them, much less a woman or a minority, at a job. Unfortunately, they are now in power.
On the searches for Bad Words. Deleting pages that talk about "How to use the equity in your home?" Or "there are diverse ways to consider the possible threat of hacking into the electrical grid."
The bunch of white males that are promoting male white supremacy appear blind to the fact that it is a juvenile state of mind. Almost all of them are not emotionally mature humans; they do not take full responsibility for all their actions. Their state of mind specifically reflects this. In the case of Trump, he absolutely doesn't take responsibility and has declared that directly.
Historically, this has happened endlessly in male human organization of nation states and appears to me to be one of the key reasons democracies are rare and difficult to sustain.
The thing is: the prior EO forbids discrimination for reasons of “race.” Last I heard, “white” was included in the common meaning of “race.” It protected White males just as much as Black ones. It’s just that the White males strutting before us now think that White is the ONLY race that counts.
That's true. I think they borrow a lot in their 'state of mind' from the John Birchers' concept of oligarchy and racial structuring, which is implicitly about rich white male control over government and people all the way down.
Lord help us from even digging deeply into their states of mind, such as it is.
Back to the HR job: the way they report for race and ethnicity -- and this is what Hanania has the biggest beef with, I think -- becomes ridiculous, because how can you distill all of humanity into a half dozen boxes to check off? Detroit has a large Arab population, clearly a minority group that faced discrimination, but for the purposes of our intern program, and the narrow boxes that had to be checked, Arab Americans were not eligible because they were considered white.
BUT, and this is the thing: having the consent decree, and having a DEI program, compelled people to think about this stuff in ways they otherwise would not have done. And that's important, I think. In the grand scheme, there's no question that the DEI initiatives did a lot more good than bad. Although they certainly irritated a lot of mediocre white men, so...
Many years ago, I worked for a company that had been ordered by the court, as part of a consent decree, to hire more minorities, because it had been found to be racist af in its employment practices (long before I arrived). (It was sexist, too, but the court didn't order anything around that, or if it did, it wasn't addressed in the same way.) So there was a minority internship program, which I helped run (I was only a few years older than the college kids who were the interns). Then it was determined that no, we can't have it just be a minority program any more, but we still wanted to focus on diversity, and so we were sort of trying to have quotas without explicitly having quotas. From an HR/recruitment perspective, this was an almost impossible circle to square. But ultimately, over the course of years, the program was successful. Hiring did become more diverse, etc. And the hires who stuck around were incredible, highly accomplished people who were excellent at the job.
My takeaway is that it's a situation where the good of the group takes precedence over the individual. Any one person might have a legit beef for being passed over, but in the big picture, the program did exactly what it was supposed to do. Like how a lot of individuals died on the beach at Normandy, but D-Day was still a victory. And the MAGA, above all else, value the single white male asshole over everyone else. That's part of why they hate DEI so much, I think.
In my mind, DEI, Affirmative Action, being politically correct, not discriminating based on anything except merit, has always boiled down to "Don't Be an Asshole." But the assholes of the US can't seem to help themselves. Every chance they get, and they have a BIG one now, they will try to drag us back to the world of the 1950s portion of "The Hours." A world where men were expected to be MEN, and women knew their place. Husband went to work every day, and wifey stayed home and cleaned the house, baked cakes, and along about 3:00 PM, decided what would be for dinner, based only on what her husband liked, and expected to be served, because, you know, he WORKED all day.
There are still some people who live this way, but they're called tradwives now. There are also other families in the country, and the world, who DON'T live this way, or even fit this mold, and they also have to earn money to live. Is that too DEI to think? Does Trump et al want them to just die and not be an inconvenience for them anymore? Is that the ultimate goal? Whether a woman, or a person of color, or an LGBTQ+ person is hired for a job should really NOT be based on any of those things -- their identity -- but what Trump and Co is trying to do is make it so that none of these "identities" are EVER hired, even for positions for which they're qualified. And of course, none of these individuals could ever bring a case hinging on discrimination because without DEI and etc., there could never BE discrimination. Neat trick, and an important part of a big, WHITE Orwellian world now, isn't it? Jesus wept.
I think the entire population of actual, voluntary, functional tradwives in the US could comfortably fit in a Honda Odyssey. It's fantasy. These people have a view of the world that doesn't gibe with reality.
DEI is supposed to widen the recruitment pool, and for all its myriad problems, it has certainly done that. I hope this is an opportunity to fix it and make it better, not morph to Germany in 1938.
I think identity politics has been a terrible mistake, has left our side open to accusations that there are no opportunities for white men. I have seen this to be true in academia— in the arts. I have seen terrible women and non-white people be promoted to administrators who are then terrible to everybody else. We Democrats need to abandon identity politics.
Thanks, Lauren. The system right now is not working the way it should. Hanania is not wrong about that.
Really what DEI is supposed to do w/r/t recruitment is widen the applicant pool, and make sure that people aren't NOT hired bc of race, gender, etc. When it becomes a quota system, that's where the problems come in. But without reporting on all of this, how can a company or a manager show no bias? It's complicated stuff.
And yes, from a political perspective, identity politics is not a helpful strategy.
A brilliantly written piece Greg. But that’s what I’ve come to expect from you and so I can pass it on with confidence. You are one of a few. Thank you.
And…. So we go back to merit hiring. And then someone will speak up and ask, “But how are we evaluating who is the most qualified here?” And the whole pendulum will begin all over again.
All week long I’ve been saying, “Why not us?” Because this stupid topic,”who holds him accountable if he defies the law,” shows us Greg, just how blind we stay. That was the situation for years and no one bothered to bravely solve it.
I already have 3 people in mind who need your book, excluding myself who just bought it. I also feel the urge to keep myself balanced enough to say, “I like those glasses!”
So happy these writings have found a bound home. For our sake.
We are NOT stuck in this place. Maybe the dislodge will come when the felon(s) fail to find the respect they feel they deserve in Paris. 😊 Or, in the Middle East, where nothing is said but plans are made long in advance with smiles. Culture. This rowdy bunch has built a wall of cultural dung around themselves already.
Thanks, Jackie. I like the glasses, too! It was fun to design the cover. All of it was a nice distraction. I haven't paid close attention to any of the confirmation hearings, for example, because it doesn't matter...probably they will all get in, except maybe Patel, and we have a crew of morons and nutters running things.
DEI means widening the pool of applicants for a job, so it isn't a situation where a plum job comes available -- senior advisor to the POTUS, say -- and it just goes to the president's son in law. The opposite is cronyism, and that's what we're getting now.
We have trod this ground before: political appointments and sinecures are why Garfield was shot; tariffs helped start the Great Depression; the greatest economic boon in US history coincided with rich people paying the most in taxes; etc.
It’s TUESDAY🎉What a charming group🤯 Call your Senators and tell ‘em vote NO on Gabbard and Kennedy. Call your Rep and tell him/her to stand strong and don’t help Mike Johnson on the budget.
Call call call!
Great essay Greg. Thank you!
Thanks, John.
While I daily practice “visioning a kind and beautiful world”, focusing on solutions over problems, I recognize their plan, sinister beyond belief. It becomes all too clear as they dismantle agencies and protection- the billionaire class has determined that they must drastically reduce the world population, plunge us into complete economic chaos , climate crisis destruction, survival wars amongst the huddling masses while they hide in their billionaire bunkers with their “chosen slaves” and hand picked immigrants, sex trafficked instead of deported. This is the world they have visioned into potential reality.
And so, again today, I will vision a kind and beautiful world, call and write those two damn PA senators, my reps, continue the Postie Project and speak up at every opportunity.
Wishing we could call in the Calvary.
Thanks, Lisa. I'm wishing there WAS a cavalry to call in...but the cavalry is us. I'd rather not have Musk build prison camps on Mars, but that's just me...
With that said, I believe in the power of intention, and envisioning that kind and beautiful world is, I think, both a positive action and will potentially make it happen.
If someone complains about DEI we should make them SAY IT. No acronym. Make them say I oppose diversity equality and inclusion. Because it’s ridiculous. 🩷🙏
Good idea!
I wish I could take credit lol ✊ it’s brilliant
Great idea, Jenn. Say it, also, because it's already come to mean so many different things. Hanania is talking about something legal and very specific, and also a system that could use improvement. Trump is using it as a stand-in for ethnic slurs. Most MAGA use it the Trump way, I think.
🙌
Much of this fervor comes from an assumption about what DEI means, as well as an assumption about the talents of women and minorities. When trump first rescinded EO 11246 I googled it. The AI came up with "prohibits employment discrimination and requires affirmative action by federal contractors and subcontractors." I thought huh? As far as I know what we now think of as "Affirmative Action"--a quota system, or even a preference for minorities, isn't practiced in the federal contracting system. So I read the EO.
What the EO does is list all the discriminatory practices in the act, forbid them, and says that "The contractor will take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and that employees are treated during employment, without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin. " In other words, he can't close turn his head and pretend that he just doesn't see.
It doesn't say ZIP about quotas or preferences.
"Affirmative Action" as a term of art referring to PREFERENTIAL hiring of minorities or imposing quotas only came later. It didn't really work; many members of minorities disliked it because it raised the same slur as "only a DEI hire" does today--an assumption that if they were hired they MUST be inferior because, well, their group is inferior.
All DEI tries to do is widen the pool of potential hires. It is possible that some HR departments took it further and imposed preference hiring; that as far as I know has never been the spirit of DEI. I'm pretty sure the name was chosen to get away from the negative connotations of "Affirmative Action" in providing an approach that didn't use the practices that raised those connotations.
Part of the problem, of course, is that being "qualified" for a position has many aspects. Consider two data entry people who are equally fast and accurate. But one also is a loudmouth who it is clear would never get along with co-workers. The other is pleasant and good-humored.
I'd hope any HR person would chose the pleasant one. But if the pleasant one happens to be a woman or minority, UP go the shrieks of "used race or sex to choose. "
What this is about is a bunch of white males who can't STAND to think that anyone can be better than them, much less a woman or a minority, at a job. Unfortunately, they are now in power.
On the searches for Bad Words. Deleting pages that talk about "How to use the equity in your home?" Or "there are diverse ways to consider the possible threat of hacking into the electrical grid."
Quite thoughtful.
The bunch of white males that are promoting male white supremacy appear blind to the fact that it is a juvenile state of mind. Almost all of them are not emotionally mature humans; they do not take full responsibility for all their actions. Their state of mind specifically reflects this. In the case of Trump, he absolutely doesn't take responsibility and has declared that directly.
Historically, this has happened endlessly in male human organization of nation states and appears to me to be one of the key reasons democracies are rare and difficult to sustain.
The thing is: the prior EO forbids discrimination for reasons of “race.” Last I heard, “white” was included in the common meaning of “race.” It protected White males just as much as Black ones. It’s just that the White males strutting before us now think that White is the ONLY race that counts.
That's true. I think they borrow a lot in their 'state of mind' from the John Birchers' concept of oligarchy and racial structuring, which is implicitly about rich white male control over government and people all the way down.
Lord help us from even digging deeply into their states of mind, such as it is.
one wouldn’t want to dig into a hazardous waste site.
Rich white NORDIC males.
mustn't let an Italian ("D" word or "W" word) or Pole ("P" word) or any other of those not of Aryan descent into the club.
Back to the HR job: the way they report for race and ethnicity -- and this is what Hanania has the biggest beef with, I think -- becomes ridiculous, because how can you distill all of humanity into a half dozen boxes to check off? Detroit has a large Arab population, clearly a minority group that faced discrimination, but for the purposes of our intern program, and the narrow boxes that had to be checked, Arab Americans were not eligible because they were considered white.
BUT, and this is the thing: having the consent decree, and having a DEI program, compelled people to think about this stuff in ways they otherwise would not have done. And that's important, I think. In the grand scheme, there's no question that the DEI initiatives did a lot more good than bad. Although they certainly irritated a lot of mediocre white men, so...
It is one of the roots of their yawning, gaping hole of grievance.
Thanks, Susan.
Many years ago, I worked for a company that had been ordered by the court, as part of a consent decree, to hire more minorities, because it had been found to be racist af in its employment practices (long before I arrived). (It was sexist, too, but the court didn't order anything around that, or if it did, it wasn't addressed in the same way.) So there was a minority internship program, which I helped run (I was only a few years older than the college kids who were the interns). Then it was determined that no, we can't have it just be a minority program any more, but we still wanted to focus on diversity, and so we were sort of trying to have quotas without explicitly having quotas. From an HR/recruitment perspective, this was an almost impossible circle to square. But ultimately, over the course of years, the program was successful. Hiring did become more diverse, etc. And the hires who stuck around were incredible, highly accomplished people who were excellent at the job.
My takeaway is that it's a situation where the good of the group takes precedence over the individual. Any one person might have a legit beef for being passed over, but in the big picture, the program did exactly what it was supposed to do. Like how a lot of individuals died on the beach at Normandy, but D-Day was still a victory. And the MAGA, above all else, value the single white male asshole over everyone else. That's part of why they hate DEI so much, I think.
In my mind, DEI, Affirmative Action, being politically correct, not discriminating based on anything except merit, has always boiled down to "Don't Be an Asshole." But the assholes of the US can't seem to help themselves. Every chance they get, and they have a BIG one now, they will try to drag us back to the world of the 1950s portion of "The Hours." A world where men were expected to be MEN, and women knew their place. Husband went to work every day, and wifey stayed home and cleaned the house, baked cakes, and along about 3:00 PM, decided what would be for dinner, based only on what her husband liked, and expected to be served, because, you know, he WORKED all day.
There are still some people who live this way, but they're called tradwives now. There are also other families in the country, and the world, who DON'T live this way, or even fit this mold, and they also have to earn money to live. Is that too DEI to think? Does Trump et al want them to just die and not be an inconvenience for them anymore? Is that the ultimate goal? Whether a woman, or a person of color, or an LGBTQ+ person is hired for a job should really NOT be based on any of those things -- their identity -- but what Trump and Co is trying to do is make it so that none of these "identities" are EVER hired, even for positions for which they're qualified. And of course, none of these individuals could ever bring a case hinging on discrimination because without DEI and etc., there could never BE discrimination. Neat trick, and an important part of a big, WHITE Orwellian world now, isn't it? Jesus wept.
Thanks, Steve.
I think the entire population of actual, voluntary, functional tradwives in the US could comfortably fit in a Honda Odyssey. It's fantasy. These people have a view of the world that doesn't gibe with reality.
DEI is supposed to widen the recruitment pool, and for all its myriad problems, it has certainly done that. I hope this is an opportunity to fix it and make it better, not morph to Germany in 1938.
I think identity politics has been a terrible mistake, has left our side open to accusations that there are no opportunities for white men. I have seen this to be true in academia— in the arts. I have seen terrible women and non-white people be promoted to administrators who are then terrible to everybody else. We Democrats need to abandon identity politics.
Thanks, Lauren. The system right now is not working the way it should. Hanania is not wrong about that.
Really what DEI is supposed to do w/r/t recruitment is widen the applicant pool, and make sure that people aren't NOT hired bc of race, gender, etc. When it becomes a quota system, that's where the problems come in. But without reporting on all of this, how can a company or a manager show no bias? It's complicated stuff.
And yes, from a political perspective, identity politics is not a helpful strategy.
I need to read this again Greg because you’ve put forth so much information. Thank you
Thanks, Helen.
A brilliantly written piece Greg. But that’s what I’ve come to expect from you and so I can pass it on with confidence. You are one of a few. Thank you.
Thanks, SPW!
And…. So we go back to merit hiring. And then someone will speak up and ask, “But how are we evaluating who is the most qualified here?” And the whole pendulum will begin all over again.
All week long I’ve been saying, “Why not us?” Because this stupid topic,”who holds him accountable if he defies the law,” shows us Greg, just how blind we stay. That was the situation for years and no one bothered to bravely solve it.
I already have 3 people in mind who need your book, excluding myself who just bought it. I also feel the urge to keep myself balanced enough to say, “I like those glasses!”
So happy these writings have found a bound home. For our sake.
We are NOT stuck in this place. Maybe the dislodge will come when the felon(s) fail to find the respect they feel they deserve in Paris. 😊 Or, in the Middle East, where nothing is said but plans are made long in advance with smiles. Culture. This rowdy bunch has built a wall of cultural dung around themselves already.
Thanks, Jackie. I like the glasses, too! It was fun to design the cover. All of it was a nice distraction. I haven't paid close attention to any of the confirmation hearings, for example, because it doesn't matter...probably they will all get in, except maybe Patel, and we have a crew of morons and nutters running things.
DEI means widening the pool of applicants for a job, so it isn't a situation where a plum job comes available -- senior advisor to the POTUS, say -- and it just goes to the president's son in law. The opposite is cronyism, and that's what we're getting now.
We have trod this ground before: political appointments and sinecures are why Garfield was shot; tariffs helped start the Great Depression; the greatest economic boon in US history coincided with rich people paying the most in taxes; etc.