The whole DEI discipline was kind of taken over by do-nothing consultants who just did some performative trainings and seminars with no measurable outcomes or actions attached. I’ve been involved...
The whole DEI discipline was kind of taken over by do-nothing consultants who just did some performative trainings and seminars with no measurable outcomes or actions attached. I’ve been involved in several committees at various levels in various companies and, after a bit of early activity in some of the better managed ones (themselves, rare), they all kind of fizzled and turned into perfunctory box checking exercises.
And I’m fairly confident those early wins were mostly just successful because they were a major priority for 1 or 2 people in or near leadership anyway, so I questioned how much the DEI committees actually contributed beyond taking advantage of the ambient vibes that prompted creating the committee in the first place.
I think the approach itself is broken at a basic level. Time horizons are too short to do anything strategic, they’re always funded in a way where you hire a couple of consultants and that’s it. For real change you need labor power from the underrepresented groups to be able to negotiate and transact against management. Having it be top down and managed largely by HR and consulting staff doesn’t do anything that will fundamentally alter the culture of anything. Cultural change takes time, you need to think in terms of a decade or more.
How do you envision that working? A union is going to represent the majority of it's workers. I think a lot of people are on board with DEI ideals I'm not sure you're going to see nearly as many...
How do you envision that working? A union is going to represent the majority of it's workers. I think a lot of people are on board with DEI ideals I'm not sure you're going to see nearly as many willing to go on strike and lose $$ to support it.
These DEI initiatives began due to public pressure and an image / reputation hedge on the part of the various companies. There is something incredibly different between posting on social media and trying to create a movement around an ideal and asking people to impact their families directly via labour movements.
The only real solution is to put the good of society above profits.
I think a lot of people are on board with DEI ideals I'm not sure you're going to see nearly as many willing to go on strike and lose $$ to support it.
The only real solution is to put the good of society above profits.
I really don't know how to reply here because your reply seems to be directed back to companies (due to the word profits) and I was responding to the idea of DEI principals being "enforced" via...
I really don't know how to reply here because your reply seems to be directed back to companies (due to the word profits) and I was responding to the idea of DEI principals being "enforced" via unions (something I think is highly unlikely to happen).
It is possible that I answered to the wrong comment. In any case, you shouldn't take things personally. We are all just trying to contribute to discussion, right? Not pounce at each other ;)
It is possible that I answered to the wrong comment. In any case, you shouldn't take things personally. We are all just trying to contribute to discussion, right? Not pounce at each other ;)
You mentioned that money could be an impediment to change. I observed that such chage can only happen if, as a society, we understand that ethics should come before profits. I don't know what...
You mentioned that money could be an impediment to change. I observed that such chage can only happen if, as a society, we understand that ethics should come before profits. I don't know what would be a correct response for that, but it's a fairly trivial statement.
I'm struggling with this right now. I've got ADHD and I'm also running a Neurodiversity group inside my workplace. We're fairly well spoken of, we get a lot of time to talk to the business and...
I'm struggling with this right now.
I've got ADHD and I'm also running a Neurodiversity group inside my workplace. We're fairly well spoken of, we get a lot of time to talk to the business and some of the extremely senior leaders (Board) and the such that we're known to want to help change.
But you know what? I've been asking for reasonable adjustments for 12 months and STILL do not have them. My boss has old fashioned attitudes that my group work is squeezed out as much as possible. JUST BE MORE LIKE ME! it screams, all the while ignoring the inequity that is posed around the business.
Yeah this has been one of the issues in every group I’ve been a part of. It’s almost entirely volunteer committees and the work isn’t meaningfully considered as part of performance evaluations....
Yeah this has been one of the issues in every group I’ve been a part of. It’s almost entirely volunteer committees and the work isn’t meaningfully considered as part of performance evaluations. It’s always going to take a backseat to the actual work. It also doesn’t help that it’s often younger people staffing them who don’t always have the best time management skills or understand how to prioritize tasks, drive towards measurable outcomes (a necessity in a corporate environment if you want change to stick), or effectively communicate with senior management. In most cases I felt like I was in a college seminar discussion session and not an actual business unit.
I'm senior leadership, that's where it's really coming unstuck (I'm one level below the guy who runs the place). The place has a lot of buyin, but when push comes to shove? You get so little...
I'm senior leadership, that's where it's really coming unstuck (I'm one level below the guy who runs the place). The place has a lot of buyin, but when push comes to shove? You get so little support individually.
That makes sense though, doesn't it? You were hired and paid for "the actual work" not the volunteer committees so your compensation and performance should be judged on the actual work not the...
Yeah this has been one of the issues in every group I’ve been a part of. It’s almost entirely volunteer committees and the work isn’t meaningfully considered as part of performance evaluations. It’s always going to take a backseat to the actual work.
That makes sense though, doesn't it? You were hired and paid for "the actual work" not the volunteer committees so your compensation and performance should be judged on the actual work not the committees.
The committees are like extracurricular activities that hopefully bring in change / insight however sever more of a networking, get your name known to upper management so that in the long run it may serve as a "tie-breaker" to get you elevated up the ladder compared to some other person with similar qualifications.
It does make sense. If they valued the project they’d elevate it to the level of actual work (discrete activities with performance measurable targets and outcomes) instead of volunteerism. But...
It does make sense. If they valued the project they’d elevate it to the level of actual work (discrete activities with performance measurable targets and outcomes) instead of volunteerism. But they don’t, so it’s all just faffing about off the side of your desk.
Flexible working. Not just, "WFH 9-5" Reporting that allows for actual action, rather than just talking shops that don't (This is hard to explain without context behind it) Understandings around...
Flexible working. Not just, "WFH 9-5"
Reporting that allows for actual action, rather than just talking shops that don't (This is hard to explain without context behind it)
Understandings around the concept of 'mental health' / 'do no harm' days
My company spent God knows how much on DEI consultants last year and hired 2 DEI executives to fill out our L team. This year we laid off 20% of our work force and downsized most programs within...
My company spent God knows how much on DEI consultants last year and hired 2 DEI executives to fill out our L team. This year we laid off 20% of our work force and downsized most programs within the company that were providing actual value to people. But I'm sure glad we paid hundreds of thousands for some consultant telling us that we need more BIPOC in leadership positions.
See, I'm torn here. Honestly, losing a bunch of executives doesn't undo everything "since George Floyd was murdered." Like, these execs weren't in charge of Police departments or anything. Not to...
See, I'm torn here. Honestly, losing a bunch of executives doesn't undo everything "since George Floyd was murdered." Like, these execs weren't in charge of Police departments or anything. Not to sound like I'm supporting the Internet hate junkies crying woke but what, really, did these people oversee or markedly improve?
I see a line like “If you do not look at building inclusive organizations as critical to the success, the profitability, the scaling of your company and its objectives, those are the things that that are greatly at risk.” Said Randolph, and just think 'okay, but how did it help?' all those paragraphs and not one example for an effort spearheaded by any of them. No metrics for the amount of change they wrought. I don't know any of those people, don't care about their titles, and (as sad as it is) metrics prove work.
I get that it's targeted and all that, obviously coordinated and everything, but why should they keep their jobs, honestly? The whole point of the article should be to sell me on what they did before they were unjustly outed.
I agree. Everybody rushes to put up their pitchforks whenever they find out a random CEO makes a lot of money, pointing out how they don't add any value and don't deserve that salary. Well, at...
I agree. Everybody rushes to put up their pitchforks whenever they find out a random CEO makes a lot of money, pointing out how they don't add any value and don't deserve that salary. Well, at least with CEOs you can typically look at the strategic direction of the company and the (good or bad) decisions they've made.
I'm guessing these people have also been earning quite a sizable amount for a few years, so... what did they bring to the table?
all those paragraphs and not one example for an effort spearheaded by any of them.
Well, they do provide at least one example:
Disney’s chief diversity officer and senior vice president Latondra Newton, a six-year veteran, was the first of the four to go. On June 20, the company said that Newton was leaving to pursue “other endeavors.” Predictably, her exit was celebrated by a faction of people who blamed her for “The Little Mermaid’s “woke” casting of Black actress and singer Halle Bailey.
Whether that "effort" helped Disney or actually made them lose money is probably way above my paygrade 😅
(Assuming she really had any kind of responsibility in that topic of course. Otherwise we're back at square one like you said.)
Hell, even that 'example' isn't an example. It's just claiming that 'anti-woke' nutjobs think she did something - it doesn't confirm or deny that it was actually her effort that caused the casting.
Hell, even that 'example' isn't an example. It's just claiming that 'anti-woke' nutjobs think she did something - it doesn't confirm or deny that it was actually her effort that caused the casting.
First, in companies where the labor pool is very competitive, it's important to find ways to ensure staff who are from different backgrounds feel welcome in the workplace - otherwise, you may lose...
First, in companies where the labor pool is very competitive, it's important to find ways to ensure staff who are from different backgrounds feel welcome in the workplace - otherwise, you may lose that part of the labor pool to a competitor.
Second, there is a sense that different backgrounds and differing viewpoints lead to better outcomes. Consider that Disney wants movies that appeal to many demographics so that they can get as many viewers as possible. Having a more diverse team involved in the creation and production leads to a better chance of wider appeal.
Whether DEI initiatives has met those two goals is a different conversation of course.
A chronic frustration I’ve had with many people who work in this space professionally has been their tendency to conflate criticism of their methods and approaches with opposition to their...
Whether DEI initiatives has met those two goals is a different conversation of course.
A chronic frustration I’ve had with many people who work in this space professionally has been their tendency to conflate criticism of their methods and approaches with opposition to their ostensible goals. It makes it extremely difficult to have productive discussions or do any kind of collaborative strategy when every social convention they operate with seems designed to have a chilling effect on skepticism and critique.
Yup - one of my theories - which I've pulled out of my butt mind you - is that having more focus on relentlessly quantifying DEI impact and how that hits the bottom line would really help. It's...
Yup - one of my theories - which I've pulled out of my butt mind you - is that having more focus on relentlessly quantifying DEI impact and how that hits the bottom line would really help. It's one thing to run an initiative, but it's much better if you can show the initiative had this impact to employees and that's tied to this increase in profit. That keeps everyone honest and makes the case for DEI much better.
Here's an organisation that had to pay almost £1m because they made racist assumptions about a member of their staff who was attacked by a delivery driver....
What does DEI do to help a company’s bottom line in reality? Nothing.
Here's an organisation that had to pay almost £1m because they made racist assumptions about a member of their staff who was attacked by a delivery driver.
They all affect the bottom line. If you don't have accounting you will literally be shut down or fined into the dust by the IRS. HR is to make sure you aren't sued into dust. Infosec is to allow...
They all affect the bottom line.
If you don't have accounting you will literally be shut down or fined into the dust by the IRS.
HR is to make sure you aren't sued into dust.
Infosec is to allow your company to operate without having it crypto locked.
Removal of any of these can literally stop your company from operating if not cost it millions in fines.
Removal of a DEI is no where near that level of disruptive, and if it has an impact, will be hard to prove. Its very much a middle management thing that might be nice to have but isn't critical to operations, and thus one of the first things on the chopping block when the belt gets tight.
This is exactly it. DIE is at the “esteem” rung on the hierarchy of needs. But if you’re struggling to turn a profit or pay the workers who make your business run, DIE is the perfect place to make...
This is exactly it. DIE is at the “esteem” rung on the hierarchy of needs. But if you’re struggling to turn a profit or pay the workers who make your business run, DIE is the perfect place to make cuts.
One has to wonder if it's because DEI isn't really paying off, or if it just looks like easy salaries to get rid of. I'm on my own employer's DEI team, but we're all volunteers. Nobody is a DEI...
One has to wonder if it's because DEI isn't really paying off, or if it just looks like easy salaries to get rid of.
I'm on my own employer's DEI team, but we're all volunteers. Nobody is a DEI professional in any way. We're just a bunch of members of minority groups and some allies, and most of our "work" involves cheerleading and raising awareness. We don't have any power in the company to influence hiring or team diversity or anything. Those choices are still up to whatever makes the company the most money.
My guess is both. For most non-Hollywood businesses diversity in hiring isn't going to affect revenue in directly obvious ways, yet those DEI salaries are noticeable. (I realize we're commenting...
One has to wonder if it's because DEI isn't really paying off, or if it just looks like easy salaries to get rid of.
My guess is both. For most non-Hollywood businesses diversity in hiring isn't going to affect revenue in directly obvious ways, yet those DEI salaries are noticeable. (I realize we're commenting on a Hollywood story where success is often entirely about marketing an idea and getting consumers excited about this or that. That is a different game entirely so I'm just focusing on regular day-to-day businesses in this reply.)
I also think the DEI groups aren't accomplishing something that wasn't already naturally happening. I'm middle-aged and in my lifetime diversity and inclusion are self-evidently the best way to conduct a pluralistic society -- that's been the norm since I was watching TV as a kid (Star Trek, Captain Planet, etc), through programs and assemblies in high-school (exploring cultures, talking about forms of bullying, etc), and into adulthood where working alongside people of different races, cultures, accents is entirely the norm. Yes there's still work to be done, and yes things aren't moving as fast as I'd like them to, and yes there will always be nasty outliers that grab headlines, but the broad trend is clearly toward a more Star Trek-esque society.
I know several people that volunteered at unpaid DEI groups, like you described. Their hearts are decidedly in the right place and they want to make the world a better place -- I don't want to paint with too broad a brush but of the people I know, they also have a notably myopic view of how the world works -- consuming new media from only one side of the isle for example. That makes me worry about the DEI initiative as a whole because I know several people who have first-hand true horror stories of paid DEI groups with way too much power and influence over hiring/firing, and disciplinary hearings, to say nothing of the soft-social power that comes along with these initiatives. Suffice it to say, those workshops were not a place for open dialog, being wrong, and exploration.
Because I think the world is trending toward diversity and inclusion naturally, I fear the DEI groups are a potential step backward for both diversity and inclusion because for all the people doing cheerleading and raising awareness, like you described, there are many others that are taking a much more heavy-handed approach which will lead to backlash.
lol, I'm not too far removed from your school :-D. People suck and give way too little thought to important issues (myself usually included). That said, I'll try to answer your question in two...
lol, I'm not too far removed from your school :-D. People suck and give way too little thought to important issues (myself usually included). That said, I'll try to answer your question in two parts:
All of history, including some pretty dang recent history in the two World Wars, is horrendously brutal. Mind blowingly, unimaginably brutal. (See any episode of Hardcore History ever.) But at the core are individual people who generally don't want to hurt other people. Deviations from that are usually a form of corruption, greed, or uninformed people from the top-down. Whereas we've been (slowly) codifying the bottom-up desires of real people into constitutions, civil rights, cross-cultural exposure and understanding, and I expect that to continue (though back-sliding will of course happen). Everything from the Renaissance onward feels like it's headed in the (general) right direction to me. It's also possible I'm a deluded nerd who watched too much Star Trek as a kid!
Thanks for the thoughtful reply. I guess the focus of my question is less about the "trending" and more to do with the "naturally". You say ... and I'm not sure that I buy that most people are...
Thanks for the thoughtful reply. I guess the focus of my question is less about the "trending" and more to do with the "naturally". You say
at the core are individual people who generally don't want to hurt other people
... and I'm not sure that I buy that most people are like that. Trampling and stifling outgroups seems to be in our collective nature, and is certainly having a resurgence lately; in the (in)famous quote from what is now several years ago about fallout from a Trump-era wall/budget battle, "He’s not hurting the people he needs to be".
The only way we drag ourselves forward is kicking and screaming, engaging policies that seem like "overkill" or end up with mixed results, because left to our own devices and without public displays of commitment to improvement, we'll be right back in the shit again before you can blink.
Kowtowing to the "there's no more white people on tv anymore" crowd? Big business is nothing but waves, they probably saw what happened with the whole stupid bud light thing and decided to ratchet...
Kowtowing to the "there's no more white people on tv anymore" crowd?
Big business is nothing but waves, they probably saw what happened with the whole stupid bud light thing and decided to ratchet it back...gods do I hate bigots.
The term "Latinos" only really makes sense in the US, and "Latinx" only really makes sense in the context of English. Latin Americans (as in people that are actually from LATAM, as opposed to...
The term "Latinos" only really makes sense in the US, and "Latinx" only really makes sense in the context of English. Latin Americans (as in people that are actually from LATAM, as opposed to Americans of South American descent) know Latinx, they just detest it because it makes no sense in Spanish and Portuguese -- both languages with grammatical gender that work profoundly different than English, and that gain nothing by importing solutions made for an entirely different language.
It's like a solution for a very specific problem that romance languages don't have. At least not in the same way.
I have seen Latin American people advocate for use of "Latine" or "Latines" though. The consensus does seem to be that "Latinx" is stupid, but there are Spanish/Portuguese-speakers who are seeking...
I have seen Latin American people advocate for use of "Latine" or "Latines" though. The consensus does seem to be that "Latinx" is stupid, but there are Spanish/Portuguese-speakers who are seeking gender-neutral language to use when talking about people. The language politics of the issue is definitely different than for English, but gendered languages like Spanish and Portuguese (as well as others like French and German) do have speakers who, often due to feminist principles or queer identity, seek more inclusive language. Ofc it's up to those communities to work out what they want to use themselves, rather than random English speakers. My limited understanding is that "-e" endings are the most popular (though still far from mainstream) solution for this in at least some queer Spanish-speaking groups.
The push for inclusion in romance languages is valid. It is just the case that it is more complicated from a linguistic standpoint because of grammatical gender, which has enormous importance to...
The push for inclusion in romance languages is valid. It is just the case that it is more complicated from a linguistic standpoint because of grammatical gender, which has enormous importance to the way they function.
Grammatical gender is different than gender as identity because it is not about identity or sexuality, it is just a way to have two "modes" of nouns to which you attach different articles and pronouns. This allows a language to be more concise and less ambiguous when referring to objects. Because of that, in those languages, no propose for radical degendering will ever "make sense" from an aesthetic or grammatical standpoint.
And it must be said that, in them, the push for some very specific changes have a lot to do with the import of measures that only really make sense in English. It's about what gender means in English, a language without grammatical gender where gender is always about subjective identity.
Which is not to say that romance languages don't need to change, but, in my opinion, it would be preferable if those demands were directed at changing how romance languages can oppress in their own particular ways, without importing English concerns wholesale with no localization.
Absolutely 100% agree with this paragraph. No notes. In general I think English monolinguals (and I guess speakers of other languages without grammatical gender) struggle to understand that it's...
Which is not to say that romance languages don't need to change, but, in my opinion, it would be preferable if those demands were directed at changing how romance languages can oppress in their own particular ways, without importing English concerns wholesale with no localization.
Absolutely 100% agree with this paragraph. No notes.
In general I think English monolinguals (and I guess speakers of other languages without grammatical gender) struggle to understand that it's not the same thing as the social concept of gender. But in a sense I can't blame them because most of them have only been exposed to languages with grammatical gender that does interact with the social concept of gender in weird ways.
In Germany the current strategy is to use an abbreviation for including both plurals when referring to groups of people (e.g. "Student/innen" or "Student*innen" which are understood to mean "Studenten/Studentinnen") but you occasionally get gender-neutral coinages (like "Studierenden" which would be something like "studyings" in English ig). There's definitely less space for gender-neutrality here though, which I find frustrating as a nonbinary person. At nonbinary meetups here a lot of people use singular they in English but there's no widespread equivalent in German, so you'll often have them either pick one of the binary gendered pronouns (German has a neuter gender but the pronoun is like English "it" and thus not popular for people) or ask to not use any pronouns.
I think a better direct translation would be "those who study". It's not really possible to confer that meaning in just one word in English as far as I know. And just to clarify for non-Germans,...
(like "Studierenden" which would be something like "studyings" in English ig)
I think a better direct translation would be "those who study". It's not really possible to confer that meaning in just one word in English as far as I know.
And just to clarify for non-Germans, "Students" and "Those who study" do indeed basically mean the same, as is the case in German, it's just that "Those who study" is entirely void of gender, and also a construct you can't create with every noun or verb. "Electricians" for example can't be rebuild in the same way.
Yeah it makes a lot more sense to me to add a neutral or third grammatical gender to a language than to try to un-gender it. This seemed like a classic case of Anglos assuming their ways are a...
Yeah it makes a lot more sense to me to add a neutral or third grammatical gender to a language than to try to un-gender it.
This seemed like a classic case of Anglos assuming their ways are a universal standard and everyone else is being weird for funsies or something.
I just want to jump in and perhaps clarify something for those of us in this part of the thread, and not explicitly in response to the above comment. The proposed gender neutral "Latiné" or even...
I just want to jump in and perhaps clarify something for those of us in this part of the thread, and not explicitly in response to the above comment.
The proposed gender neutral "Latiné" or even "Latinx" as far as I am aware, is not intended to be placed in the language as a whole. It's in no way meant to be used with grammatical gender of nouns or changing how you conjugate entire sentences. It's only meant to be used when referring to or about people who wish to be referred to appropriately based on their gender identity, or NB status.
While there's nothing particularly wrong with your clarification, I find it important to understand that shifts in language have ramifications that cannot be contained due to the intrinsic nature...
While there's nothing particularly wrong with your clarification, I find it important to understand that shifts in language have ramifications that cannot be contained due to the intrinsic nature of how language works.
Edit: also, these are proposals for the English language. I have no opinion on how English speaking culture should work in that regard. My criticism is about their wholesale import to other languages and cultures.
Yes, I heard that as well. As to why I didn't know any of that: English is not my first language, and I tend to talk about those issues with my countrymen.
Yes, I heard that as well.
As to why I didn't know any of that: English is not my first language, and I tend to talk about those issues with my countrymen.
I only learned it, because I have a reading friend that tracks alot of things in their reading in a spreadsheet. BIPOC, LGBT, Disabled and Neurodiverse (character representation and authors).
I only learned it, because I have a reading friend that tracks alot of things in their reading in a spreadsheet. BIPOC, LGBT, Disabled and Neurodiverse (character representation and authors).
In my realm of jargon I knew POC as Point Of Contact, like a representative liaison. At this point I should probably bin it for that usage, and let People Of Color take over. Anyone with input for...
In my realm of jargon I knew POC as Point Of Contact, like a representative liaison.
At this point I should probably bin it for that usage, and let People Of Color take over.
Anyone with input for new jargon for said representative liaison, your contribution is appreciated in advance.
It is still just fine to call it a point of contact. The fact that an acronym can mean several things depending on context doesn't invalidate the other meanings just because of a new popular usage.
It is still just fine to call it a point of contact. The fact that an acronym can mean several things depending on context doesn't invalidate the other meanings just because of a new popular usage.
The whole DEI discipline was kind of taken over by do-nothing consultants who just did some performative trainings and seminars with no measurable outcomes or actions attached. I’ve been involved in several committees at various levels in various companies and, after a bit of early activity in some of the better managed ones (themselves, rare), they all kind of fizzled and turned into perfunctory box checking exercises.
And I’m fairly confident those early wins were mostly just successful because they were a major priority for 1 or 2 people in or near leadership anyway, so I questioned how much the DEI committees actually contributed beyond taking advantage of the ambient vibes that prompted creating the committee in the first place.
I think the approach itself is broken at a basic level. Time horizons are too short to do anything strategic, they’re always funded in a way where you hire a couple of consultants and that’s it. For real change you need labor power from the underrepresented groups to be able to negotiate and transact against management. Having it be top down and managed largely by HR and consulting staff doesn’t do anything that will fundamentally alter the culture of anything. Cultural change takes time, you need to think in terms of a decade or more.
In one word: unions :)
The one thing leadership could do would be supporting unions.
Exactly. Without addressing that they whole enterprise was set up to fail.
How do you envision that working? A union is going to represent the majority of it's workers. I think a lot of people are on board with DEI ideals I'm not sure you're going to see nearly as many willing to go on strike and lose $$ to support it.
These DEI initiatives began due to public pressure and an image / reputation hedge on the part of the various companies. There is something incredibly different between posting on social media and trying to create a movement around an ideal and asking people to impact their families directly via labour movements.
The only real solution is to put the good of society above profits.
I really don't know how to reply here because your reply seems to be directed back to companies (due to the word profits) and I was responding to the idea of DEI principals being "enforced" via unions (something I think is highly unlikely to happen).
It is possible that I answered to the wrong comment. In any case, you shouldn't take things personally. We are all just trying to contribute to discussion, right? Not pounce at each other ;)
umm.. I didn't take it personally?? I simply stated I didn't understand how to reply to you.
You mentioned that money could be an impediment to change. I observed that such chage can only happen if, as a society, we understand that ethics should come before profits. I don't know what would be a correct response for that, but it's a fairly trivial statement.
Why do you hate freedom and America?
/s
I'm struggling with this right now.
I've got ADHD and I'm also running a Neurodiversity group inside my workplace. We're fairly well spoken of, we get a lot of time to talk to the business and some of the extremely senior leaders (Board) and the such that we're known to want to help change.
But you know what? I've been asking for reasonable adjustments for 12 months and STILL do not have them. My boss has old fashioned attitudes that my group work is squeezed out as much as possible. JUST BE MORE LIKE ME! it screams, all the while ignoring the inequity that is posed around the business.
It sucks.
Yeah this has been one of the issues in every group I’ve been a part of. It’s almost entirely volunteer committees and the work isn’t meaningfully considered as part of performance evaluations. It’s always going to take a backseat to the actual work. It also doesn’t help that it’s often younger people staffing them who don’t always have the best time management skills or understand how to prioritize tasks, drive towards measurable outcomes (a necessity in a corporate environment if you want change to stick), or effectively communicate with senior management. In most cases I felt like I was in a college seminar discussion session and not an actual business unit.
I'm senior leadership, that's where it's really coming unstuck (I'm one level below the guy who runs the place). The place has a lot of buyin, but when push comes to shove? You get so little support individually.
That makes sense though, doesn't it? You were hired and paid for "the actual work" not the volunteer committees so your compensation and performance should be judged on the actual work not the committees.
The committees are like extracurricular activities that hopefully bring in change / insight however sever more of a networking, get your name known to upper management so that in the long run it may serve as a "tie-breaker" to get you elevated up the ladder compared to some other person with similar qualifications.
It does make sense. If they valued the project they’d elevate it to the level of actual work (discrete activities with performance measurable targets and outcomes) instead of volunteerism. But they don’t, so it’s all just faffing about off the side of your desk.
As an employer, I’m curious — what adjustments?
Flexible working. Not just, "WFH 9-5"
Reporting that allows for actual action, rather than just talking shops that don't (This is hard to explain without context behind it)
Understandings around the concept of 'mental health' / 'do no harm' days
Even without the context I feel this so hard.
My company spent God knows how much on DEI consultants last year and hired 2 DEI executives to fill out our L team. This year we laid off 20% of our work force and downsized most programs within the company that were providing actual value to people. But I'm sure glad we paid hundreds of thousands for some consultant telling us that we need more BIPOC in leadership positions.
See, I'm torn here. Honestly, losing a bunch of executives doesn't undo everything "since George Floyd was murdered." Like, these execs weren't in charge of Police departments or anything. Not to sound like I'm supporting the Internet hate junkies crying woke but what, really, did these people oversee or markedly improve?
I see a line like “If you do not look at building inclusive organizations as critical to the success, the profitability, the scaling of your company and its objectives, those are the things that that are greatly at risk.” Said Randolph, and just think 'okay, but how did it help?' all those paragraphs and not one example for an effort spearheaded by any of them. No metrics for the amount of change they wrought. I don't know any of those people, don't care about their titles, and (as sad as it is) metrics prove work.
I get that it's targeted and all that, obviously coordinated and everything, but why should they keep their jobs, honestly? The whole point of the article should be to sell me on what they did before they were unjustly outed.
I agree. Everybody rushes to put up their pitchforks whenever they find out a random CEO makes a lot of money, pointing out how they don't add any value and don't deserve that salary. Well, at least with CEOs you can typically look at the strategic direction of the company and the (good or bad) decisions they've made.
I'm guessing these people have also been earning quite a sizable amount for a few years, so... what did they bring to the table?
Well, they do provide at least one example:
Whether that "effort" helped Disney or actually made them lose money is probably way above my paygrade 😅
(Assuming she really had any kind of responsibility in that topic of course. Otherwise we're back at square one like you said.)
Hell, even that 'example' isn't an example. It's just claiming that 'anti-woke' nutjobs think she did something - it doesn't confirm or deny that it was actually her effort that caused the casting.
Pretty easy to see why they’re first to go tbh. What does DEI do to help a company’s bottom line in reality? Nothing.
First, in companies where the labor pool is very competitive, it's important to find ways to ensure staff who are from different backgrounds feel welcome in the workplace - otherwise, you may lose that part of the labor pool to a competitor.
Second, there is a sense that different backgrounds and differing viewpoints lead to better outcomes. Consider that Disney wants movies that appeal to many demographics so that they can get as many viewers as possible. Having a more diverse team involved in the creation and production leads to a better chance of wider appeal.
Whether DEI initiatives has met those two goals is a different conversation of course.
A chronic frustration I’ve had with many people who work in this space professionally has been their tendency to conflate criticism of their methods and approaches with opposition to their ostensible goals. It makes it extremely difficult to have productive discussions or do any kind of collaborative strategy when every social convention they operate with seems designed to have a chilling effect on skepticism and critique.
Yup - one of my theories - which I've pulled out of my butt mind you - is that having more focus on relentlessly quantifying DEI impact and how that hits the bottom line would really help. It's one thing to run an initiative, but it's much better if you can show the initiative had this impact to employees and that's tied to this increase in profit. That keeps everyone honest and makes the case for DEI much better.
Here's an organisation that had to pay almost £1m because they made racist assumptions about a member of their staff who was attacked by a delivery driver.
https://www.doughtystreet.co.uk/news/david-stephenson-secures-ps1m-payout-victim-racial-bias
Indeed those are necessary pieces of infrastructure for a company to run. DEI isn’t in that category.
They all affect the bottom line.
If you don't have accounting you will literally be shut down or fined into the dust by the IRS.
HR is to make sure you aren't sued into dust.
Infosec is to allow your company to operate without having it crypto locked.
Removal of any of these can literally stop your company from operating if not cost it millions in fines.
Removal of a DEI is no where near that level of disruptive, and if it has an impact, will be hard to prove. Its very much a middle management thing that might be nice to have but isn't critical to operations, and thus one of the first things on the chopping block when the belt gets tight.
This is exactly it. DIE is at the “esteem” rung on the hierarchy of needs. But if you’re struggling to turn a profit or pay the workers who make your business run, DIE is the perfect place to make cuts.
One has to wonder if it's because DEI isn't really paying off, or if it just looks like easy salaries to get rid of.
I'm on my own employer's DEI team, but we're all volunteers. Nobody is a DEI professional in any way. We're just a bunch of members of minority groups and some allies, and most of our "work" involves cheerleading and raising awareness. We don't have any power in the company to influence hiring or team diversity or anything. Those choices are still up to whatever makes the company the most money.
My guess is both. For most non-Hollywood businesses diversity in hiring isn't going to affect revenue in directly obvious ways, yet those DEI salaries are noticeable. (I realize we're commenting on a Hollywood story where success is often entirely about marketing an idea and getting consumers excited about this or that. That is a different game entirely so I'm just focusing on regular day-to-day businesses in this reply.)
I also think the DEI groups aren't accomplishing something that wasn't already naturally happening. I'm middle-aged and in my lifetime diversity and inclusion are self-evidently the best way to conduct a pluralistic society -- that's been the norm since I was watching TV as a kid (Star Trek, Captain Planet, etc), through programs and assemblies in high-school (exploring cultures, talking about forms of bullying, etc), and into adulthood where working alongside people of different races, cultures, accents is entirely the norm. Yes there's still work to be done, and yes things aren't moving as fast as I'd like them to, and yes there will always be nasty outliers that grab headlines, but the broad trend is clearly toward a more Star Trek-esque society.
I know several people that volunteered at unpaid DEI groups, like you described. Their hearts are decidedly in the right place and they want to make the world a better place -- I don't want to paint with too broad a brush but of the people I know, they also have a notably myopic view of how the world works -- consuming new media from only one side of the isle for example. That makes me worry about the DEI initiative as a whole because I know several people who have first-hand true horror stories of paid DEI groups with way too much power and influence over hiring/firing, and disciplinary hearings, to say nothing of the soft-social power that comes along with these initiatives. Suffice it to say, those workshops were not a place for open dialog, being wrong, and exploration.
Because I think the world is trending toward diversity and inclusion naturally, I fear the DEI groups are a potential step backward for both diversity and inclusion because for all the people doing cheerleading and raising awareness, like you described, there are many others that are taking a much more heavy-handed approach which will lead to backlash.
I have to ask, as someone much more of the "people are bastard-coated bastards" school : what makes you think this?
lol, I'm not too far removed from your school :-D. People suck and give way too little thought to important issues (myself usually included). That said, I'll try to answer your question in two parts:
All of history, including some pretty dang recent history in the two World Wars, is horrendously brutal. Mind blowingly, unimaginably brutal. (See any episode of Hardcore History ever.) But at the core are individual people who generally don't want to hurt other people. Deviations from that are usually a form of corruption, greed, or uninformed people from the top-down. Whereas we've been (slowly) codifying the bottom-up desires of real people into constitutions, civil rights, cross-cultural exposure and understanding, and I expect that to continue (though back-sliding will of course happen). Everything from the Renaissance onward feels like it's headed in the (general) right direction to me. It's also possible I'm a deluded nerd who watched too much Star Trek as a kid!
The media is showing us what we want to hear and not necessarily what is true. The "if it bleeds, it leads" problem. Two good sources that demonstrate that I can recommend: Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World – and Why Things Are Better Than You Think (also a good audiobook). There's also 40-minute presentation on YouTube that is also data-heavy and covers some of the same ground called A Tale of Two Realities.
Thanks for the thoughtful reply. I guess the focus of my question is less about the "trending" and more to do with the "naturally". You say
... and I'm not sure that I buy that most people are like that. Trampling and stifling outgroups seems to be in our collective nature, and is certainly having a resurgence lately; in the (in)famous quote from what is now several years ago about fallout from a Trump-era wall/budget battle, "He’s not hurting the people he needs to be".
The only way we drag ourselves forward is kicking and screaming, engaging policies that seem like "overkill" or end up with mixed results, because left to our own devices and without public displays of commitment to improvement, we'll be right back in the shit again before you can blink.
Kowtowing to the "there's no more white people on tv anymore" crowd?
Big business is nothing but waves, they probably saw what happened with the whole stupid bud light thing and decided to ratchet it back...gods do I hate bigots.
Putting this here just so others don't have to Google like I had.
I learned that POC was People of Color earlier this week (and I'm black :P).
lol reminds me of latino people not knowing the term latinx
The term "Latinos" only really makes sense in the US, and "Latinx" only really makes sense in the context of English. Latin Americans (as in people that are actually from LATAM, as opposed to Americans of South American descent) know Latinx, they just detest it because it makes no sense in Spanish and Portuguese -- both languages with grammatical gender that work profoundly different than English, and that gain nothing by importing solutions made for an entirely different language.
It's like a solution for a very specific problem that romance languages don't have. At least not in the same way.
I have seen Latin American people advocate for use of "Latine" or "Latines" though. The consensus does seem to be that "Latinx" is stupid, but there are Spanish/Portuguese-speakers who are seeking gender-neutral language to use when talking about people. The language politics of the issue is definitely different than for English, but gendered languages like Spanish and Portuguese (as well as others like French and German) do have speakers who, often due to feminist principles or queer identity, seek more inclusive language. Ofc it's up to those communities to work out what they want to use themselves, rather than random English speakers. My limited understanding is that "-e" endings are the most popular (though still far from mainstream) solution for this in at least some queer Spanish-speaking groups.
The push for inclusion in romance languages is valid. It is just the case that it is more complicated from a linguistic standpoint because of grammatical gender, which has enormous importance to the way they function.
Grammatical gender is different than gender as identity because it is not about identity or sexuality, it is just a way to have two "modes" of nouns to which you attach different articles and pronouns. This allows a language to be more concise and less ambiguous when referring to objects. Because of that, in those languages, no propose for radical degendering will ever "make sense" from an aesthetic or grammatical standpoint.
And it must be said that, in them, the push for some very specific changes have a lot to do with the import of measures that only really make sense in English. It's about what gender means in English, a language without grammatical gender where gender is always about subjective identity.
Which is not to say that romance languages don't need to change, but, in my opinion, it would be preferable if those demands were directed at changing how romance languages can oppress in their own particular ways, without importing English concerns wholesale with no localization.
Absolutely 100% agree with this paragraph. No notes.
In general I think English monolinguals (and I guess speakers of other languages without grammatical gender) struggle to understand that it's not the same thing as the social concept of gender. But in a sense I can't blame them because most of them have only been exposed to languages with grammatical gender that does interact with the social concept of gender in weird ways.
In Germany the current strategy is to use an abbreviation for including both plurals when referring to groups of people (e.g. "Student/innen" or "Student*innen" which are understood to mean "Studenten/Studentinnen") but you occasionally get gender-neutral coinages (like "Studierenden" which would be something like "studyings" in English ig). There's definitely less space for gender-neutrality here though, which I find frustrating as a nonbinary person. At nonbinary meetups here a lot of people use singular they in English but there's no widespread equivalent in German, so you'll often have them either pick one of the binary gendered pronouns (German has a neuter gender but the pronoun is like English "it" and thus not popular for people) or ask to not use any pronouns.
I think a better direct translation would be "those who study". It's not really possible to confer that meaning in just one word in English as far as I know.
And just to clarify for non-Germans, "Students" and "Those who study" do indeed basically mean the same, as is the case in German, it's just that "Those who study" is entirely void of gender, and also a construct you can't create with every noun or verb. "Electricians" for example can't be rebuild in the same way.
Until I take over and everyone has to say "Elektrikarbeitenden," ofc.
-- sparksbet, Germany's best Neuworterfindende
Yeah it makes a lot more sense to me to add a neutral or third grammatical gender to a language than to try to un-gender it.
This seemed like a classic case of Anglos assuming their ways are a universal standard and everyone else is being weird for funsies or something.
Is it even a problem though or is it just a perceived problem?
I'm not sure what you mean. Could you be more specific?
Well you said that Latinx is a solution to a problem. I was suggesting that it's not really a problem at all.
I see. I wouldn't know how to answer that. That is very US specific. Maybe it is useful in America. I wouldn't know.
I just want to jump in and perhaps clarify something for those of us in this part of the thread, and not explicitly in response to the above comment.
The proposed gender neutral "Latiné" or even "Latinx" as far as I am aware, is not intended to be placed in the language as a whole. It's in no way meant to be used with grammatical gender of nouns or changing how you conjugate entire sentences. It's only meant to be used when referring to or about people who wish to be referred to appropriately based on their gender identity, or NB status.
While there's nothing particularly wrong with your clarification, I find it important to understand that shifts in language have ramifications that cannot be contained due to the intrinsic nature of how language works.
Edit: also, these are proposals for the English language. I have no opinion on how English speaking culture should work in that regard. My criticism is about their wholesale import to other languages and cultures.
All of my Hispanic friends absolutely cannot stand the term Latinx
BIPOC is another variant, for "Black, Indigenous, and People of Color"
Yes, I heard that as well.
As to why I didn't know any of that: English is not my first language, and I tend to talk about those issues with my countrymen.
I only learned it, because I have a reading friend that tracks alot of things in their reading in a spreadsheet. BIPOC, LGBT, Disabled and Neurodiverse (character representation and authors).
In my realm of jargon I knew POC as Point Of Contact, like a representative liaison.
At this point I should probably bin it for that usage, and let People Of Color take over.
Anyone with input for new jargon for said representative liaison, your contribution is appreciated in advance.
It is still just fine to call it a point of contact. The fact that an acronym can mean several things depending on context doesn't invalidate the other meanings just because of a new popular usage.