A Few thoughts. Apologies for it being long

A Few thoughts. Apologies for it being long
by wpkirish (2024-01-05 17:29:59)

In reply to: As a follow-up to below, Ackman's post on DEI is interesting posted by EricCartman

First, I believe at this point any discussion of woke / crt / dei is like taking a Rrohrschach test. There is no agreed upon definitions so everyone has a different idea of what they are discussing which can make conversations difficult. I have been involved in a number of DEI projects at schools and businesses and will tell you that it has never been anti-capitalist, anti-white, geared toward equality of outcome or most of the other negative descriptions Ackman uses. For that reason I am going to have a different view. I also suspect the students he spoke to likely have not been in any DEI meetings and their views are informing their expeirences rather than the other way around.

Second, Ackman himself recognizes and says he has long believed in giving disadvantaged groups a helping hand. So while he talks about how DEI efforts discriminate against whites he appears to have thought it worthwhile to do the same under a different name.

Third, He says he met with 15 faculty members and a few hundred students. From what I could find online Harvard has 2,400 faculty members not including teaching hospital appointments and 21,600 students. That comes out to.00625% of the faculty and .023% of the students (assuming he met with 500 students). Not having any idea how these people were selected there obviously maybe some self selection bias. He says those conversations made clear that DEI caused the anti-semitism on campus. That strikes me as strange because anti-semitism has also been rising on the right and those groups oppose DEI efforts. I doubt the proud boys or the groups chanting Jews will not replace us were motivated by DEI so I am skeptical of his causation.

Fourth, he talks about the need for a meritocracy. A number of thoughts there. As I said in a post to krudler yesterday we often talk about meritocracy and hold corporate America up as the shining example but we all know someone who got a job / promotion / internship / bonus based not upon their work but their ability to suck up or get credit for others work. We also often offer to help your friend's kid get a job or offer an internship at your company to people you know? Do you support legacy admissions at schools like Notre Dame? Ever get a client because you knew someone even though a competitor might have as qualified if not more qualified? I have long joked that no one hates patronage they hate not knowing the person handing out the job. The private sector version would be we all believe in merit unless we have another way of winning the client.

What does meritocracy mean with regard to college admissions and job searches? I have a HS senior going through the admissions process who was deferred from three schools in December. One of those schools not only admitted the daughter of co-worker of my wife but offered a $50,000 scholarship. My son had better grades, better scores and leadership / activities that were as good if not better. Did my son merit admission? Sure but they are also worried he wont go there and believe she is more likely to come. My son can do the work at all the schools he has applied to and merits admission but so have many others so if he is rejected does that mean merit is not being applied? What factor should backgorund play in merit? My son has two parents with law degrees, had a nanny at home with him so the tv was not turned on, was enrolled in second language classes at 18 months and attended a top grade school and high school in Chicago. How do you judge his accomplshments against someone from North Lawndale or Appalachia without those advantages? What does merrit mean across those vastly different circumstances?

I have written this before but wull write it again now because I believe it is relevant to the topic. I believe our society is paying the price for never having dealt with the issue of slavery and Jim Crow. MLK spoke of forming a poor people's party that owould have united the working poor across the races. Unfortunately the hatred that had grown durng Jim Crow made that difficult if not impossible. In mind this problem was exacerbated by the fact the birth of the Civil Rights movement coincided with corporate decisions to move jobs overseas. The easy answer for someone whose life became more difficult is minorities are taking my job when in fact it was moved overseas. Similary, the easy answer for the upper class white parent whose child isnt accepted to the school is affirmative action when the reality is another white kid likely got their spot. One of my wife's college roommate's was voicing this very complaint after her daughter went to TCU because she could not get into any "elite" schools. Of course after we found out her scores and grades we realized she was never going to be admitted to those schools.

I tried to find information on the statement non-DEI candidates were excluded from the President search but could not find anything so I am not certain what he means by that. While DEI might have been a factor I doubt they specifically excluded certain groups. It would be nice to live in a post-racial world but you can go online and videos day after day of people using race as a weapon to realize we have not reached that point. Go look at pictures from 1960's and 1970's at civil rights or busing protests. Look at the young kids whose faces are filled with hate those kids are only a few years older than me. Do we think they raised their kids to love one another no matter the color of their skin? Some may have changed their ways more likely did not. Read the book I recommended in the post below it was revealing to me to read about these smaller churches and their fight to take back America and of course of lot of that is wrapped up in race. Hell Trump promoted the idea of Obama the gay muslim all the way to the White House.

I grew up a blue dog democrat who the rest of my family referred to as the token Republican. I became more liberal as I grew older and met those from outside my own small world. Have we made progress since the era of Jim Crow? Undubtedly we have. Do we still have a long way to go? Undoubtedly we do. I suspect many of us on this board likely agree on some of the broad strokes of these issues the difficulty is going into detail especially online.

If you have read to hear and I doubt anyone has thanks for reading and apologieis for it being so long.

Comparing your kid to Appalachia is key

The idea of a meritocracy only works when you have two candidates that are otherwise equal in their baseline. If two people are in a race, but one has a weight shackled to one leg is the person that wins the race really the fastest person?

Is the kid who got straight A’s and a 1500 SAT but had tutors and multiple SAT prep classes really smarter than the kid who got a 1350 on the SAT and got A’s and B’s on the hardest classes that their school offered, without a tutor or prep class, and while working every day at an after school job?

That is the challenge that I think everyone is struggling with. I would argue that kid may be a stronger candidate than the rich white kid

My kids are certainly very smart, but I don’t know if they would’ve accomplish what they accomplished without the resources we gave them.

I suspect a lot of people would be ok with

affirmative action if it really were just a gentle thumb on the scale for the the deserving second kid in your example, but I don't at all think that is how it is implemented. The reality is colleges would rather have a wealthy, highly resourced black kid with a 1250 SAT than a poor Asian kid with a 1500.

Also, I've been involved with some minority-focused recruitment programs at law schools, and on more than a few occasions I've been shocked at how poor the undergrad transcripts are for some kids at top 30 law schools.

I would much rather hire the second kid

I anticipate the second student would be much more resilient.

On a related note does anyone have info on the rate of use of psychoactive medications on campuses such as notre dame? I include such meds as SSRIs and their like, stimulants, anti psychotics, etc. I've heard it's way up, I'm just curious how high. I tried to find info on that but did not find it.

Personally, I think this insistence on nearing perfection and "failure is not an option" is creating a neurotic bunch. Upper middle class seems generally consumed with worry their children will end up in a lower strata, thus creating an arms race. Of course, employers find the neuroticism useful.

Agree. So when I should think of DEI that’s what I think of

It’s not making decisions based solely on pure merit and resume

Ergo looking for socioeconomic diversity

I think evaluating for true socioeconomic diversity is a much better way, not least because it's a way to really tap into unrealized talent.

However, it would really cut into tuition reimbursement, so that too is a nonstandard
Besides, I could see some parents finding a way to game that as well.

I agree with much of what you've written, and

to avoid rehashing it, I would just add to your paragraph 1 on an issue that I think is a major part of my problem with the piece.

He invokes Kendi, but generally seems to mischaracgerize Kendi's definitions/arguments. I would agree that in some of his writing he isn't the most clear, but over time I think he's made it more clear that he advocates for a position where only policies/actions are racist or antiracist--not individuals. And because of that, any individual is capable of racist or antiracist actions/beliefs (including himself), but that any one person should not be labeled as one or the other. Also, Kendi (to my knowledge) doesn't support the idea that all White people should be labeled as "oppressors". And I don't think you can read the chapter "Whites" in How to Be Anti-Racist and think that he does.

So if he's starting from a point where the facts aren't accurate, I'm not sure how accurate some of his other conclusions may be as it relates to the value of "DEI" writ large. I think many of his points later in the piece would be agreeable to most people, including those who advocate for DEI initiatives. The issue with the piece specifically is that it may not be as accurate with regards to why DEI can't reach those objectives.

I would agree with him that Kendi veers a bit into the equality of outcome, not opportunity. However Kendi's argument is that if everyone is equal, and all opportunities are equal, then we should necessarily expect equal outcomes. If the outcomes aren't equal, then it either means there is a fundamental flaw in the groups of people which precludes them from achieving the equal outcomes with equal opportunity, or the opportunity isn't actually equal. I'm not sure I buy that totally, but I see his reasoning.

I can't speak broadly, but anecdotally, the DEI initiatives which reformed hiring practices where I'm at are definitely better. And honestly, I do think they benefit everyone (not just underrepresented groups). Instead of three people sitting around and deciding to interview and hire the people they know based on nebulous criteria, there is now a formalized process to select applicants for interview, rank based on committee review using standardized rubrics, etc.

I think your first point deserves more discussion.

I'm hopeful that the current spotlight on Harvard and Ackman's essay will lead to a constructive dialog. I agree whole heartedly that, "There is no agreed upon definitions so everyone has a different idea of what they are discussing which can make conversations difficult." That needs to change and hopefully Ackman's essay will cause a step in the right direction.

This might be part of the Rorschach test, but I did not read Ackman's essay as presenting an argument of diversity efforts generally. Rather, I read it as an argument against the "oppressor/oppressed framework" that is rooted in critical theory, has evolved in critical race theory, is fundamental to Kendi's racist/anti-racist dichotomy, and is integral to some peoples' understanding of DEI. As Ackman wrote, "Then I did more research. The more I learned, the more concerned I became, and the more ignorant I realized I had been about DEI, a powerful movement that has not only pervaded Harvard, but the educational system at large. I came to understand that Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion was not what I had naively thought these words meant."

As a condition precedent to making real improvements, we need to agree on what the relevant words mean.