DEI risk to corporations

Investment Analysis Clubs Macro Economic Trends and Risks
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The problem you ignore is that DEI has contributed to this unfortunate preconception.

DEI programs have increased POC admissions into upper level universities. During this period, POC university students had lower GPAs, higher dropout rates, and tended to graduate in less academically challenging majors. Like it or not, that is the data.

How does a student or teacher in a school with DEI admissions who see POC consistently performing at the low end academically and failing more frequently than the average not conclude that a lot of POC are being admitted who are not qualified.

If people see that in school, it becomes easy to generalize that to everything else.

I’m not happy with this but it is an inconvenient fact that you really shouldn’t ignore.

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The known history of TIG… Surprised? NOT !!!

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Consider the case that would be relevant to most people of the base: trying to get a job/promotion. If a POC wins the job/promotion, the white guy complains to the Department of White Entitlement, about suspected DEI going on. The “JC” will need to provide documented proof the POC was better qualified, or suffer the consequences. If a white man is given the job/promotion, no questions are asked. What will the “JC” do? The easy thing, that is less likely to get him in trouble.

Steve

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Those things are not the sole measure of being qualified for any given role. Academic performance is a very limited view of what it means to be qualified. You’ve been told this before, but still you persist.

Trying to understand your point - Because I’ve had experience with an unqualified POC, It’s understandable that I would assume that all POC are therefore unqualified. Instead of me taking responsibility for my clearly racist views, let’s blame DEI.

That’s a bold position to take.

I’m not ignoring that racism is still a problem in the US, if that’s the fact you’re pointing to. If instead your point is that DEI causes racism, I’d hardly call that a fact. That’s like saying equal pay for equal work initiatives cause sexism.

What seems inconvenient is the idea that over 400 years of racism and oppression would go away without long term interventions.

Meritocracy is the way! This is the battle cry of the most unqualified among us. Besides their insincerity, prioritizing meritocracy before ensuring the fundamentals to make it work is putting the cart before the horse. First, we have to ensure everyone has the same foundation for success (they don’t), the same opportunities (they don’t), and the same accountability when they don’t perform (they don’t).

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Hence the push to outlaw “CRT”. If we don’t talk about racism, it doesn’t exist, right?

Here is an experiment. There are two each of Wendy’s, Tim’s, BK, and Arby’s within five miles of my home.

The Wendy’s staffs are almost 100% African American

The BK and Tim’s staffs are about 50/50 white/African American.

The two Arby’s staffs are almost exclusively white. I say almost on the chance that there has been an AA employee that I did not observe.

These store are all within the same, nice, suburb. The brands vary widely in staff composition, but staff composition is consistent from store to store, of the same brand.

Who gets sued for the crime of DEI?

Steve

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Good summary (to 20).

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Long back, I am talking about 1997~1998, I was working on a project, where Arthur Anderson, is the leading consulting company helping a steel plant implement ERP. There was this Asian dude, who is brought in as an independent contractor, who questioned some of the assumptions and suggested a better approach to data organization. The AA consultant said, “this is American way of doing it, you don’t understand” and another contractor, a friend of CIO said, “when you were playing in your shorts, I was already writing code”.

The dismissiveness and hostility was eye opening to me. I assumed naively, that when you present the best ideas people will listen. No it matters a lot who says it.

Here is a personal example. My wife, short, chubby, shy girl, at least in 1999, but brilliant math mind, was working for a startup who are trying to match resumes’ with job opening. The team had a white 40’s consultant from the VC’s, who provided the initial algorithm. She looked at it and told her boss, this is very inefficient and a better way of doing it and she got a dress down. So all upset, she explained to me what happened, we were young and naive, so I encouraged her to write the code based on her algo and we can prove why her approach is better. She wrote all weekend and by Monday morning she had some working version. Then I asked her to take a day off on Monday and make it better. She did. On Tuesday, We will never forget these days, she demo’ed her code and I helped her in establishing the metric for performance, like # of queries, vs compute, data transfer over NW, etc.

The founders had 2 Indian guys. They were open and willing to listen to my wife and see the data. And made the call.

The diversity is not for the sake of having different race or gender, but diversity is to ensure you truly stay open, bring different perspectives and views. Just one look at leadership roles in this country, you can see how “competence” is viewed. It is a shame that we view our male child is somehow inherently smarter than our daughters. This bias is real and exists.

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Booyah! Thanks for sharing, great comment.

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Same thing happened to me at the pump seal company.

First, this is the type of seal that was the company’s bread and butter product:

Flowserve-Durametallic-PusherSeals-RO
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The dark grey face is known as the “insert” made of carbon. It is a maintenance part as it takes almost all the wear. The light colored ring that mates with it is known as the “seal ring”, made, typically, of tungsten carbide. To maintain the seal, the pusher assembly behind the seal ring, typically 316 stainless, is cleaned, the set screws and “O” rings (standard sizes from Parker Hannifin) replaced. The face of the seal ring is lapped. The carbon insert is replaced.

OK, know that you know what I’m talking about…

One day, in 79, the sales manager gave a presentation about their new “pre-engineered” seal line. The idea was to have a quick and dirty seal package that was available off the shelf, so a customer could get a seal out of the plant in Kalamazoo, without the usual 8-12 week wait for a made to order seal.

By the end of the presentation, I had an idea. After the meeting broke up, I walked up to the sales manager and said “we already have inserts on the shelf for all the common sizes of Goulds and Duriron pumps. The common Worthington, I-R, TRW Mission, and other pumps, have the same (banned word on the fool, but its the round piece that rotates) sizes, only the stuffing box dimensions vary. If an insert holder is made, to pilot on the stuffing box, instead of having the insert itself pilot on the box, then the Goulds and Durion inserts, and complete seals, that are already on the shelf, can be adapted to all the other brands of pumps, and reduce inventory SKUs, saving the company a stack of money.” I got the typical sort of “JC” brush off “You don’t know what I know”, or “you don’t understand what I understand”, with no attempt to say what that is that I did not know or understand. Message received “shut up and work, only honchos are allowed to have ideas”. Thus ended my attempts to make a contribution to the company outside of my narrow job description.

A year later, a new “sales letter” was circulated through the company, announcing a “great new innovation in the pre-engineered seal line”. It was exactly what I had proposed, a year earlier. Was there any acknowledgement of my making a contribution? Of course not. I didn’t bother reminding the sales manager that he had gotten that idea from me, or how he had blown me off. Lesson learned.

Every job I had, over a near 35 year span, could have been interesting and satisfying, but the “JCs” crushed every bit of satisfaction out of the job, and turned it into an ordeal.

That sales manager made it to CEO of the company in the 90s. But, when the company was folded into Flowserve, he was not invited to move to Flowserve HQ in Houston. He was invited to use the “out” door.

Steve

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Will get to merit in a bit, but first:

Here is a fun fact, we are all against racism. The difference between you and I is that you believe in only one solution, DEI, so that anyone against it must be racist. I believe racial-identity politics like DEI not only no longer work but worsens the problem, so anyone promoting it is unintentionally being racist.

I think DEI programs were effective in the aftermath of Jim Crow to accelerate the transition from legalized racial segregation to one of integration. That period of effectiveness ended about 20 years ago. Over the last 20 years in my experience the net effect of DEI is to increase racism, and it is not even close.

It should be no shocker that focusing on race will tend to increase racism.

I am a pragmatist. I prefer to combat racism by programs that work rather than push a program that doesn’t work but fits my ideology. The problem is Black-American underperformance in the work place with respect to metrics like employment rate and average income. This stems directly from underperformance in academics. This is why your statement below is just silly.

Every immigrant group without exception who have successfully assimilated into the America economy did so by focusing on academic success. Jews, Asians, Armenians, Cubans, foreign-born Blacks all have done it the same way. They didn’t wait for Whites to end institutional racism with some DEI program. If they had, they would still be considered disadvantaged.

Anyway, getting back to meritocracy. The two most successful American industries for integrating the races and for Black American participation in particular are Entertainment and Athletics. Both are meritocracies. Both became integrated despite being in a society that had all the aspects of institutional racism claimed by Critical Race Theory.

That’s the successful model. No policies based on racial identity. Focus instead on improving necessary skills on a non-racial basis. Improve all poor-performing schools. Provide free meals to all kids. Provide cheap college-prep curriculums for all at community colleges. Poor Lives Matter, race doesn’t.

DEI programs don’t work. That is one big reason why democrats are beginning to lose Black and Hispanic voters. They very rationally are starting to look for more effective alternatives than the tired policies of the 1970s.

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Everybody is against racism! Bold statement, even more bold to claim it as a fact. You might want to clue in the racists.

I don’t think I’ve ever said that DEI in the only solution, and I’ve never said that anyone against it must be racist. That said, a lot of people who are against it have clear racist tendencies. Let’s consider Charlie Kirk as an example. It must be nice living in a world where racism isn’t a serious problem, but that’s not reality.

I will own being silly. Silliness is my fleur de vie. It’s interesting that you cite entertainment and athletics as examples of meritocracies, I’ll point out that academic excellence has very little to do with being qualified in either industry. Welcome to the silly club, it’s glorious!

I think you’re projecting. As James Carville has said “It’s the economy stupid”. Inflationary impacts played the most significant role in losing minority voters. Immigration was probably a close second, with forced gender reassignment surgeries for kids coming in third. DEI had very little impact on the 2024 election.

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So close, but no cigar. The real key to success is the parents (and extended family) putting in the time and effort to have a unified front regarding the expectations of the next generation. Which means the parents (and more) limit a wide range of outside activities in order to keep the children focused on success–wherever it might be. Initially, it is school–but not in the sense of just academics. Limited other activities are permissible, but that is the key point: LIMITED. Kids can do very well if the family is ALL focused on this point. Otherwise, kids will do other things that interfere with the desired future of the parents/family for their child. Been there, seen that. Eventually, she learned those lessons and became a great mother. Guess what? She is really into the limiting of outside activities because she learned those lessons the hard way.

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Why you think DEI is about racial-identity? The whiner-in-chief, and his followers have painted DEI is about race. No it is not. It is about bringing different sections of people together, provide them a voice, hear their perspective. I am presenting below without my comments and interested to see how people interpret this.

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Every time I see someone with a name like O’Reilly, Hannity, or Buchanan, get up on his hind legs and howl about people in the US observing Cinco de Mayo, I want to ask them if they had a good time on St Patrick’s Day. Apparently, some identities are good, and some are bad.

Steve

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It’s because they think it’s Mexico’s independence day.

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It would be like Mexico celebrating the 4th of July!
:wink:

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And I’ll point out that academic excellence has a great deal to do with being qualified for most higher income jobs in fields other than entertainment and athletics.

Fine. But what is uniformly true for the ethnic and immigrant groups who are no longer considered “disadvantaged” is that the parents emphasized academic success.

Because the DEI I am talking about are ones where racial identity is a significant component in the decision to hire, promote, or admit. It is the form of DEI that Asian-American students fought against all the way to the Supreme Court. If all you are defending is a weak form of DEI that is limited to voluntary participation in awareness programs and ethnic appreciation months, I don’t think that is very controversial.

You folks are avoiding the real issue. There is no doubt that DEI programs have good intentions. The question that we all should be asking is whether DEI works. More specifically:

Are DEI programs reducing racism in America or are they increasing racial tension?

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DEI programs are certainly not increasing racism. But, they are highlighting existing systemic racisms. When the facts surface those who benefitting from existing systemic inequity are uncomfortable with it. DO you think Jim Crow laws back then were because of DEI programs? Even in progressive states like CA, fire departments, had a significant hiring within the family!!

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A study out of Rutgers found that exposure to DEI materials made people more likely to perceive prejudice where none existed. They appear to do more harm than good by increasing hostility between groups.

Instructing Animosity: How DEI Pedagogy Produces the Hostile Attribution Bias

A 2023 study by the Pew Research Center found that 52% of American workers have DEI meetings or training events at work, and according to Iris Bohnet, a professor of public policy at Harvard Kennedy School, $8 billion is spent annually on such programs…

This study focused on diversity training interventions that emphasize awareness of and opposition to “systemic oppression,” a trend fueled by the 2020 Black Lives Matter movement and popularized by texts such as Ibram X. Kendi’s, How to Be an Antiracist…

Rhetoric from these materials was excerpted and administered in psychological surveys measuring explicit bias, social distancing, demonization, and authoritarian tendencies…Across all groupings, instead of reducing bias, they engendered a hostile attribution bias, amplifying perceptions of prejudicial hostility where none was present, and punitive responses to the imaginary prejudice.

DB2

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This is on CT. There is some sort of stat in one of these NPR reports that only 11% of 2 year students get a four year degree.