The Problems with DEI #SOC119

This is a short segment from SOC 119, an introductory class on race and culture that is taught by Dr. Sam Richards at Penn State University. Today's video comes from the fourth class of the Fall 2024 semester. The original live stream took place on Thursday, September 5, 2024. The full lecture live stream is available here:

Feel free to participate in the comment section.
But please be kind.
Remember, this is a classroom.

Watch the other videos from this semester:

New to SOC 119?
We live stream every class, Tuesday and Thursday.
🏖️ August to 🍂 December, the stream happens from 1635-1750 (435-550pm).
☃️ January to 🌷 May, the stream happens from 1505-1620 (305-420pm).

Timestamps:
00:00 Preview
01:08 What is DEI[B]?
03:19 A Facilitator’s Mindset
04:24 What Do You See?
06:42 DEI in India
08:38 What Are the Problems?

CONTACTS:

Did you watch an ad and have questions about where the money is going?
The short answer is: All the money goes back into the stream or sent to our international partners for fundraisers mentioned in class.

Do you have a comment, question or concern?

Want to check out the slides and references used in this class:

#DEI #Diversity #Equity #Inclusion #Belonging

[bogusphone]

DEI

Positives:
- Possible hiring percentage change
- Possible individual feelings improvement

Negatives:
- Discrimination
- Distrust
- Under performing
- False accusations
- Diminished Engagement
- Smaller pool of applicants
- Lawsuits
- Decreased job satisfaction
- Decreased job mobility
- Decreased motivation
- Increased Racism
- Decreased team cohesion
- Increased cost
- Increased delay in staffing
- Decreased effectiveness
- Increased CYA

[dilly]

Hiring based off of physical characteristics rather than skill, what could go wrong !?

[gabeo]

ANY consideration of DEI in hiring will diminish merit absolutely. Even if discrimination did exist in hiring, the solution is not to counter it with another form of discrimination — that is hypocrisy. A genuine solution cannot be found until we face reality.

[philipdawes]

Taking the wonderful variety that is humanity, dividing it into differences, then ratioing sub sets of existence on an arbitrary set of percentile representation.

[michaelspehar]

The trouble with this class is that it did not include an explanation of how diversity, equity, and inclusion actually affect the workplace. For most jobs, diverse perspectives are less important because job tasks are performed through standardized procedures and judged to be successful once the purpose of the task is achieved. Equity, as opposed to equal opportunity, is implemented through seeking equal outcomes by group identity, rather than by job performance. The fairness sought by equity tends to replace merit. This turns fifty years of social progress on its head as one is no longer to be judged by one's "content of character, " but rather by one's identity in a given group. This seems designed to be divisive rather than unifying.

[HOG-cnzd]

Just ask yourself why major league sports DON'T use DEI?

[sky]

The problem isn't about being 'excluded', it's about making the effort and paying your dues to make yourself 'includable'.
Everyone in America is just as 'free' to become a/the:
- world renown scientist as Neil deGrasse Tyson,
- POTUS as Barack Obama,
- Hollywood icon like Sammy Davis Jr.,
- supreme court justice as Thurgood Marshall,
- sports legend as M. Jordon,
- king of pop as M. Jackson, and on and on... even POC if people haven't noticed.
Everything else is just excuses.

[CryptoSurfer]

“Diversity is a really good thing”. Well professor, prove it. You make the statement as if it is inherently known to be correct. I say show me real evidence beyond opinion.

[gabeo]

Equity [YouTube]
is [silences]
antithetical < — [this]
to [sentence.]
equality. [Why?]

[marcbrunson]

I'm glad to see a discussion on this topic. Yes, DEI can be a good policy to use for choosing the right person in whatever job. The problem is a certain ideology wants to use it to restrict from choosing the more qualified person. The college I went to finally terminated their DEI department.

[CRAFT]

One major problem is accepting the fact that every issue carries equal weight.

If you believe so much in DEI, for your next interview go in with a professional headshot instead of a resume/CV. See what the hiring manager says. Unless it's with a modeling agency, you won't get far; people want to know what you can do/have done rather than how you will look sitting at a desk.

[Matt-ktnm]

DEI is in opposition to civil rights and the Constitution.
The fact that opposition to DEI is framed as a problem is the problem.

[TheBrickLyfe]

Diversity was a reference to ideas not race, ideology, beliefs, feelings, perception, power or anything intersectional. Instead the academy shored up its ranks by finding the same ideas in different hues.

[matt]

A meta analysis just showed diversity does not increase or decrease your business productivity. Countries with more diversity are statistically not more successful than those that are more homogenous. Equity is based on myriad misleading or falsehoods about supposed historical discrimination, and the idea that inequality is inherently inequity, which is sometimes true but definitely not true all the time. Diverse opinions are not synonymous with racial or any other diversity, it is a Trojan horse to replace actual viewpoint diversity with only left leaning people.

[deryknorton]

Need to focus on what is meant by “equity” in DEI. Does it require equal outcomes?

[Makinthadough]

I would love to have had the chance to take your class and am excited to find your actual YouTube channel (I’m glad you have one). I trickled in here and heard you in other videos on other channels comment on ratios of female hires at Penn State. I’m currently working on a historical piece about the history of intellectualism and literary institutions in relatively near by Hampshire and Hardy counties in West Virginia and we’ve been finding that our institutions before the civil war were coeducational and became predominantly or exclusively male postwar during reconstruction and our formal recognition as a separate state (for a period of around 100 years from 1760s to 1863). I’m excited to watch more of your offered lectures and I know this has nothing to do with dei but as you were kind of prompting your student to consider gender in his frustration, considering other videos, and trying to at least find the right channel to share this on, I decided to share this here this evening. I’d be interested to know what you know about Pennsylvania during that period and to hear your thoughts on that discovery generally as it connects to our concepts of progressivism etc.

[malissiajones]

I'm in favor of equality in opportunity or under the law, not equity. Resources are finite and redistributing them according to boxes checked means rather than merit that one group must be harmed while other groups are rewarded regardless of added value. And, no, different ideas or perspectives isn't reason enough nor productive enough to justify it. The whole suffers when productivity suffers because there is less to distribute. It's simple math. In the real world, some ideas just suck.

[switzjon]

7:45 Notice she never mentions the Cast system

[davagevorriose]

Forget what the right-wingers say about DEI, listen, carefully, to what the activists say.

Activists use "diversity" to refer to individuals rather than just groups. An individual "person of color" is "diverse" and a white person isn't. An individual woman or female is "diverse" and a male or man isn't. An individual "LGBTQIA+" person is "diverse" and a "cisgender" person isn't.

Activists promote "inclusion" as "centering diverse people" and "decentering non-diverse people." What do you call it when you move someone out of the center? Marginalizing.

"Equity" is considered "fairness, " where it is "fair" to take from or deny resources to "non-diverse" individuals in favor of giving to "diverse" individuals.

Those are all how DEI activists use the terms; pay attention and listen to them, carefully.

[armynp]

I see problems language, and ability of workers and more important supervisors. Just because the company management uses DEI does not mean the recipient will have to same beliefs and may cause problems, Muslim supervisor may push his/her beliefs with negative evaluation on employee thar drinks alcohol or eats pork.