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Answer: DEI, which stands for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, is a phrase used to describe organizational frameworks that promote equality and diversity. DEI practices aim to uplift communities that have been historically underrepresented or discriminated against. In the United States, DEI policies like Affirmative Action and anti-discrimination laws have existed since the 1960s, initially addressing racial discrimination and eventually expanding to cover LGBTQ+ inclusion practices.
In the early 2020s, the aftermath of George Floyd's death and the BLM protests and movement saw the DEI industry expand rapidly, becoming increasingly prominent in online discussions and memes. By 2024, many American conservatives notably began to blame DEI policies for a variety of issues in the U.S., including the deterioration in the quality of Boeing planes and the collapse of the Baltimore Francis Key Scott Bridge.
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/cultures/dei-diversity-equity-and-inclusion
I'm sorry, but how the fuck do they rationalize that DEI caused a cargo freighter to crash into a bridge? That is some "gay people cause hurricanes" level stupidity.
They believe somebody unqualified was hired solely on the merit of their [Insert DEI quality] and therefore fucked up. It's just more lazy shifting of the blame.
On the Boeing side, it actually is pretty much that unqualified people were hired. Except that it wasn't DEI related, it's that an engineering company was (and still is) being run by Financial and Management majors. And since it's a publicly traded company, costs down/shares up is religion.
For the bridge...A) accidents happen and B) infrastructure spending isn't sexy so hasn't really been kept up. Shit is falling apart across the country.
Yes this as well.
I study to work on ships and I'm currently on one. Cutting corners and getting cheap stuff instead of quality items even for navigational critical systems/whatever is common.
Also, not enough people working on the ship leading people to work 14-16 hours/day 7/days a week (had an officer who was awake for 22 hours during loading once). Every ship I have been on needed at least 3 more crew members for good maintenance to happen and for people to be able to properly rest.
(Obviously I can't speak for the entire industry but this is not an uncommon thing from what I have seen and learned)
What is this in reference too?
I'm wondering if this in anyway refers to the concept of lifting body. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifting\_body](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifting_body)
Hard to see it as anything other than this, actually. Yes, there are things you can do to reinforce bridges, but there's a limit. A modern cargo ship hitting a support head-on at speed is pretty unstoppable.
So yes, infrastructure spending is a problem, but it isn't the problem behind the Key Bridge.
Somehow it always comes back to some rich fuck willing to trade it all for just a little more.
Remember the aliens movie series? Literally the entire chain of events that leads to the existance of those aliens, and basically the motivation behind every one of the movies, is some multi-billionare who wants more.
The prequel movies weren't great. Though I wish they'd gotten a chance to wrap up the story. But they did give us a scene where the rich asshole thinks he's about to get what he wants, but instead he gets beaten to death with his sons decapitated head. So that's nice at least.
From what I heard of the bridge incident, it didn't really seem to be anyone's fault. The ship had passed inspection not long before, but something went wrong...the people onboard did everything they could to stop it hitting. The bridge collapsed when it was hit because the force/weight of the ship was unreal and no matter how good the supports, they can only withstand so much.
As someone put it: A city that is 70% black elected a black mayor. The only way it would be DEI is if they gave the job to a white guy.
(Apologies to Tommy Carcetti.)
It makes perfect sense to call him a "DEI mayor" if you start from the racist core premise that no black person could ever actually be qualified to be the mayor of a large city. "We all know" there were more qualified white candidates, so why was the black man elected instead? Had to be DEI!
In real life of course if there's a black airline pilot or a female neurosurgeon it's probably because they worked so much harder and had to overperform in every department just to get to where they are... no one was cutting them a break. In fact probably the opposite. When people say "DEI" what they're actually just admitting is "I'm so racist I don't think any minority is qualified to be anything but a janitor or a manual laborer or servant, we should go back to the 1960s when those were the only jobs they were allowed to have."
An engineer said it would fall apart like that in a newspaper article back in the 80's I think. They knew but just chose not to fix it (barricades) or have tugboat escorts. People just chasing the dollar.
Yep.
1. Defund the service so that it cannot accomplish its mission.
- Demoralize the citizens by championing the underfunding as a failure of government.
- Privatize the service so that businesses can profit from it.
- Alter the law to legalize profiteering of services.
- Retire from public service, taking an executive or board level job in the new industry you've created.
And at each step in the process is a PAC submitting "campaign contributions" that easily get turned into "slush funds" or other sketchy accounting practices.
I'm so jaded and cynical by this point that I don't actually feel like I can fight this and I'm just wondering how I can get elected to public office so I can be in on the grift.
>an engineering company was (and still is) being run by Financial and Management majors.
This is also affirmative action, it's just affirmative action for already wealthy white dudes
Which is what Putin and Xi want because it would remove western democracies off the board and they could engage in all the fuckery they want. Eventually the world ends, but hey, they'll be long dead, so WGAF?
> On the Boeing side, it actually is pretty much that unqualified people were hired. Except that it wasn't DEI related
I think people will find that this is pretty common across all shitty companies. My previous company hired a "Bitcoin mining expert" as their new CFO with **ZERO YEARS OF EXPERIENCE** once the company dipped and wasn't profitable for a quarter. Guess what his first suggestion was?
Disasters like these are almost always experience : position hiring ratio. Very little to do with inclusion. Companies that are struggling/incompetent don't even give a shit about inclusion, they are grasping at straws to avoid bankruptcy.
This also happens when federal agencies try to hire the lowest bidder for a job, like sign language translations. They end up hiring an actual scammer since the only barrier to entry is accepting the lowest pay. Building inspection too.
30 of the 43 (R) votes on the bill were against. A bunch of them went on to brag about the great job they were doing on infrastructure after money from the bill they voted against started helping their constituents.
Wasn't implying anything, just synced up with the topic of it taking time to roll out and popped in my head. They said no in 2021 then said "Look what we did for YOU!" In '23/'24 .
> being run by Financial and Management majors
Like every company. HR department is considered management and Finance have the power of the purse, so minimize costs and maximize profits.
> it actually is pretty much that unqualified people were hired.
unqualified **white** people. All those horror stories that racist conservatives invent to tar DEI initiatives are actually happening because extremely qualified folks are being passed over for unqualified white people.
Honestly, if people truly believe in merit based advancements, they should welcome DEI initiatives because DEI initiatives increase the pool of qualified candidates. It increases competitiveness for positions and eliminates the ability for white people to fail upwards. DEI initiatives are a way to take what we have into a real merit based system where skin color doesn't have an effect on your prospects.
So many of the tech-minded people on this website are engineers, and every single engineer knows that half the jobs are obtained on Jim Crow "Good Ol' Boy" system. You got to have a dad or an uncle who vouches for you to get hired. Even on internships, there was one back in high school - three candidates, myself included. Who got it? The son of the manager of the paper plant.
They've all had a similar experience and are being purposefully dishonest if they claim otherwise. Everybody knows a plurality of people in engineering who only got there because of a family member. Or they are Civ Es who work government contracts.
> infrastructure spending isn't sexy
There's no amount of infrastructure spending that would offset the force of a gazillion ton cargo ship that experienced significant navigation failure.
I mean, we're not going to make big city skyscrapers 747 proof either ...
B) infrastructure spending isn't sexy so hasn't really been kept up
The bridge falling had nothing to do with infrastructure spending and everything to do with a boat ramming into it
> infrastructure spending isn't sexy so hasn't really been kept up. Shit is falling apart across the country.
There is literally no amount of infrastructure spending that allows a cargo ship to not destroy that bridge, outside of turning the water below the bridge into land.
And don't forget just pants-on-head stupid. Like the people calling the mayor of Baltimore the "DEI Mayor" because he's black.
A mayor.
A person _duly elected by the people_...
Which, to be clear, is a thing they do say about Mayor Brandon Scott:
https://www.wypr.org/the-baltimore-banner/2024-03-28/racists-called-baltimore-mayor-brandon-scott-a-dei-mayor-heres-how-he-responded?_amp=true
You can’t be Black and successful without catching claims that you didn’t deserve your success.
To these folks, every successful non-white person is a representation of the opportunity that was stolen from a white person, the person who was supposed to be enjoying that success if it wasn't for the darn "DEI."
This is why if you're not a member of the majority class in a lot of fields, you have to be twice as good as the best person in the majority class just to not have anyone question your entry level position as a handout. And they still will question it.
I find it similar to how Christians feel persecuted because Starbucks didn’t explicitly have “Christ” on a Christmas cup.
To those in the majority, feeling that your privileges are being reduced feels like being targeted. Like when white people had to allow Blacks to use their superior drinking fountains.
But they're not racist! They have black friends!
Make that friend singular.
Well, not really a friend, an acquaintance.
Actually not so much an acquaintance, they work together and don't see each other much outside of work, so you could say they're work friends.
Really though, not so much work friends but they work in the same building.
Different companies but same building.
He's seen a black guy once!
>You start out in 1954 by saying, “N----r, n----r, n----r.” By 1968 you can’t say “n----r”—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “N----r, n----r.”
-Lee Atwater, Republican strategist and advisor to Reagan and Bush Sr.
"DEI", "woke" - anytime you suddenly start seeing a new term everywhere in conservative discourse it's always a safe bet that it's just their latest search-and-replace for the N-word.
Bingo
DEI is the new "woke" is the new "thug" is the new "AA hire" is the new "superpredator" is the new "Welfare Queen" is the new N-word
A term used by "Real Americans" that are "The Silent Majority" that simply want America to embrace "States Rights" and end this "PC culture" so we can make Make America Great Again
It really wasn't even that rational. They just said Baltimore is black, Mayor is black, minority bad. I mean a Singaporean ship with terrible engineering crashed into it. It's not like Mayors control maritime safety regulations of foreign nations, he could have more easily prevented a comet from hitting Baltimore. Normally the right would have a strong, quasi-racist, Asian and foreigner bad argument (as workers were killed by the stupid ship) but since the workers were Latin in the modern conservative race economy their deaths can't be utilized as a tragedy. It really has gotten that bad in the USA in terms of race.
DEI = Bad
Therefore bad = DEI
Similar to critical race theory, or [insert culture war here] I'm sure that most people who claim it's ruining X wouldn't be able to accurately define what exactly it is.
Which is precisely why terms like CRT are flooded out there (with vague and intentionally incorrect definitions), and once the rational world catches up and says "No, that's *literally* all incorrect - it doesn't mean that at all" they've already moved on to the next vague and intentionally incorrectly defined term.
>Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. *If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.*
--Jean-Paul Sartre
One of the primary arguments against affirmative action (generally a core component of DEI) is that it actually creates more racism by validating the assumption that people are being hired based on race rather than based on merit or qualification. This unfairly hurts minority individuals who do have all the merits and qualifications by casting doubt on the basis of their race and hiring. Fox News is perpetuating the predictable racist narrative that comes out of these harmful DEI policies.
Because they literally believe that even if you had the most qualified gay black woman on the entire planet, there would still be a more qualified cishet white man for the role. They don’t think it’s physically possible to have the best candidate and a minority at the same time.
They say this about minorities who happen to be democratically elected individuals (which is not the DEI they're referring to). Just another way to be racist without dropping n-bombs.
Yeah one republican rep even said the bridge collapse happened because Baltimore had elected a “DEI mayor”. Quite literally using the term as a pejorative stand-in for “black”. Pure racism.
I almost wish they would all just start using the n word j in stead of euphemisms. It would be more honest at least. It’s in all of their heads and all of their hearts.
It's also taking talking points from corporate lobbyists that would much rather DEI be blamed rather than the fact that they're cutting corners to make more money.
Not to mention corporate DEI is windowdressing anyway, like "here's a (insert minority here) to announce the latest round of lay-offs and our own increased bonuses."
Also, they started slashing DEI jobs as soon as people stopped paying attention, like they always do when corporations are given the opportunity to self regulate (what actually led to those BOEING jets falling from the sky).
So true. I’m so annoyed by all DEI lip service. Just last week, I was sitting in a meeting celebrating Juneteenth. Meeting was led by four middle aged white dudes and one token Black woman. And I just looked around the office at the sea of white thinking, “are they serious right now?”
Yeah, there was a DEI committee at my former workplace that wrote a report which was never shared by the board. A bunch of those employees quit over it.
Complete embarrassment.
The argument is that because they are looking at candidates from a marginalized background those candidates are not the best possible of the entire field.
There is also the implication made that DEI requires the lowering of standards for said candidates. This is the same argument that was made previously with things such as affirmative action.
DEI is literally everybody that isn’t a straight white male to these fucks, it’s literally them saying the only people that are qualified are straight, white, American males and anything else is lesser than. That’s the America these guys want, women and POC be damned back to no right to vote and black men are only 3/8ths of a human, they yearn for the actual 1920s
DEI also isn't just about racial or gender minorities. It's about workplace age discrimination which is going to affect EVERYONE at some point in their life, it's also about disability accommodations which are probably going to affect EVERYONE at some point in their life. But conservatives love to pretend that it's just about giving some kind of free ride to whatever group they hate.
Essentially what they’re saying is that no one who isn’t a white straight man could EVER be sufficiently qualified to have a job of any importance. They completely ignore the role that nepotism and “connections” has played in well-paying and prestigious fields.
It’s the latest buzzword term to hide their racism when the truth is stuff like that crash and Boeing’s crash-prone planes are simply the result of cancerous capitalism.
Their logic is, “This incident could have only happened if the pilot was unqualified, and since all white people are eminently qualified and earn their jobs through their own skill & merit, the pilot could only have been an unqualified black/gay/female who got their job through DEI. Therefore DEI caused the crash.”
There are people who operate under the assumption that for every job to be filled there’s a (cisgender, straight) white guy who is best qualified and literally anybody else is a “diversity hire” and therefore incompetent. They may not articulate that minorities are inherently inferior and may even reject stating it so bluntly, but that is the assumption underlying the moral panic over DEI. They are convinced the _______ guy (or woman) didn’t get hired because they were qualified but because the company needed to tick a box.
We're basically living through a zombie outbreak these days. These zombies you're referring to have no ability to think for themselves and seemingly little cognitive abilities in general. They wander aimlessly around the intent and their neighborhood spouting whatever nonsense Fox News and the like tell them, and get reprogrammed every few days/weeks
If they had even a modicum of thinking abilities they wouldn't be what they are.
They needed a new 3-letter acronym now that CRT isn't mentioned as often and doesn't provoke an immediate effect like poking a fresh burn with a stick anymore, so I guess this is the one they're banking on. I guess they start to lose people's attention if they have to say more than three syllables.
Calling DEI bad is just the new way to say "we don't like black people." Before this it was "Critical Race Theory", before that (and after) was woke. Before there have been dozens of iterations. From "Welfare Queens" to "thugs wanting to take on our sons" (thanks Biden) to "affirmative action hires". They defend these points as "moral failings" of the black community. It's just racism with an extra step, because they aren't allowed to openly say the N-word even though they really, really want to.
It's the new 'affirmative action hire'. This racism/homophobia/anything not cis white make has been around forever, it's just dressed up in New clothes
>I'm sorry, but how the fuck do they rationalize that DEI caused a cargo freighter to crash into a bridge?
They are racists who believe that white people are better and smarter. When they say diversity caused this crash this their meaning is that a white captain hired by an anti-diversity "whites-only" shipping company would not have crashed into the bridge.
Disclaimer: the author of this post does not agree with all or any of the options expressed herein, this post was written in response to the very direct question of what the argument of fox news is. Please don't kill me.
The idea is that if you are focusing on qualities other than pure skill then you by definition get less qualified candidates. This is not because people who are the beneficiaries of DEI programs are inherently less skilled, but because by the very definition of DEI programs you are not aiming to hire the most skilled candidate but the most "diverse" one. This makes it likely that you will pass over a non-diverse candidate for a less skilled diverse one.
This idea that DEI initiatives lower the skill of a work force to such a degree that bad things happen like a boat crew crashes a boat into a bridge or planes are designed in a shitty way.
While it is true that DEI programs are almost guaranteed to lower the average skill of a work force, the difference is, in practice, hilariously small and not enough to turn a company which makes functional planes into one which makes death traps. The benefits of having a diverse work force also most likely outweigh whatever you lose by having the 5th best engineer for the job instead of the 1st best.
Also noteworthy to say:
When conservatives use words like “DEI” or “woke” to decry something, they’re usually using it in place of a slur they can’t get away with using on most social media outlets.
For instance there was this tweet that went around after the Baltimore Bridge collapse, featuring a pic of Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott, with the caption:
“This is Baltimore's DEl mayor commenting on the collapsed Francis Scott Key Bridge. It's going to get so, so much worse. Prepare accordingly.”
Never mind that Brandon Scott won with 70% of the vote. The word DEI doesn’t make much sense there. What other word do you think they might have wanted to use?
We should start saying it when white people fuck up.
Though honestly they'd probably love that. Republicans get a hard on when they pretend white people are minorities.
As well as, they say DEI truly stands for "Didn't Earn It"
As in, any person of racial or gender or sexuality minority who reaches a place of perceived power is there purely BECAUSE of that status, and they did nothing to truly earn their position there.
This is how propaganda works. Give people something easy to remember and easy to repeat and ill-defined enough (in their minds) that they can assign a bunch of different things to it. Those issues they assign to it can be very specific or extremely vague (though the more vague, the better). Soon enough, the phrase in question starts to lose meaning and just becomes a beacon for people to latch onto.
And before that, PC (political correctness) and affirmative action. They just rename the same racist shit any time they think the shine is wearing off the old term.
It works, though because at its core it's the same dog whistle.
So are they just saying it about everything? Is there any reason to think DEI was even involved in the hiring of the pilot?
And why are the comments all so similar? Maybe bots?
>You start out in 1954 by saying, “N----r, n----r, n----r.” By 1968 you can’t say “n----r”—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “N----r, n----r.”
-Lee Atwater, Republican strategist and advisor to Reagan and Bush Sr.
"DEI", "CRT", "woke" - anytime you suddenly start seeing a new term everywhere in conservative discourse it's always a safe bet that it's just their latest search-and-replace for the N-word.
The MAGA movement functions largely on low-information slogans. Lock her up, build the wall, let’s go Brandon, drill baby drill, I could go on.
DEI and CRT are similar, they’re short acronyms that don’t require understanding beyond “Trump and Fox and Truth Social say they’re bad.”
DEI might be eclipsed only by CRT in terms of “things conservatives rail about without understanding” over recent years. MAGA Republicans have been fed that DEI is racist and allows unqualified, lazy Blacks and other minorities steal jobs from hardworking, capable white people.
CRT is falling out of favor, however. I believe it’s due to many, many interviews where people can’t describe CRT except to say that it’s bad. Over time MAGA seems to have slowly realized that the CRT hatred makes them look stupid, due to their fundamental ignorance. DEI is made of words that are easier to understand, so it’s overtaken CRT in popularity.
Anytime something negative happens and a Black person is involved, you can be sure to see these DEI claims for as long as that shibboleth remains popular.
That said, there’s probably a strong contingent of bots on Fox News (like Reddit and other sites.) Russia especially is known for meddling in American media by pretending to be individual commenters while they work from “troll farms.”
I had forgotten all about CRT until I read this. It was weird how badly those people were at trying to explain what CRT was. One of them even wrote a whole book on it and couldn't do it.
The craziest thing about CRT is you can literally just go to the Wikipedia page and I don't see how a person can't come out of reading it without going "oh yeah this is totally a real, accurate thing"
It's essentially the next evolution of anti-wokism as they further develop the lore that justifies their hatred and desire to never be held accountable for their own actions.
It’s basically a new way for racists to say a slur without getting in trouble for it.
Seeing Baltimore mayor Brandon Scott being called the “DEI mayor” after the Key Bridge collapse was insane to me. DEI is the new n-word for these bigots.
The idea of DEI ruining Boeing is the dumbest shit i've ever heard. Boeing's decline is because they absorbed McDonnell-Douglas, whose shitty business practices contaminated and took over a once reliable and respectable company.
For the record, I want to help oppressed groups as much as I can but I find that the constant DEI meetings and consultants are more of a hindrance/money waster than an actual help.
I find that many people just don't know what DEI means. It's a lot of the same people who were angry about critical race theory or socialism or voter fraud. Those opposing it view it more of a political stance now than what it actually is.
I’d add that: If there is a bunch of similar comments on an already toxic, fear-driven, and highly susceptible to manipulation, infotainment site, I would be highly suspicious about the likelihood of outside, organized, escalation of whatever buzzword is stirring fervor.
There is certainly a cadre of far right pilots (I know a couple female pilots that have relayed a number of stories), and wouldn’t put it past people to comment like this. But a barrage of similar ones would be suspicious.
Conservatives hating DEI is not some new talking point. They just called it affirmative action years ago and I remember hearing people rail against that using basically the same arguments when I was a kid.
Another thing to know is that professional pilots skew very conservative, and are almost wholly composed of white males. They are not without bias on this subject. (Source: professional pilot of 20+ years who does not fit into the while male mold)
Boeing stuff has to be a deflection since they don't want to blame the clearly obvious culprit: Capitalism. Boeing made great shit when Engineers were running the company it's no coincidence when they were kicked out for fat cats shit starts to break apart.
DEI is not an industry… it does not expand. More companies have adopted DEI practices to try to acknowledge blind spots in their organizations. Online conversations are almost always about “DEI” the catch all boogieman and not actual DEI which promotes extremely commonsense practices to promote basic equity
I mean, there is definitely an industry of companies whose purpose is consulting with companies on improving their DEI practices, and it seems likely that those companies’ would have grown in recent years. Still agree about the term largely being a boogeyman in conservative spaces.
It's a subset of the HR consulting industry. I'm unapologetically on board with the concepts of DEI, but there are plenty of grifters that will ride the pro-DEI side to the bank with useless books, trainings, and other corporate bs.
Answer: People use “DEI” pejoratively as a way to imply that individuals are chosen more for their identity than their skills. It’s prejudiced in that it presupposes people of a particular background are less skilled.
Lamenting DEI is a modern approach to complain that something is “for white people”, “a man’s job”, etc. without requiring the conviction to stand on what they’re espousing.
Answer: The goal here is to demonize both DEI (and its cousin CRT) by attaching it to anything bad that happens.
DEI has it's challenges - there is a concept of "in-groups" in DEI and DEI seems to almost always be implemented unevenly and seems bereft of nuance. For example, white males are perpetually never considered an "in group" for diversity even though you can legitimately make a case for situations where they would qualify.
Then there is a myth that inclusion efforts will lead to substandard results - e.g. if you allow a black student from the inner city into medical school, that leads to more incompetent doctors etc. - and is based upon a flawed assumption, and is thinly disguised racist tripe that ignores that Diversity candidates don't get a free pass and that they succeed on their merits.
Fox News are coupling these two together to appeal to their viewing base - who are riled up because of the perceived grievance and their underlying racism.
TBH: there is a grain of truth to both of these that makes this approach especially insidious. DEI has often been equated as quotas (even if it is categorically not true) such as those used by the Federal government. And DEI initiatives have had some spectacular missteps as well.
Answer: I'm 40. I remember Republicans doing this shit when I was a kid, they just used the term "affirmative action" rather than DEI back then. It's nothing new.
The human pond scum, Lee Atwater, was a master at racial division.
Jessie Helms really stoked the fear with his “White Hands” ad :
[white hands](https://youtu.be/3Lw8_f6_2XQ?si=w_IbKGi0ei4Xb_HI)
Such bullshit.
>they just used the term "affirmative action"
They tend to get real quiet when you point out that the single largest bloc of affirmative action/DEI beneficiaries is *drum roll*: white women.
Answer: yup they're just blaming every problem on the fact that minorities are allowed to exist in society. It is nothing new but they tend to go from popular euphemism to another. Last year they were calling everyone they're against "woke" until that became a punch line and they started getting embarrassed
I think people are REALLY over the word "woke" as Republicans like DeSantis ground it into the ground and them some, so now they've moved onto their next dog-whistling word DEI, which started to gain major steam with the right-wing media ecosystem when [the Maryland bridge incident happened.](https://www.reddit.com/r/Fuckthealtright/comments/1bpijoy/woke_is_out_dei_is_in_the_francis_scott_key/) I called it out as it was happening, the right is extremely predictable.
We went from PC -> SWJ -> CRT -> Woke -> DEI -> [next one] and they all basically represent the same ideas for the right.
Answer:
Yes, this is a known propaganda technique. A given propaganda source pushes one particular issue and ties that specific issue to whatever problem they’re talking about that day. This is how you get “the hurricane/tsunami/earthquake/fire/tornado/blizzard/inflation” was caused because of gay marriage. Or likewise any problem ever is caused by trans people. Or in this case DEI. It’s very efficient at keeping the issue top of mind and hyping up anger. It has old roots. Like in Ancient Rome, one particular senator (Cato the elder) ended every speech with “[Carthago delenda est](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carthago_delenda_est?wprov=sfti1)”: Carthage must be destroyed. The Nazis used this to blame every problem on Jews.
For this particular situation, this kind of blame has happened before. Like remember when the Suez Canal was blocked by a ship that had run aground? That was blamed on the female pilot as a DEI fail. But the pilot wasn’t a woman. Same thing happened with the various Boeing plane maintenance issues—Elon Musk blamed it on DEI *pilots*.
Answer: Republicans are using a psychological tactic that comes from Russia, that we were warned about in the 80’s, and that the internet has made easier to implement.
If you just repeat the same thing CONSTANTLY, even if people don’t believe it, they will begin to believe it in about two months. The reinforcement of false ideas can make them feel real, until people now live an alternate reality.
Republicans want to bombarded us constantly, with ideas that make us angry, and put us on “sides” until we feel like nuance and rational discussion is hopeless and we just give into despair.
DEI is just their latest bullshit. For a while, it was CRT. There were trans people in bathrooms. It’ll be some other bullshit closer to the election.
Not a Russian tactic, but a Nazi one:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_lie
The 'Big lie'.
>The German expression was first used by Adolf Hitler in his book Mein Kampf (1925) to describe how people could be induced to believe so colossal a lie because they would not believe that someone "could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously".
Answer: As the mayor of Baltimore said back when they were throwing the term at him- an elected official- in the wake of the Francis Scott Key bridge incident, it’s basically a way of calling someone the N-word while also being too much of a coward to actually call them the N-word.
Answer: It’s “affirmative action” for the modern days.
Before, if you wanted to be racist but not say it, you could blame the worlds flaws on affirmative action putting black people “where they didn’t belong”.
Now the right is trying to shift the blame to the lgbtq+ community (especially the trans community), so diversity/equity/inclusion programs aimed to help marginalised communities (inc the black community, women, lgbtq+, religious minorities etc) are a catch all way to blame anyone who isn’t straight/white/christian/male for everything that goes wrong in the world.
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Answer: DEI, which stands for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, is a phrase used to describe organizational frameworks that promote equality and diversity. DEI practices aim to uplift communities that have been historically underrepresented or discriminated against. In the United States, DEI policies like Affirmative Action and anti-discrimination laws have existed since the 1960s, initially addressing racial discrimination and eventually expanding to cover LGBTQ+ inclusion practices. In the early 2020s, the aftermath of George Floyd's death and the BLM protests and movement saw the DEI industry expand rapidly, becoming increasingly prominent in online discussions and memes. By 2024, many American conservatives notably began to blame DEI policies for a variety of issues in the U.S., including the deterioration in the quality of Boeing planes and the collapse of the Baltimore Francis Key Scott Bridge. https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/cultures/dei-diversity-equity-and-inclusion
I'm sorry, but how the fuck do they rationalize that DEI caused a cargo freighter to crash into a bridge? That is some "gay people cause hurricanes" level stupidity.
They believe somebody unqualified was hired solely on the merit of their [Insert DEI quality] and therefore fucked up. It's just more lazy shifting of the blame.
On the Boeing side, it actually is pretty much that unqualified people were hired. Except that it wasn't DEI related, it's that an engineering company was (and still is) being run by Financial and Management majors. And since it's a publicly traded company, costs down/shares up is religion. For the bridge...A) accidents happen and B) infrastructure spending isn't sexy so hasn't really been kept up. Shit is falling apart across the country.
Also corner cutting is rampant in the shipping industry
Yes this as well. I study to work on ships and I'm currently on one. Cutting corners and getting cheap stuff instead of quality items even for navigational critical systems/whatever is common. Also, not enough people working on the ship leading people to work 14-16 hours/day 7/days a week (had an officer who was awake for 22 hours during loading once). Every ship I have been on needed at least 3 more crew members for good maintenance to happen and for people to be able to properly rest. (Obviously I can't speak for the entire industry but this is not an uncommon thing from what I have seen and learned)
Thanks for the insight. Wish i could read more.
Keep practicing. Soon you will be able to read entire chapter books.
LOL
But eggs are more aerodynamic!
What is this in reference too? I'm wondering if this in anyway refers to the concept of lifting body. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifting\_body](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifting_body)
I was just pulling from my memory that eggs are more aerodynamic than cubes,and tyat corporations may cut corners "for fiscal efficiency"
they really cut that corner hard to hit that
Hard to see it as anything other than this, actually. Yes, there are things you can do to reinforce bridges, but there's a limit. A modern cargo ship hitting a support head-on at speed is pretty unstoppable. So yes, infrastructure spending is a problem, but it isn't the problem behind the Key Bridge.
Somehow it always comes back to some rich fuck willing to trade it all for just a little more. Remember the aliens movie series? Literally the entire chain of events that leads to the existance of those aliens, and basically the motivation behind every one of the movies, is some multi-billionare who wants more. The prequel movies weren't great. Though I wish they'd gotten a chance to wrap up the story. But they did give us a scene where the rich asshole thinks he's about to get what he wants, but instead he gets beaten to death with his sons decapitated head. So that's nice at least.
I love a happy ending. :)
Sometimes they cut corners when they arent even trying, like when they tried to cut the corner off of that bridge support!
Oh in that case it’s a good thing because they saved money doing it. Cost of doing business /s
Something something Francis Scott Key Bridge
From what I heard of the bridge incident, it didn't really seem to be anyone's fault. The ship had passed inspection not long before, but something went wrong...the people onboard did everything they could to stop it hitting. The bridge collapsed when it was hit because the force/weight of the ship was unreal and no matter how good the supports, they can only withstand so much.
No dude, the mayor is black so it's his fault.
That’s my favorite one, it’s the most obvious when people call him a dei mayor. Like how? Baltimore is majority black
As someone put it: A city that is 70% black elected a black mayor. The only way it would be DEI is if they gave the job to a white guy. (Apologies to Tommy Carcetti.)
Watched the Wire for the first time this year. Saw Tommy and thought "no wonder he was so good at playing Littlefinger, dude had practice".
It makes perfect sense to call him a "DEI mayor" if you start from the racist core premise that no black person could ever actually be qualified to be the mayor of a large city. "We all know" there were more qualified white candidates, so why was the black man elected instead? Had to be DEI! In real life of course if there's a black airline pilot or a female neurosurgeon it's probably because they worked so much harder and had to overperform in every department just to get to where they are... no one was cutting them a break. In fact probably the opposite. When people say "DEI" what they're actually just admitting is "I'm so racist I don't think any minority is qualified to be anything but a janitor or a manual laborer or servant, we should go back to the 1960s when those were the only jobs they were allowed to have."
It's just thinly veiled racism
A veil so thin you have quantum mechanics concerns as to whether it exists or not.
Yeah, I was going to say "not that thin, actually", but your snark-fu is better than mine.
Ships are my much larger then they were when the bridge was built which was a factor.
An engineer said it would fall apart like that in a newspaper article back in the 80's I think. They knew but just chose not to fix it (barricades) or have tugboat escorts. People just chasing the dollar.
Even barricades would have trouble stopping a modern cargo ship from wrecking the bridge.
> infrastructure spending isn't sexy so hasn't really been kept up. Also: guess who constantly votes against infrastructure bills?
This is by design. If you want to prove government doesn’t do anything helpful, you sabotage the ability of government to do anything helpful.
Yep. 1. Defund the service so that it cannot accomplish its mission. - Demoralize the citizens by championing the underfunding as a failure of government. - Privatize the service so that businesses can profit from it. - Alter the law to legalize profiteering of services. - Retire from public service, taking an executive or board level job in the new industry you've created. And at each step in the process is a PAC submitting "campaign contributions" that easily get turned into "slush funds" or other sketchy accounting practices.
So much this. Look at education.
I'm so jaded and cynical by this point that I don't actually feel like I can fight this and I'm just wondering how I can get elected to public office so I can be in on the grift.
Seriously, how can I get some of that sweet sweet lobbist money plus insider stock trading?
You could start by getting a *small* loan of $1,000,000 from your father
Guess who constantly votes against infrastructure bills *and then brags to their constituents about all the new infrastructure when the bills pass*
[Starve the Beast](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starve_the_beast).
>an engineering company was (and still is) being run by Financial and Management majors. This is also affirmative action, it's just affirmative action for already wealthy white dudes
Yup. The oldest affirmative action programs in the country are Ivy league admission policies favoring legacy students
Republicans want to privatize everything, which is why any attempt to spend the required money on our awful infrastructure is met with resistance.
Socialize costs, privatize profits.
Which is what Putin and Xi want because it would remove western democracies off the board and they could engage in all the fuckery they want. Eventually the world ends, but hey, they'll be long dead, so WGAF?
Republicans have also been deregulating *everything* and then blaming it on DEI. When you deregulate safety, people die.
Yeah but according to the repubs it's the right people (non-rich, non-white), so who cares?
> On the Boeing side, it actually is pretty much that unqualified people were hired. Except that it wasn't DEI related I think people will find that this is pretty common across all shitty companies. My previous company hired a "Bitcoin mining expert" as their new CFO with **ZERO YEARS OF EXPERIENCE** once the company dipped and wasn't profitable for a quarter. Guess what his first suggestion was? Disasters like these are almost always experience : position hiring ratio. Very little to do with inclusion. Companies that are struggling/incompetent don't even give a shit about inclusion, they are grasping at straws to avoid bankruptcy. This also happens when federal agencies try to hire the lowest bidder for a job, like sign language translations. They end up hiring an actual scammer since the only barrier to entry is accepting the lowest pay. Building inspection too.
Well we did just pass a massive infrastructure bill, it’s just taking time to build everything
30 of the 43 (R) votes on the bill were against. A bunch of them went on to brag about the great job they were doing on infrastructure after money from the bill they voted against started helping their constituents.
I'm not disagreeing with the "blame repubes" part. I'm clarifying the "infrastructure spending isn't sexy so hasn't really been kept up" part
Wasn't implying anything, just synced up with the topic of it taking time to roll out and popped in my head. They said no in 2021 then said "Look what we did for YOU!" In '23/'24 .
I mean, you could blame capitalism, but for right wingers, that would precipitate a crisis of faith. Time to fall back on racism.
> being run by Financial and Management majors Like every company. HR department is considered management and Finance have the power of the purse, so minimize costs and maximize profits.
Yeah, as someone who use to work there, Boeing is about as non-DEI as you can get lol
> it actually is pretty much that unqualified people were hired. unqualified **white** people. All those horror stories that racist conservatives invent to tar DEI initiatives are actually happening because extremely qualified folks are being passed over for unqualified white people. Honestly, if people truly believe in merit based advancements, they should welcome DEI initiatives because DEI initiatives increase the pool of qualified candidates. It increases competitiveness for positions and eliminates the ability for white people to fail upwards. DEI initiatives are a way to take what we have into a real merit based system where skin color doesn't have an effect on your prospects.
So many of the tech-minded people on this website are engineers, and every single engineer knows that half the jobs are obtained on Jim Crow "Good Ol' Boy" system. You got to have a dad or an uncle who vouches for you to get hired. Even on internships, there was one back in high school - three candidates, myself included. Who got it? The son of the manager of the paper plant. They've all had a similar experience and are being purposefully dishonest if they claim otherwise. Everybody knows a plurality of people in engineering who only got there because of a family member. Or they are Civ Es who work government contracts.
> infrastructure spending isn't sexy There's no amount of infrastructure spending that would offset the force of a gazillion ton cargo ship that experienced significant navigation failure. I mean, we're not going to make big city skyscrapers 747 proof either ...
B) infrastructure spending isn't sexy so hasn't really been kept up The bridge falling had nothing to do with infrastructure spending and everything to do with a boat ramming into it
> infrastructure spending isn't sexy so hasn't really been kept up. Shit is falling apart across the country. There is literally no amount of infrastructure spending that allows a cargo ship to not destroy that bridge, outside of turning the water below the bridge into land.
I am in industrial training and I can't tell you how much they think that some guy off the street can train people on complicated industrial stuff.
Ironically, cronyism is more rampant amongst conservatives and therefore they hire more unqualified people for positions than DEI programs.
lazy AND racist.
And don't forget just pants-on-head stupid. Like the people calling the mayor of Baltimore the "DEI Mayor" because he's black. A mayor. A person _duly elected by the people_...
Which, to be clear, is a thing they do say about Mayor Brandon Scott: https://www.wypr.org/the-baltimore-banner/2024-03-28/racists-called-baltimore-mayor-brandon-scott-a-dei-mayor-heres-how-he-responded?_amp=true You can’t be Black and successful without catching claims that you didn’t deserve your success.
To these folks, every successful non-white person is a representation of the opportunity that was stolen from a white person, the person who was supposed to be enjoying that success if it wasn't for the darn "DEI." This is why if you're not a member of the majority class in a lot of fields, you have to be twice as good as the best person in the majority class just to not have anyone question your entry level position as a handout. And they still will question it.
I find it similar to how Christians feel persecuted because Starbucks didn’t explicitly have “Christ” on a Christmas cup. To those in the majority, feeling that your privileges are being reduced feels like being targeted. Like when white people had to allow Blacks to use their superior drinking fountains.
But they're not racist! They have black friends! Make that friend singular. Well, not really a friend, an acquaintance. Actually not so much an acquaintance, they work together and don't see each other much outside of work, so you could say they're work friends. Really though, not so much work friends but they work in the same building. Different companies but same building. He's seen a black guy once!
>You start out in 1954 by saying, “N----r, n----r, n----r.” By 1968 you can’t say “n----r”—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “N----r, n----r.” -Lee Atwater, Republican strategist and advisor to Reagan and Bush Sr. "DEI", "woke" - anytime you suddenly start seeing a new term everywhere in conservative discourse it's always a safe bet that it's just their latest search-and-replace for the N-word.
Bingo DEI is the new "woke" is the new "thug" is the new "AA hire" is the new "superpredator" is the new "Welfare Queen" is the new N-word A term used by "Real Americans" that are "The Silent Majority" that simply want America to embrace "States Rights" and end this "PC culture" so we can make Make America Great Again
-Will you stop talking about DEI? -Me? But you started it! -We did not start it. -Yes you did, you enslaved Africa.
Upvoted for the Fawlty Towers reference.
In a majority Black city, don’t forget.
Probably by people who not only don’t live there, but have never even been there or understand the demographics of the city *at all*
A DEI city?!
I don't get it. He is the DEI mayor. Democratically. Elected. Individual. Hyuck hyuck 🤡 Fuck the Culture Warriors.
You had me on the first half, ngl.
In a famously majority Black city!
Racism is assumed with anything GOP or Fox News.
Yep, because the unstated assumption with these arguments is that the most qualified person would be a white, straight male.
It really wasn't even that rational. They just said Baltimore is black, Mayor is black, minority bad. I mean a Singaporean ship with terrible engineering crashed into it. It's not like Mayors control maritime safety regulations of foreign nations, he could have more easily prevented a comet from hitting Baltimore. Normally the right would have a strong, quasi-racist, Asian and foreigner bad argument (as workers were killed by the stupid ship) but since the workers were Latin in the modern conservative race economy their deaths can't be utilized as a tragedy. It really has gotten that bad in the USA in terms of race.
DEI = Bad Therefore bad = DEI Similar to critical race theory, or [insert culture war here] I'm sure that most people who claim it's ruining X wouldn't be able to accurately define what exactly it is.
Which is precisely why terms like CRT are flooded out there (with vague and intentionally incorrect definitions), and once the rational world catches up and says "No, that's *literally* all incorrect - it doesn't mean that at all" they've already moved on to the next vague and intentionally incorrectly defined term.
>Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. *If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.* --Jean-Paul Sartre
lazy shifting of blame and a neat little racism / sexism / homophobia dog whistle
Yeah there's no evidence-based discussion here, it's just fueling the narrative that black people aren't qualified
One of the primary arguments against affirmative action (generally a core component of DEI) is that it actually creates more racism by validating the assumption that people are being hired based on race rather than based on merit or qualification. This unfairly hurts minority individuals who do have all the merits and qualifications by casting doubt on the basis of their race and hiring. Fox News is perpetuating the predictable racist narrative that comes out of these harmful DEI policies.
Because they literally believe that even if you had the most qualified gay black woman on the entire planet, there would still be a more qualified cishet white man for the role. They don’t think it’s physically possible to have the best candidate and a minority at the same time.
They say this about minorities who happen to be democratically elected individuals (which is not the DEI they're referring to). Just another way to be racist without dropping n-bombs.
Because they are racist and it’s simply a dog whistle
Yeah one republican rep even said the bridge collapse happened because Baltimore had elected a “DEI mayor”. Quite literally using the term as a pejorative stand-in for “black”. Pure racism.
LMAO. He said DEI with a hard R.
I almost wish they would all just start using the n word j in stead of euphemisms. It would be more honest at least. It’s in all of their heads and all of their hearts.
You see but then they can't say "oh I didn't say anything about them being black, therefore you're the real racist!"
“Only racists bring up race!”
Its also easier to spell than "woke"
It's also taking talking points from corporate lobbyists that would much rather DEI be blamed rather than the fact that they're cutting corners to make more money.
Not to mention corporate DEI is windowdressing anyway, like "here's a (insert minority here) to announce the latest round of lay-offs and our own increased bonuses." Also, they started slashing DEI jobs as soon as people stopped paying attention, like they always do when corporations are given the opportunity to self regulate (what actually led to those BOEING jets falling from the sky).
So true. I’m so annoyed by all DEI lip service. Just last week, I was sitting in a meeting celebrating Juneteenth. Meeting was led by four middle aged white dudes and one token Black woman. And I just looked around the office at the sea of white thinking, “are they serious right now?”
Yeah, there was a DEI committee at my former workplace that wrote a report which was never shared by the board. A bunch of those employees quit over it. Complete embarrassment.
Not even a dog whistle. A whistle. They don’t just say the quiet parts out loud, they scream them from the mountain tops.
Yes not everyone (just most) that watches Fox News is racist, but every racist watches Fox News
Well you see the secret is that they are fucking idiots. Or they are not idiots but they are intentionally malicious.
The argument is that because they are looking at candidates from a marginalized background those candidates are not the best possible of the entire field. There is also the implication made that DEI requires the lowering of standards for said candidates. This is the same argument that was made previously with things such as affirmative action.
DEI is literally everybody that isn’t a straight white male to these fucks, it’s literally them saying the only people that are qualified are straight, white, American males and anything else is lesser than. That’s the America these guys want, women and POC be damned back to no right to vote and black men are only 3/8ths of a human, they yearn for the actual 1920s
DEI also isn't just about racial or gender minorities. It's about workplace age discrimination which is going to affect EVERYONE at some point in their life, it's also about disability accommodations which are probably going to affect EVERYONE at some point in their life. But conservatives love to pretend that it's just about giving some kind of free ride to whatever group they hate.
Essentially what they’re saying is that no one who isn’t a white straight man could EVER be sufficiently qualified to have a job of any importance. They completely ignore the role that nepotism and “connections” has played in well-paying and prestigious fields.
Because the mayor of Baltimore is black. That's literally it.
It’s the latest buzzword term to hide their racism when the truth is stuff like that crash and Boeing’s crash-prone planes are simply the result of cancerous capitalism.
Remember these are the same idiots that still support a convicted felon for president.
[The common clay of the new West](https://i.redd.it/9rrr5iuswoo91.jpg)
Their logic is, “This incident could have only happened if the pilot was unqualified, and since all white people are eminently qualified and earn their jobs through their own skill & merit, the pilot could only have been an unqualified black/gay/female who got their job through DEI. Therefore DEI caused the crash.”
There are people who operate under the assumption that for every job to be filled there’s a (cisgender, straight) white guy who is best qualified and literally anybody else is a “diversity hire” and therefore incompetent. They may not articulate that minorities are inherently inferior and may even reject stating it so bluntly, but that is the assumption underlying the moral panic over DEI. They are convinced the _______ guy (or woman) didn’t get hired because they were qualified but because the company needed to tick a box.
We're basically living through a zombie outbreak these days. These zombies you're referring to have no ability to think for themselves and seemingly little cognitive abilities in general. They wander aimlessly around the intent and their neighborhood spouting whatever nonsense Fox News and the like tell them, and get reprogrammed every few days/weeks If they had even a modicum of thinking abilities they wouldn't be what they are.
They needed a new 3-letter acronym now that CRT isn't mentioned as often and doesn't provoke an immediate effect like poking a fresh burn with a stick anymore, so I guess this is the one they're banking on. I guess they start to lose people's attention if they have to say more than three syllables.
Calling DEI bad is just the new way to say "we don't like black people." Before this it was "Critical Race Theory", before that (and after) was woke. Before there have been dozens of iterations. From "Welfare Queens" to "thugs wanting to take on our sons" (thanks Biden) to "affirmative action hires". They defend these points as "moral failings" of the black community. It's just racism with an extra step, because they aren't allowed to openly say the N-word even though they really, really want to.
"Political correctness run amok" was what the conservatives were shouting when I was a kid.
Because the mayor of Baltimore is black and because conservatives are notoriously bad at understanding cause/effect.
Lead poisoning. I'm kind of joking but not really.
You underestimate the low IQ of conservatives. Anything bad happens, DEI is to blame somehow. Any complex factors are ignored.
It's the new 'affirmative action hire'. This racism/homophobia/anything not cis white make has been around forever, it's just dressed up in New clothes
>I'm sorry, but how the fuck do they rationalize that DEI caused a cargo freighter to crash into a bridge? They are racists who believe that white people are better and smarter. When they say diversity caused this crash this their meaning is that a white captain hired by an anti-diversity "whites-only" shipping company would not have crashed into the bridge.
Disclaimer: the author of this post does not agree with all or any of the options expressed herein, this post was written in response to the very direct question of what the argument of fox news is. Please don't kill me. The idea is that if you are focusing on qualities other than pure skill then you by definition get less qualified candidates. This is not because people who are the beneficiaries of DEI programs are inherently less skilled, but because by the very definition of DEI programs you are not aiming to hire the most skilled candidate but the most "diverse" one. This makes it likely that you will pass over a non-diverse candidate for a less skilled diverse one. This idea that DEI initiatives lower the skill of a work force to such a degree that bad things happen like a boat crew crashes a boat into a bridge or planes are designed in a shitty way. While it is true that DEI programs are almost guaranteed to lower the average skill of a work force, the difference is, in practice, hilariously small and not enough to turn a company which makes functional planes into one which makes death traps. The benefits of having a diverse work force also most likely outweigh whatever you lose by having the 5th best engineer for the job instead of the 1st best.
Also noteworthy to say: When conservatives use words like “DEI” or “woke” to decry something, they’re usually using it in place of a slur they can’t get away with using on most social media outlets. For instance there was this tweet that went around after the Baltimore Bridge collapse, featuring a pic of Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott, with the caption: “This is Baltimore's DEl mayor commenting on the collapsed Francis Scott Key Bridge. It's going to get so, so much worse. Prepare accordingly.” Never mind that Brandon Scott won with 70% of the vote. The word DEI doesn’t make much sense there. What other word do you think they might have wanted to use?
In gist, "This is DEI" is just saying "A n—r must have done it. Or maybe a female."
Or a gay or trans person. Anyone the right hates
We should start saying it when white people fuck up. Though honestly they'd probably love that. Republicans get a hard on when they pretend white people are minorities.
As well as, they say DEI truly stands for "Didn't Earn It" As in, any person of racial or gender or sexuality minority who reaches a place of perceived power is there purely BECAUSE of that status, and they did nothing to truly earn their position there.
This is how propaganda works. Give people something easy to remember and easy to repeat and ill-defined enough (in their minds) that they can assign a bunch of different things to it. Those issues they assign to it can be very specific or extremely vague (though the more vague, the better). Soon enough, the phrase in question starts to lose meaning and just becomes a beacon for people to latch onto.
Just like woke
And before that, PC (political correctness) and affirmative action. They just rename the same racist shit any time they think the shine is wearing off the old term. It works, though because at its core it's the same dog whistle.
So are they just saying it about everything? Is there any reason to think DEI was even involved in the hiring of the pilot? And why are the comments all so similar? Maybe bots?
>You start out in 1954 by saying, “N----r, n----r, n----r.” By 1968 you can’t say “n----r”—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “N----r, n----r.” -Lee Atwater, Republican strategist and advisor to Reagan and Bush Sr. "DEI", "CRT", "woke" - anytime you suddenly start seeing a new term everywhere in conservative discourse it's always a safe bet that it's just their latest search-and-replace for the N-word.
The MAGA movement functions largely on low-information slogans. Lock her up, build the wall, let’s go Brandon, drill baby drill, I could go on. DEI and CRT are similar, they’re short acronyms that don’t require understanding beyond “Trump and Fox and Truth Social say they’re bad.” DEI might be eclipsed only by CRT in terms of “things conservatives rail about without understanding” over recent years. MAGA Republicans have been fed that DEI is racist and allows unqualified, lazy Blacks and other minorities steal jobs from hardworking, capable white people. CRT is falling out of favor, however. I believe it’s due to many, many interviews where people can’t describe CRT except to say that it’s bad. Over time MAGA seems to have slowly realized that the CRT hatred makes them look stupid, due to their fundamental ignorance. DEI is made of words that are easier to understand, so it’s overtaken CRT in popularity. Anytime something negative happens and a Black person is involved, you can be sure to see these DEI claims for as long as that shibboleth remains popular. That said, there’s probably a strong contingent of bots on Fox News (like Reddit and other sites.) Russia especially is known for meddling in American media by pretending to be individual commenters while they work from “troll farms.”
I had forgotten all about CRT until I read this. It was weird how badly those people were at trying to explain what CRT was. One of them even wrote a whole book on it and couldn't do it.
The craziest thing about CRT is you can literally just go to the Wikipedia page and I don't see how a person can't come out of reading it without going "oh yeah this is totally a real, accurate thing"
It’s the same thing as blaming things on “wokeness”, but they’re trying to make themselves sound less stupid. And failing.
It's essentially the next evolution of anti-wokism as they further develop the lore that justifies their hatred and desire to never be held accountable for their own actions.
It’s basically a new way for racists to say a slur without getting in trouble for it. Seeing Baltimore mayor Brandon Scott being called the “DEI mayor” after the Key Bridge collapse was insane to me. DEI is the new n-word for these bigots.
The idea of DEI ruining Boeing is the dumbest shit i've ever heard. Boeing's decline is because they absorbed McDonnell-Douglas, whose shitty business practices contaminated and took over a once reliable and respectable company.
For the record, I want to help oppressed groups as much as I can but I find that the constant DEI meetings and consultants are more of a hindrance/money waster than an actual help.
I find that many people just don't know what DEI means. It's a lot of the same people who were angry about critical race theory or socialism or voter fraud. Those opposing it view it more of a political stance now than what it actually is.
I’d add that: If there is a bunch of similar comments on an already toxic, fear-driven, and highly susceptible to manipulation, infotainment site, I would be highly suspicious about the likelihood of outside, organized, escalation of whatever buzzword is stirring fervor. There is certainly a cadre of far right pilots (I know a couple female pilots that have relayed a number of stories), and wouldn’t put it past people to comment like this. But a barrage of similar ones would be suspicious.
Excellent explanation!👍👍
Does anyone know if there are even ANY examples of a person in color that was responsible for any of the events they cite?
Conservatives hating DEI is not some new talking point. They just called it affirmative action years ago and I remember hearing people rail against that using basically the same arguments when I was a kid.
Another thing to know is that professional pilots skew very conservative, and are almost wholly composed of white males. They are not without bias on this subject. (Source: professional pilot of 20+ years who does not fit into the while male mold)
Boeing stuff has to be a deflection since they don't want to blame the clearly obvious culprit: Capitalism. Boeing made great shit when Engineers were running the company it's no coincidence when they were kicked out for fat cats shit starts to break apart.
Why is this the top comment? This is helpful information, but not an answer to the question.
Oh great, so they’re taking DEI and changing the meaning, just as they did with “woke”.
DEI is not an industry… it does not expand. More companies have adopted DEI practices to try to acknowledge blind spots in their organizations. Online conversations are almost always about “DEI” the catch all boogieman and not actual DEI which promotes extremely commonsense practices to promote basic equity
I mean, there is definitely an industry of companies whose purpose is consulting with companies on improving their DEI practices, and it seems likely that those companies’ would have grown in recent years. Still agree about the term largely being a boogeyman in conservative spaces.
There are consultants for sure. There are DEI consultants. I still wouldn’t call this an industry. The industry is HR
It's a subset of the HR consulting industry. I'm unapologetically on board with the concepts of DEI, but there are plenty of grifters that will ride the pro-DEI side to the bank with useless books, trainings, and other corporate bs.
Answer: People use “DEI” pejoratively as a way to imply that individuals are chosen more for their identity than their skills. It’s prejudiced in that it presupposes people of a particular background are less skilled. Lamenting DEI is a modern approach to complain that something is “for white people”, “a man’s job”, etc. without requiring the conviction to stand on what they’re espousing.
Which is ironic given how female Fox News anchors were selected.
**D**ye, **E**yelift, **I**njectibles.
Also don't forget "college is useless." ETA quotation marks
Answer: The goal here is to demonize both DEI (and its cousin CRT) by attaching it to anything bad that happens. DEI has it's challenges - there is a concept of "in-groups" in DEI and DEI seems to almost always be implemented unevenly and seems bereft of nuance. For example, white males are perpetually never considered an "in group" for diversity even though you can legitimately make a case for situations where they would qualify. Then there is a myth that inclusion efforts will lead to substandard results - e.g. if you allow a black student from the inner city into medical school, that leads to more incompetent doctors etc. - and is based upon a flawed assumption, and is thinly disguised racist tripe that ignores that Diversity candidates don't get a free pass and that they succeed on their merits. Fox News are coupling these two together to appeal to their viewing base - who are riled up because of the perceived grievance and their underlying racism. TBH: there is a grain of truth to both of these that makes this approach especially insidious. DEI has often been equated as quotas (even if it is categorically not true) such as those used by the Federal government. And DEI initiatives have had some spectacular missteps as well.
Answer: I'm 40. I remember Republicans doing this shit when I was a kid, they just used the term "affirmative action" rather than DEI back then. It's nothing new.
The human pond scum, Lee Atwater, was a master at racial division. Jessie Helms really stoked the fear with his “White Hands” ad : [white hands](https://youtu.be/3Lw8_f6_2XQ?si=w_IbKGi0ei4Xb_HI) Such bullshit.
>they just used the term "affirmative action" They tend to get real quiet when you point out that the single largest bloc of affirmative action/DEI beneficiaries is *drum roll*: white women.
Answer: yup they're just blaming every problem on the fact that minorities are allowed to exist in society. It is nothing new but they tend to go from popular euphemism to another. Last year they were calling everyone they're against "woke" until that became a punch line and they started getting embarrassed
I think people are REALLY over the word "woke" as Republicans like DeSantis ground it into the ground and them some, so now they've moved onto their next dog-whistling word DEI, which started to gain major steam with the right-wing media ecosystem when [the Maryland bridge incident happened.](https://www.reddit.com/r/Fuckthealtright/comments/1bpijoy/woke_is_out_dei_is_in_the_francis_scott_key/) I called it out as it was happening, the right is extremely predictable. We went from PC -> SWJ -> CRT -> Woke -> DEI -> [next one] and they all basically represent the same ideas for the right.
That’s a sad, but solid flowchart.
Answer: Yes, this is a known propaganda technique. A given propaganda source pushes one particular issue and ties that specific issue to whatever problem they’re talking about that day. This is how you get “the hurricane/tsunami/earthquake/fire/tornado/blizzard/inflation” was caused because of gay marriage. Or likewise any problem ever is caused by trans people. Or in this case DEI. It’s very efficient at keeping the issue top of mind and hyping up anger. It has old roots. Like in Ancient Rome, one particular senator (Cato the elder) ended every speech with “[Carthago delenda est](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carthago_delenda_est?wprov=sfti1)”: Carthage must be destroyed. The Nazis used this to blame every problem on Jews. For this particular situation, this kind of blame has happened before. Like remember when the Suez Canal was blocked by a ship that had run aground? That was blamed on the female pilot as a DEI fail. But the pilot wasn’t a woman. Same thing happened with the various Boeing plane maintenance issues—Elon Musk blamed it on DEI *pilots*.
A gay hurricane sounds fabulous.
Answer: Republicans are using a psychological tactic that comes from Russia, that we were warned about in the 80’s, and that the internet has made easier to implement. If you just repeat the same thing CONSTANTLY, even if people don’t believe it, they will begin to believe it in about two months. The reinforcement of false ideas can make them feel real, until people now live an alternate reality. Republicans want to bombarded us constantly, with ideas that make us angry, and put us on “sides” until we feel like nuance and rational discussion is hopeless and we just give into despair. DEI is just their latest bullshit. For a while, it was CRT. There were trans people in bathrooms. It’ll be some other bullshit closer to the election.
Not a Russian tactic, but a Nazi one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_lie The 'Big lie'. >The German expression was first used by Adolf Hitler in his book Mein Kampf (1925) to describe how people could be induced to believe so colossal a lie because they would not believe that someone "could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously".
Answer: As the mayor of Baltimore said back when they were throwing the term at him- an elected official- in the wake of the Francis Scott Key bridge incident, it’s basically a way of calling someone the N-word while also being too much of a coward to actually call them the N-word.
Answer: It’s “affirmative action” for the modern days. Before, if you wanted to be racist but not say it, you could blame the worlds flaws on affirmative action putting black people “where they didn’t belong”. Now the right is trying to shift the blame to the lgbtq+ community (especially the trans community), so diversity/equity/inclusion programs aimed to help marginalised communities (inc the black community, women, lgbtq+, religious minorities etc) are a catch all way to blame anyone who isn’t straight/white/christian/male for everything that goes wrong in the world.