Often times merit is viewed differently. If 2 students both have a 4.0 GPA and 1 has more extra curriculars, and the other had to work instead because they come from a poorer family and needed to help support the family, which has more merit? If being able to stay after every day for practice and afford travel expenses for such means you have more merit, then the rich will always have the advantage to appear with more merit. I would say the person who worked 30 hours a week while maintaining a 4.0 GPA has worked harder and overcome higher odds.

There is more to merit than just numbers in my opinion. Some of it does appear like racism from the outside because if the average black family has less opportunities and you try to give more opportunities to new generations to help close the wealth gap, then you are being called racist by your initial definition.

There are valid points on both sides. DEI in my opinion helps integrate races, sexes, cultures, religions together which provides long term benefits and disincentivizes hatred. If you never come in contact with someone, it is easier to hate them. Easier to commit crimes against them. Ultimately a big portion of DEI is about educating the population to get along with and accept those who may appear or act differently than you do. It may appear easier for an African American to get into Harvard, but they are still less than 7% of the population there while being over 12% of the U.S. population total. There are other factors always at play standing in the way of comparing 2 people just off a single number.

DEI is having a job fair at a school for the deaf, it’s having unisex bathroom stalls, it’s allowing religious/traditional holiday celebrations, it’s training against racism. Every person hired is still qualified, but the company expands their hiring practice and their culture.

As far as I understand, DEI as a policy in a university or workplace means giving place to a candidate because not of their merits or test scores, but because of their race or background.

Isn’t that racism?

This is the distorted mudslinging version. It may not be what you intended, but it’s what you’ve learned via right wing propaganda.

DEI seeks to correct biases that have been inherent in US hiring practices for years - things as fundamental as “if your name sounds too black you don’t get called for interviews as often, even with the same qualifications”. (Linked literally the first article I found about it, but there are plenty more, and this is just an easy example.)

Some of these biases come from people actually being bigots, but some of them come from “that’s just how we’ve always done it” or even just simple unconscious bias that we all have.

Some of the shitty outcomes are from the fact that in the early, early foundational days of many aspects of US government and law, the country was by and large run by people who weren’t too unhappy about lynchings of black people or even participated themselves, and those attitudes found their way overtly and subtly into many practices and regulations that remain in place to this day.

It’s a complicated topic deeply interwoven with our history, our geography, and our culture.

DEI initiatives aren’t perfect, and like anything else you have individuals who may misapply or overzealously apply their principles, causing a different sort of problem.

But the Republican/Conservative objections to them are, like the Conservative assessments of literally any topic I can think of, based at best upon a shallow, incomplete understanding of cherrypicked details, and at worst based on exactly the bigotry and racism they shout about not having in their hearts despite their every action proving how untrue that is.

Edited to add - DEI isn’t limited to racism, and racism isn’t limited to black people. There is of course sexism, homophobia, etc in there as well. But this is a comment on a forum, not a research paper, and the more dimensions we try to add to the discussion here, the more complicated it will get. So I focused on racism against black folks because it’s an easily visible, and sadly, familiar topic.

The biggest issue with this take is that merit/test score is still the biggest factor. For example, a law firm is not passing over well-qualified white candidates to hire unqualified black candidates, they’re just trying to hire more well-qualified black candidates because they’re currently an all-white firm. Nobody is ever getting a job as an act of charity, and typically it just helps to avoid implicit hiring bias. To go back to the example, why has the law firm become all white? Well the first two partners were white, and even if they aren’t offensively racist they still have enough internal bias that they only hired other white workers. Like in this example, most DEI initiatives are about reducing existing internal biases.

Diversity refers to the presence of variety within the organizational workforce, such as in identity and identity politics. It includes gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, disability, age, culture, class, religion, or opinion.

Equity refers to concepts of fairness and justice, such as fair compensation and substantive equality. More specifically, equity usually also includes a focus on societal disparities and allocating resources and “decision making authority to groups that have historically been disadvantaged”, and taking “into consideration a person’s unique circumstances, adjusting treatment accordingly so that the end result is equal.”

Finally, inclusion refers to creating an organizational culture that creates an experience where “all employees feel their voices will be heard”, and a sense of belonging and integration.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diversity,_equity,_and_inclusion

US (and many other nations) corporate and education systems have long given preferential treatment/selection to white employees and students, to the point where the more qualified candidate was passed by due to their ethnicity. There’s further issues that stem from the same sources, such as banks refusing to loan to Afro-Americans at a disproportionate rate, even with high wages and a more stable income, being refused even an interview because your name doesn’t sound white enough despite being the most qualified applicant, etc etc etc.

DEI being implemented in a way that chooses non-white, women, differently abled, or LGBTQ+ simply to check a box and have diversity to point to is a real issue, but these places weren’t ever really interested in leveling the playing field. They were concerned about optics. Like the 90s movie/tv cliché of the group of popular pretty girls having the one “fat and ugly” friend in the group to show that they’re inclusive, to make themselves look and feel better.

DEI if implemented properly strips the unconscious and systemic bias in American (and other countries) systems to overlook better candidates for white, straight men.

There is a manifesto that is literally titled the “The Post-Meritocracy Manifesto” which a lot of people unironically agreed with, at least when those were hot topics a few years ago.

So any attempt at pretending that there isn’t an anti-meritocracy angle to this would be disingenuous to say the least.

That same person behind the manifesto is a primary figure in introducing CoC’s to software projects btw.