And they did it because they were pressured to "increase diversity".
On the demand side (where placement or acceptance or hiring is contingent upon qualifications) the "actual work to get more candidates from diverse backgrounds" cannot be done equitably.
Selective institutions are a reflection of the society from which they draw candidates. As society produces more kinds of qualified candidates, the makeup of selective organizations will change.
Change 'at the top' is a trailing indicator, it is the result of a process and not the start of one.
I don't even know what 'outreach' and 'financial support' mean in this context, but I disagree that societal attitudes must change more than they already are changing. In the US, people expect the most qualified candidates to get the job, and they (increasingly) reject discrimination on the basis of race and background. That is why they cry foul when systems and programs are put in place that discriminate against qualified applicants.
In this example, before it was CTI schools that were providing most of the candidates. There's a lot of potentially qualified minorities who absolutely have no clue such schools or opportunities even exist, and a few who even if they knew were so financially disadvantaged to take care of the opportunities. Outreach in this case, will be combing high schools and making more people aware of the opportunities, and providing financial assistance for those who may be qualified but are too poor.
None of them are “programs that discriminate against qualified applicants.”
Go to a predominantly black school/neighbourhood and hand out flyers with "hey, we have this great programme you should consider applying for!"
Provide financial support for candidates who cannot afford to go through the programme on their own means (which will be disproportionately, though not exclusively, from minority groups).
And generally, "most qualified candidate" doesn't really exist. Usually what you have is something like "50% clearly unqualified, 25% maybe, and 25% seems qualified" and that's it. Numbers vary and there are exceptions, but by and large, that's basically how it works. So you need a "tie-breaker", which is usually "person I got along with the best", which is just as biased as "person from $minority_group" as a tie-breaker.
Obviously things didn't go well at the FAA, but it really doesn't take that much imagination to come up with some basic measures that are reasonable and don't discriminate anyone.
No true Scotsman or appeal to purity is an informal fallacy in which one modifies a prior claim in response to a counterexample by asserting the counterexample is excluded by definition. Rather than admitting error or providing evidence to disprove the counterexample, the original claim is changed by using a non-substantive modifier such as "true", "pure", "genuine", "authentic", "real", or other similar terms.
At no point do I say these bad initiatives are not “DEI,” since they clearly fit under the umbrella of DEI. I simply say they’re bad initiatives. You might be confused by me saying “DEI isn’t the core of the problem,” but that’s not the same thing as saying “these bad things are not DEI.” I hope this clarifies things for you.
From rich to poor I see as ethical, but there are current programs that are gated on race. This is taking from all to give to a chosen race, all DEI practices should be eliminated from government actions.
The problem cases are after that, when people get upset the numbers didn't change as much as they hoped, and decide to go do fiddle with the hiring process.
Does a government carry any moral responsibility to right its previous wrongs? If so, what sort of policies would that look like?
DEI has only one cause, and that is avoiding discrimination on non-germane axes, particulalry by subtle, non-obvious means, such as relying on biased funnels.
Yes, it’s lazy and stupid for the FAA to believe they can fix inequality by biasing hiring practices.
The fundamental problem is that the US has severe wealth inequality, which for historical reasons is correlated with race, and for structural reasons (property taxes fund schools, meaning poor kids get worse education) is made even worse.
All of the “wholistic evaluation” doublespeak and weird qualification exams in the world can’t fix that.
I said at the top of my thread that the refusal of people in power to engage with criticisms like this thoughtfully has allowed the far right to toxify these debates and I think the downvotes and responses to my comments are minor, but perfect, examples of my point. Instead of discussing the issues and how they should be fixed, the “debate” breaks down into “DEI bad” on your side and “saying DEI bad is racist/sexist/etc.” on the other side.
