With DEI under attack, it’s time to get clear on the facts: white men still get far more than their fair share of opportunities in 2025. And systemic racism in hiring remains real and deleterious.
I talked with a friend this weekend who had a long career in the trades. She develops her own properties now, has been influential in national green building groups and movements…but she spent many years as a building inspector in Seattle, and before that as a carpenter. She said that even though in the seventies it was illegal to discriminate against women in hiring, in practice they did it anyhow. She talked about how her first couple of jobs that gave her the skills and experience necessary to become a building inspector were the results of affirmative action quotas from the federal government and then the state of Washington. She credits those quotas with allowing her to get her foot in the door so she could prove that she could build, and she considers it was access to critical education she otherwise never would have gotten, that was necessary for her to become a building inspector.
What a helpful arsenal of facts. It’s truly damning that there is no documented instance (outside of the anecdotal) of discrimination against white men— and bountiful data confirming the opposite.
I think the issue of the Air traffic controllers is a symbol of a system that is broken. There are plenty of applicants for those jobs. They are well paid and prestigious. They don't have a hiring process that works.
Thereafter Meta and other companies like Apple never implanted any Fair hiring processes. They may collect data about applicants. They make little to no effort to hire anyone outside of whoever is hiring preferences. There is nothing new about that. They never felt obligated to do anything but collect this data.
Privilege is a concept beyond #names# certain groups have absolutely no intention of giving anyone else a look on. Therefore certain occupations become pools of people with essential biases.
Privilege goes far beyond skin color. It goes to that those who might be able to corner some niche have no intention of adopting any concept of diversity. Therefore collecting statistics of who applies and who gets the job is not that relevant. When we live in a culture where diversity and economic equality is celebrated maybe we can move from there. The current administration likes to exploit and cause chaos and scapegoat groups. Thereafter they cause consternation. If you go to a company like Amazon Apple or Facebook there is no diversity at certain levels. They mane zero effort to even consider it. No one suggests they might be reinforcing stereotypes
Therefore the issue is that people need to be asking why is it ai obvious that merely collecting statistics on why applies is not that effective. Thereafter rather than react to Trumps deliberate attempt to chaos its time for people to organize and ask for more than a few crumbs of collecting who applies for what
Someone will have to explain to me how anyone can, at the same time, be both anti-racist and racist? Anti-sexist and sexist? While fighting discrimination based on sex or skin color, you can literally discriminate based on sex or skin color.
And on a related note, why are so many people furious about income inequality when those same people are perfectly fine with educational inequality in the public schools?
I talked with a friend this weekend who had a long career in the trades. She develops her own properties now, has been influential in national green building groups and movements…but she spent many years as a building inspector in Seattle, and before that as a carpenter. She said that even though in the seventies it was illegal to discriminate against women in hiring, in practice they did it anyhow. She talked about how her first couple of jobs that gave her the skills and experience necessary to become a building inspector were the results of affirmative action quotas from the federal government and then the state of Washington. She credits those quotas with allowing her to get her foot in the door so she could prove that she could build, and she considers it was access to critical education she otherwise never would have gotten, that was necessary for her to become a building inspector.
The correct response to any concern trolling is: “so you think racial segregation is the correct approach/could/would prevent issues?”
Such a thoughtful and well- researched piece. Thank you!
I appreciate all of the well researched data to support what I already know from 25 years of observation in the corporate world.
Typo! See para about Emily and Greg. Otherwise this rocks, thanks for doing it.
Fixed! Thank you
🙌
What a helpful arsenal of facts. It’s truly damning that there is no documented instance (outside of the anecdotal) of discrimination against white men— and bountiful data confirming the opposite.
I think the issue of the Air traffic controllers is a symbol of a system that is broken. There are plenty of applicants for those jobs. They are well paid and prestigious. They don't have a hiring process that works.
Thereafter Meta and other companies like Apple never implanted any Fair hiring processes. They may collect data about applicants. They make little to no effort to hire anyone outside of whoever is hiring preferences. There is nothing new about that. They never felt obligated to do anything but collect this data.
Privilege is a concept beyond #names# certain groups have absolutely no intention of giving anyone else a look on. Therefore certain occupations become pools of people with essential biases.
Privilege goes far beyond skin color. It goes to that those who might be able to corner some niche have no intention of adopting any concept of diversity. Therefore collecting statistics of who applies and who gets the job is not that relevant. When we live in a culture where diversity and economic equality is celebrated maybe we can move from there. The current administration likes to exploit and cause chaos and scapegoat groups. Thereafter they cause consternation. If you go to a company like Amazon Apple or Facebook there is no diversity at certain levels. They mane zero effort to even consider it. No one suggests they might be reinforcing stereotypes
Therefore the issue is that people need to be asking why is it ai obvious that merely collecting statistics on why applies is not that effective. Thereafter rather than react to Trumps deliberate attempt to chaos its time for people to organize and ask for more than a few crumbs of collecting who applies for what
Someone will have to explain to me how anyone can, at the same time, be both anti-racist and racist? Anti-sexist and sexist? While fighting discrimination based on sex or skin color, you can literally discriminate based on sex or skin color.
And on a related note, why are so many people furious about income inequality when those same people are perfectly fine with educational inequality in the public schools?