(C) Daily Kos
This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .
Jackie Robinson WAS a DEI hire. And THAT’s the point! [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-03-27
It has fallen to a sports commentator, Nick Wright, to make the point that those of us in favor of DEI have allowed the term to be framed as a negative.
We even use it ourselves, saying “Pete Hegseth is obviously a DEI hire”. In other words, Pete is “not qualified” for his position.
We’ve allowed the republicans to define the premise of the argument.
But Jackie Robinson is a perfect example of why DEI programs are needed. He was a tremendous, far-better-than-average baseball player, but for years he was blocked from the major leagues because of his color.
So …yes, yes, yes, he was a DEI hire—because the system was not giving him an equal chance to advance on merit.
Wright argues that we have to get in there toe to toe and have the argument straight up. Argue the need for DEI with examples and statistics that show it was needed and still is needed. That DEI doesn’t mean that undeserving, less competent people are getting jobs. It means that deserving, equally competent (and sometimes far more competent, like Jackie R.) minority and female candidates are not regularly excluded from consideration.
How did we let this re-framing happen? My guess is that the case for DEI, like the case for affirmative action at colleges, is a fairly complicated one that takes some explaining.. And our political reps, along with sympathetic CEOs and school presidents, largely gave up. It’s gotten so that there no longer even seems to be any pushback in the press or in congress when the right claims that DEI means organizations have had to lower their standards. For all I know that may have been true in a few cases—where it’s not really lower standards but, more accurately, changed standards that better reflect the actual qualifications needed. Most often, however, it just means that in organizations where, say, 96 out of a hundred managers are white men, recruiters need to make a special outreach effort to find equally qualified minority and female candidates.
If you’ve heard others talking about how we’ve ceded the premise of the DEI argument, I’d love to hear about it.
[END]
---
[1] Url:
https://dailykos.com/stories/2025/3/27/2312992/-Jackie-Robinson-WAS-a-DEI-hire-And-THAT-s-the-point?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web
Published and (C) by Daily Kos
Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified.
via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/
