Instigator / Pro
Sunshineboy217's avatar
Sunshineboy217
1500
rating
6
debates
50.0%
won
Topic
#5941

“Affirmative Action” DEI Programs In Colleges & Corporations Are Stupid & Very Unprogressive

Status
Debating

Waiting for the next argument from the instigator.

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Tags
Politics
Society
Parameters
Publication date
Last updated date
Type
Standard
Number of rounds
5
Time for argument
Two weeks
Max argument characters
30,000
Voting period
Two months
Point system
Multiple criterions
Voting system
Open
Contender / Con
bronskibeat's avatar
bronskibeat
1545
rating
3
debates
100.0%
won
Description

Here are just some terms that need to be clarified before the debate:

“Affirmative action” programs are the programs in which colleges and companies admit or hire people for their race, sex, or sexual orientation, and the identity of the candidate is placed in higher priority than qualifications.

“Critical Race Theory,” or CRT is the philosophy that white people are inherently advantaged and that American society is rooted in systemic racism (white privilege). A common CRT theory is that white people should pay African-Americans reparations for slavery and segregation.

“DEI” stands for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. DEI is the core philosophy that encompasses affirmative action, critical race theory, and other supposedly “progressive” and “inclusive” policies associated with the modern Democratic Party.

Round 1
Sunshineboy217's avatar
Sunshineboy217
Pro
#1
Four years ago, DEI took the country by storm. It's centered on creating opportunities for "disadvantaged" groups of people, including racial minorities, women, and LGBTQ+. It sounds good. And DEI is definitely derived from good intentions. But intentions mean nothing. What actually matters is: does DEI actually enable equality for all? No. Definitely not. 

Affirmative Action
One of, if not, the biggest tenet of DEI is affirmative action. This practice is typically used in companies, colleges, and K-12 public schools. In companies and colleges, DEI programs usually hire or admit racial minority candidates over white candidates that might even have better qualifications than the minority candidates. It completely undermines the good American system of merit. Just pick the candidate with better qualifications! It doesn't need to be about race! I mean, does anyone actually benefit from affirmative action? Let's see, the company or college gets employees or students who might not be as skilled or as dedicated as other candidates. The candidates who got their job or college admission just for their race learn the wrong message, which is that if you just play the victim (even if you have a very easy life), you'll always get whatever you want. And the other candidates who were denied the job or college of their dreams just for their race miss out on the higher education or dream job that they've worked towards their entire lives, a miss-out which can very negatively affect them financially or mentally for the rest of their lives. There was actually a landmark Supreme Court case in 1978, Bakke vs. Regents of the University of California, in which the Supreme Court ruled that rigid racial quotas were unconstitutional and a violation of civil rights in universities. Of course, the Supreme Court did not have the authority to completely outlaw the consideration of race in college admissions, but it set an important precedent: it is a clear violation of civil rights when you intentionally deny someone a job or college admission just for their race. Because guess what, Sherlock? You can be racist to white people, too. There are also some programs in school districts in which minority students who bully other kids won't be punished as harshly as white kids. I don't think I even need to say anything further than that, because it's pretty clearly a disgusting practice.

Ultra-Sensitivity & Playing The Victim
Those who support DEI get offended very easily by literally everything that comes their way. If some bad event happens to anyone other than a straight white man, that bad event is somehow the result of discrimination. A man fair and square beat a woman in the presidential election? That's sexism. Trump wants to deport illegal immigrants who have criminal records? That's racism. It's pure stupidity! It's called the merit system, Einstein: maybe the things that happen to you are because of what you did. Maybe it's not about race, or sex, or discrimination. I know, crazy thought there. There's also the generalization factor. For example, Black Lives Matter and Defund The Police. That whole movement assumed that since there was one bad police officer who killed a black guy, therefore all police officers are everywhere are terrible, evil, racist people who therefore deserve to lose part of their salary and police departments deserve to lose funding. Oh, that's a great idea. Let's just stop funding the thin line that holds society from falling into complete chaos just because you're offended by something.

In Closing
In closing, is DEI really helpful towards ending racism? No, it's just reverse racism. It runs on the idea that whites who might be great, accepting, and inclusive people are inherently evil, racist, and responsible for what other white people did to minorities a long time ago. So if modern white people are responsible for what white slave-owners did over a century ago, are African-Americans responsible for the enslavement practices that African tribes used against each other? Are Chinese people responsible for what Mao Zedong did? Are modern Hispanics the reason that Fidel Castro oppressed his political enemies? If we ran on this idea, everyone would be responsible for everything, and every good person on Earth would always be paying for what someone with the same skin tone as them did 200 years ago. For a supposedly "progressive" program, DEI seems very unable to make progress. It is the program that fails to move forward, and instead spends every waking hour denying opportunities to good, hard-working, deserving people just for the color of their skin. Seems like a violation of basic civil rights to me.

Granted, my definition of DEI may be different from your definition of DEI. It seems that that's how it usually goes. So if you have a different idea of DEI, then by all means, explain it to me. And then we can continue the debate.
bronskibeat's avatar
bronskibeat
Con
#2
First, I’d like to thank Sunshineboy217 for starting this debate. 

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

While “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” or “DEI” has become a bit of a buzzword over the past 5 years, it has existed for decades. Despite what many would say, DEI is not about placating the “hurt feelings” of “overly sensitive” people. It is about ensuring that underrepresented demographics have the resources to succeed in life, health, work, education, etc. 

Dictionary.com defines DEI as “a conceptual framework that promotes the fair treatment and full participation of all people, especially in the workplace, including populations who have historically been underrepresented or subject to discrimination because of their background, identity, disability, etc.” 

DEI isn’t about superficial virtue signaling. It can offer real strategies, resources, and tools that can have a positive impact on the day to day experiences, livelihoods, and health of many people:

  • For those with disabilities, DEI programs offer assurance that they are working and/or learning in accessible environments and using accessible technology. This might look like ensuring that services like closed-captioning, sign-language interpreters, or virtual translators apps are available when needed. This would also look like providing resource materials to educators or employers that offer understanding on how help better people with disabilities in the workplace or classroom. [1]
  • For black Americans, DEI programs can offer education to healthcare professionals on which health issues black people are disproportionately affected by compared to the rest of the population. For example, black women are 17% to 50% more likely to die from breast cancer than white women. Black women on average have significantly denser breast tissue than white women do on average. This makes detection of breast cancer much more difficult, as first-line screening methods like mammograms often don’t reliably detect breast cancer in high-density breasts. This knowledge allows medical professionals not only to offer more effective treatment plans for their patients, but it allows them to educate their patients so they can better advocate for themselves and know what to watch out for in their own health. [2]
As mentioned in the Dictionary.com definition above, DEI includes marginalized groups but is not exclusively centered around them. Other demographics can also benefit. For example:

  • DEI programs often provide specifically tailored resources for Veterans like mental health services, academic support, career transition assistance, etc. that recognizes the specific challenges that they face. [3]

Affirmative Action 

In the 1960s, we see the introduction of affirmative action. Many misconceptions surround affirmative action, namely that it offers “unfair” preference to “under-qualified” candidates who belong to certain marginalized demographics. This is not true, but before I get into what implementation of affirmative action actually looks like, I want to explore one core aspect of why it exists to begin with:

Uneven Playing Field

It is difficult to discuss the “fairness” of affirmative action without addressing the lack of “fairness” that exists in the experiences of different demographics. Certain groups face obstacles when it comes to obtaining work or an education in the United States that other groups don’t experience at the same rates. Here are some obstacles black Americans face with both finding work and education:

  • A 2004 study found that “black sounding” names were less likely to receive a call back for a job interview than “white sounding” names despite similar qualifications [4]. More recently, researchers at the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Chicago expanded on that premise, filing 83,000 fake job applications for 11,000 entry-level positions at a variety of Fortune 500 companies. They found that the presumed white applicants were around 9% more likely to receive a call-back from a potential employer than the black candidates were. That number rose to around 24% for the worst offenders [5].
  • In academics, researchers reported that teachers who were asked to rate students’ academic abilities scored black children far below their white peers with identical scores. [6]
  • Teachers are more likely to label black students as troublemakers than they are white students with the same number of infractions. [7]

Affirmative action is meant to act as a weight to retain balance against these inequities that exist in society. 

How Affirmative Action is Implemented

Contrary to what Pro argues (and many believe) affirmative action is not meant to give preference to lesser qualified candidates. The process typically breaks down like this: you have two candidates with similar qualifications, what might be the tie breaker? Universities look at many factors outside of grades and test scores when weighing the value of a potential student: extra-curricular activities, volunteering, sports, if they have family who are alumni, location, etc. And yes, factors such as race and sex can play a tie-breaking role as well. Additionally, affirmative action can simply be about being proactive in finding qualified candidates in under-represented or marginalized demographics, and requesting they apply. 

But, as mentioned at the beginning of this post, it’s not just groups who are considered marginalized who have benefited. As the rates of men pursuing higher-education have declined over the years [8], certain universities have admitted to actively recruiting men to help maintain “gender balance” among their populations. [9]

Benefits of Diversity

Beyond trying to lessen the negative impact of the obstacles that exist for certain demographics, the goals of affirmative action and DEI efforts also center around creating more diversity in different environments. The benefits of diversity among employees in a workplace or among students at a university is the ability to gain wider understanding of different perspectives, experiences, and ideas that may be missed if that diversity were not present. 

Some examples: 

  • Research conducted by the Harvard Business Review found that teams and companies that are diverse in terms of composition are 70% more likely to capture a new market than firms that are not diverse. [10]
  • This study published in the Academy of Management Journal shows that racial diversity in both upper and lower management has positive impacts on productivity and output. [11]
  • Research has shown that there is a strong relationship between diversity in culturally diverse teams and overall team creativity. The more diverse your teams in terms of characteristics, backgrounds, skills and experiences, the more increased the likelihood of generating a wider range of new and fresh ideas.[12]
Additional Rebuttals

Pro attempts to downplay the prevalence of racism by stating that the Black Lives Matter and Defund the Police movements were based on "one bad cop who killed a black guy." This is false. Both movements  were motivated by numerous killings of black people between the years 2014-2020 [13]. These movements weren't just about the killings, but the overall inequities black people face within the legal system. For example, black offenders get longer sentences than white offenders with similar history and crimes [14], black defendants are 25% less likely than white defendants to have their principal initial charge dropped or reduced to a lesser crime, and white defendants with no prior convictions receive charge reductions more often than black defendants with no prior convictions [15].


Sources:


Round 2
Sunshineboy217's avatar
Sunshineboy217
Pro
#3
Forfeited
bronskibeat's avatar
bronskibeat
Con
#4
Sunshineboy217 has forfeited this round, but I look forward to reading their arguments in round 3.
Round 3
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Round 5
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