DEI gone wrong: Connecticut girl who graduated SUEs education system cause she’s illiterate

The right wing discussion of KBJ was the biggest display of ignorance I have seen in this space in a while. She was more qualified than Amy Coney Barrett and it wasn’t even close. KBJ had credentials rivaling anyone currently on the court. I have hired and worked with lawyers who regularly appear before the Supreme Court and they uniformly believe she is beyond qualified, irrespective of their party affiliation.

 

a lot of people think that this is not a form of discrimination. It is acceptable bias in their minds. People should be allowed to like who they like, and it does not matter that the effect is to favor white people and disfavor minorities. That is the rationale.

 

You posted several points and aid like to discuss them all actually. But it is a lot so I thought I would focus on this part first.

You speak in past tense when you say that “white people were favored in many positions for decades…”. Do you think that is an issue of the past and does not still predominate in corporate America? I can tell you that country club/frat boy/sorority girl cronyism is still very much alive and well in corporate America, in Fortune 10 oil and gas companies, at prestigious law firms, and in investment banks.

Regarding DEI, I would be curious to get your input on two questions that come to mind:

1. If a white applicant and a hispanic applicant are equally qualified by all objective measures (academic background, professional certifications, prior work experience, prior performance history), would it be acceptable to you if the tiebreaker were given to the Hispanic applicant in the name of DEi?

2. Also, does it upset you equally when an underqualified white person is hired based on country club/frat boy/sorority girl white cronyism? Do you have the same visceral level of being upset when compared to a underqualified black person being hired?

 

Salvy, I thought this was another part of your post that presented some interesting questions in my mind. I’m not picking on you by responding, I actually think this has evolved into an interesting discussion and I am genuinely curious about the questions I am posing to understand your perspective. I also don’t want to be only asking questions of you. I want to answer the questions you ask above.

From what I have read, there is no way this woman earned her grades or accolades in high school. I agree with you there. But ai think that’s where your position may be too broad. It seems like you take the position that two things are the same: (1) minority student gets good grades she didn’t earn, thus it was DEI, and (2) minority applicant is hired for a job she wasn’t qualified for, thus it was DEI. The two situations seem like the same, but they aren’t because causation isn’t the same.

In the second situation, causation is clear. DEI was the reason the underqualified minority was hired.

In the first situation, you seem to want to assume causation without knowing the facts.

Was it DEi that drove the teachers to give her good grades she did not earn? Maybe. I honestly don’t know. Maybe one teacher liked her because she was Hispanic, so she gave her an A.

Maybe another teacher was lazy and didn’t want to give her a F because that would then require extra effort to get this student up to speed, work through her learning disabilities (student says she had them), engage with her parents, etc. There are a crap ton of lousy and lazy teachers in the public school system, and if an investigation showed this is what happened with this girl, I would believe it. There are certainly a ton of lousy high school teachers in HISD that would fit this description.

The overall point I am making is that perhaps you are sufficiently upset with DEI that you don’t mind jumping the gun and calling something DEi, when it could just as easily be something else.

There is something so viscerally upsetting about minorities being given something they don’t deserve that it is stopping you from considering what we know and don’t know about a given situation. I would suggest that maybe that’s not such a good thing.

I would also suggest that if you don’t have the same visceral reaction to a white person being given something he or she didn’t earn, that’s not a good thing either.

 

Thing is, white people of European, Italian and Irish decent pretty much set tradition across the board for many many years. They were the majority, I don't think its even been 100 years since we started seeing more and more central and southern Americans crossing the border and settling here not to mention Asia and Africa.... I can see how white people would mostly hire white people especially when dealing with different languages and culture.

Flash forward to today and the english language and culture has become very universal and widespread. Not to mention the impact of technological advancements that put the history of the world, education, tutorials and information in the palm of our hands. Things have changed and generally it is not uncommon for such practices as biased hiring based off of race to no longer happen naturally. Mainly because in the world and society we live today the main goal most of the time is success. Its not tradition or race or religion. Its success, its money its fulfillment.

1. Between two equally qualified people one white and one hispanic I think the tiebreaker should go to the person that best fits the culture and vision of the company. And who determines that? Welp, hopefully the person that was hired to make such company successful. They may both be qualified but attitude, motivation and communication could still be factors.

2. Both are the same, in my opinion both are a waste of time and money for the investors and or the person relying on said company and position to fulfill their needs.

 

Appreciate your response. Basically, I think where we differ the most is our dramatically different assessment of whether country club/frat boy/sorority girl cronyism still exists today.

 

Do you agree that existing power structures based on race should be utilized in the hiring process?

We don't live in a country of small business owners hiring 5 of their buddies.

We live in a age of corporations that have cornered the job market.

That means in a society that is dominated by white males in corporate hierarchical structures and have cornered entire career fields like mechanical engineering a black woman who is a competently educated engineer who is qualified to do these jobs on the market has intrinsically less opportunities than equally competent white males because the industry leaders are mostly white males controlling the hiring process still.


You are effectively stating that job opportunities should be limited based on existing social dynamics and power structures.



Just in case you believe we still live in a equal society where subconscious racial discrimination doesn't exist.

White people still hold most of the hiring power in America. I literally am showing you data that explains this. So you agree that subconscious biases should maintain conditions where someone like a black woman will have less opportunities than a white male even if equally competent.

 

Another thing. You haven't yet address my question about an example of someone unqualified being hired because of DEI.

 

I want to respond but I'm coming down with the flu or a cold, I'll respond tomorrow.... I feel like $hit....

 

very superstitious.

Spoiler

 

Is this a case with any weight.
Do you blame ALL of her educators preceding her leaving for college? Do you blame U Conn?
Do you blame her for not seeking the proper pre college education?

I do know she is smart enough to lawyer up.
So who is to blame is my question.

 

Thanks bro! Already feeling a little better....

 

well, @tinman has concluded that UConn admitted this woman due to DEI. What do you think?

UConn: 59,000 people applied for admission in her year, 19,500 accepted. Do you think UConn hired an investigator for her 1 application out of 59,000, and UConn knew her grades were bogus, but decided to admit her bc of DEI, like Tinman claims? Or was UConn a victim of fraud and relied on the veracity of her application in good faith? (@tinman still seems to believe that she must have cheated on her SAT, when there is no evidence that she took or submitted a SAT score, and UConn is a “test optional” school and does not require a SAT or ACT score for admission).

The applicant: surely she deserves some of the blame? She knew she was illiterate. She admits to being a bad kid and bad student.

The high school: surely they deserve some of the blame. They failed to educate her. They knew she couldn’t read and gave her good grades anyway. They probably did this for other kids too. Did they do this bc of DEI? Or did they do this because it is easier to pass kids rather than teach them, devote extra time, attention and resources to engage the student and parent?

The parents: they also deserve some of the blame. Assuming they were capable of understanding their kids learning deficits (she says she has them), they presumably should have engaged with the school to make sure their kid got educated properly.

 

To your first paragraph.
I do not have enough information to make an accurate statement.
That's why I was asking those questions.

I will say as a parent. My wife and I were always checking our sons homework. And although my son was no brain surgeon he did well enough in high school and could surely read and write.
My son did not go to a traditional college.
He went to Berklee School of Music in Boston.
Again, his brain was not wired for an English degree or the sciences.
But he is making a good living as a studio guitar player down in NYC, and can write legibly and read. Although he does not write in cursive like many these days.

I just don't know how parents had no idea of her illiteracy.

 

Nobody who is illiterate should be able able to graduate anything. It's a failure on multiple levels