Sustainable Development? Protect the environment? Promote social justice? Equitable access? Driving inclusive growth? Eliminating biases? Not excluding underrepresented groups?
These are not the values the American people voted for. Americans selected a president who is against "equity", "inclusion" and "social justice", and who is more "roman salute" oriented.
Of course this is all very disorienting to non-Americans, as a year or two ago efforts to do things like rename git master branches to main and blacklists to denylists also seemed to be driven by Americans. But that's just America's modern cultural dominance in action; it's a nation with the most pornographers and the most religious anti-porn campaigners at the same time; the home of Hollywood beauty standards, plastic surgery and bodybuilding, but also the home of fat acceptance and the country with the most obesity. So in a way, contradictory messages are nothing new.
>Americans selected a president who is against "equity", "inclusion" and "social justice"
Indeed. Our American values are and always have been Equality, Pursuit of Happiness, and legal justice respectively, as declared in our Declaration of Independence[1] and Constitution[2], even if there were and will be complications along the way.
Liberty is power, power is responsibility. Noone ever said living free was going to be easy, but everyone will say it's a fulfilling life.
Then why don't you do all that but instead treating people who are in pursuit of happiness as criminals for example? Why do you need the paperwork and bureaucracy to let people pursue happiness?
The US is a sovereign nation which has a right to defend its borders from illegal invaders. Try to enter or stay in Singapore illegally and see what happens to you.
Quite literally any country with a government worth talking about controls entry of foreign nationals. It is a privilege to enter another country as a foreigner, and that country has every sovereign right to deny you that privilege if they so choose for any reason (usually citing their laws).
The fact that you ignore this demonstrates your bad will in engaging in these conversations.
Good to hear. What are you doing to demolish the visa regime that actually doesn't allow all that? Do you have an ETA for the day when anybody who enters USA will be able to seek employment or start a company or do whatever they want in their pursuit of happiness?
I was worried that you are advocating for work visas, permits, green cards ect, like a silly EU country would do.
In other words pursuit of happiness through bureaucracy. Hope Musk keeps enough of those who pick who can pursue happiness in US then. Otherwise the pursuit of happiness will be pretty slow.
Anyway, IMHO you are putting too much trust in the abilities and importance of bureaucrats or maybe you want them to do the dirt work so you can feel good for yourself and pretend that you like the American way of life(the right of pursuit of happiness kind of things) but secretly want to be European(the bureaucracy that keeps out the undesirables)?
Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal ..." (+)
(+) terms and conditions apply; did not originally apply to nonwhite men or women. Hence allowing things like the mass internment of Americans of Japanese ethnicity.
> We are also talking much more rightly about equity,
>it has to be about a goal of saying everybody should end up in the same place. And since we didn’t start in the same place. Some folks might need more: equitable distribution
This is arguing for giving certain people more benefits versus others based on their race and gender.
This mindset is dangerous, especially if you codify it into an automated system like an AI and let it make decisions for you. It is literally the definition of institutional discrimination.
It is good that we are avoiding codifying racism into our AI under the fake moral guise of “equity”
Its not. What we currently have is institutional discrimination and Trump is trying to make it much worse. Making sure AI doesn't reflect or worsen current societal racism is a massive issue
At my job I am not allowed to offer a job to a candidate unless I have first demonstrated to the VP of my org that I have interviewed a person or color.
This is literally the textbook definition of discrimination based on skin color and it is done under the guise of “equity”.
It is literally defined in the civil rights act as illegal (title VII).
It is very good that the new administration is doing away with it.
So did your company interview any people of color before? It seems like your org recognizes their own racism and is taking steps to fight that. Good on them at least if they occasionally hire some of them and aren't just covering their asses.
You don't seem to understand either letter of the spirit of the civil rights act.
You're happy that a racist president who campaigned on racism and keeps on baselely accusing people who are members of minority groups of being unqualified while himself being the least qualified president in history is trying to encourage people to not hire minorities? Why exactly?
2. Candidate applies and interviews, team likes them and wants to move forward
3. Team not allowed to offer because candidate is not diverse enough
4. Team goes and interviews a diverse person.
Now if we offer the person of color a job, the first person was discriminated against because they would have got the job if they had had the right skin color.
If we don’t offer the diverse person a job, then the whole thing was purely performative because the only other outcome was discrimination.
This is how it works at my company.
Go read Title VII of the civil rights act, this is expressly against both the letter and spirit of the law.
BTW calling everything you disagree with racism doesn’t work anymore, nobody cares if you think he campaigned on racism (he didn’t).
If anything, people pushing this equity stuff are the real racists.
Edit after reading about Trump firing the people administering our nuclear weapons: God damn Donald Trump, and God damn the people who are so foolish to believe the the disinformation networks that tell them Donald Trump isn't working to destroy this country.
Men are created equal, but not identical. That's why you should aim for equal chance, but shouldn't try to force equal results. Affirmative actions and such are stupid and I'm glad Trump is getting rid of them.
I live in a country that has had a very successful programme of affirmative action, following roughly three generations of open, systemic racism (Maori school students where kept out of university and the professions as a matter of public policy)
Now we are starting to get Maori doctors and lawyers that is transforming our society - for the better IMO
That was because the law and medical schools went out of their way to recruit Maori students. To start with they were hard to find as nobody in their families (being Maori, and forbidden) had been to university
If you do not do anything about where people start then saying "aim for equal chance" can become a tool of oppression and keeping the opportunities for those who already have them.
Nuance is useful. I have heard many bizarre stories out of the USA about people blindly applying DEI with not much thought or planning. But there are many many places where carefully applied policies have made everybody's life better
This is always the Motte & Bailey of the left. "Equity" doesn't mean you recruit better. It means when your recruitment efforts fail to produce the outcomes you want, you lower the barriers on the basis of skin color. That's the racism that America is presently rejecting, and very forcefully.
NZ does not have a "successful programme of affirmative action".
Discrimination in favour of Maori students largely has benefited the children of Maori professionals and white people with a tiny percentage of Maori ancestry who take advantage of this discriminatory policy.
The Maori doctors and lawyers coming through these discriminatory programmes are not the people they were intended to target. Meanwhile, poor white children are essentially abandoned by the school system.
Maori were never actually excluded from university study, by the way. Maori were predominantly rural and secondary education was poor in rural areas but it has nothing to do with their ethnicity. They were never "forbidden". There have been Maori lawyers and doctors for as long as NZ has had universities.
For example, take Sir Apirana Ngata. He studied at a university in NZ in the 1890s, around the same time women got the vote. He was far from the first.
What you have alleged is a common narrative so I don't blame you for believing it but it is a lie.
> Maori were never actually excluded from university study, by the way
Māori schools (which the vast majority of Māori attended) were forbidden by the education department from teaching the subjects that lead to matriculation. So yes, they were forbidden from going to university.
> Sir Apirana Ngata. He studied at a university in NZ in the 1890s,
That was before the rules were changed. It was because of people like Ngata and Buck that the system was changed. The racists that ran the government were horrified that the natives were doing better than the colonialists. They "fixed" it.
> Discrimination in favour of Maori students largely has benefited the children of Maori professionals
It has helped establish traditions of tertiary study in Māori families, starting in the 1970s
There are plenty of working class Māori (I know a few) that used the system to get access. (The quota for Māori students in the University of Auckland's law school was not filled in the 1990s. Many more applied for it, but if their marks were sufficient to get in without using the quota they were not counted. If it were not for the quota many would not have even applied)
Talking of lies: "white people with a tiny percentage of Maori ancestry who take advantage of this" that is a lie.
The quotas are not based on ethnicity solely. To qualify you had to whakapapa (whāngi children probably qualified even if they did not whakapapa, I do not know), but you also had to be culturally Māori.
Lies and bigotry are not extinct in Aotearoa, but they are in retreat. The baby boomers are very disorientated, but the millennials are loving it.
Sustainable Development? Protect the environment? Promote social justice? Equitable access? Driving inclusive growth? Eliminating biases? Not excluding underrepresented groups?
These are not the values the American people voted for. Americans selected a president who is against "equity", "inclusion" and "social justice", and who is more "roman salute" oriented.
Of course this is all very disorienting to non-Americans, as a year or two ago efforts to do things like rename git master branches to main and blacklists to denylists also seemed to be driven by Americans. But that's just America's modern cultural dominance in action; it's a nation with the most pornographers and the most religious anti-porn campaigners at the same time; the home of Hollywood beauty standards, plastic surgery and bodybuilding, but also the home of fat acceptance and the country with the most obesity. So in a way, contradictory messages are nothing new.