Wait, is that what I think it is?
No!
So we're running through all of these different ideas and concepts that people seem to get
wrong, seem to butcher or misunderstand them deeply.
And more recently, it's been DEI, right?
And this is DEI is one of those things where, I mean, it's just a feeling, an intuition
that I have.
Okay, so don't try to hold me to it.
I'm just, you know, spitballing here.
Okay.
But it's a feeling that there are a lot of concepts or ideas or things that are implemented
at the college level.
And then it gets used by private sectors, by companies, by, it becomes part of a public
discourse for no good reason.
It was like never meant to be for the public.
And then, but then it gets translated into these areas incorrectly.
And then it becomes something that like a straw man argument where people will start
ranting and raving about DEI when in reality is not what people have used it to be or made
it out to be.
Like, I'm not sure what, but there seems to be a lot of misconceptions around DEI.
Look, DEI is not anything particularly insane.
Okay.
DEI stands for diversity, equity, and inclusivity.
Okay.
Let's take each of these in turn.
Okay.
Diversity.
Okay.
People value diversity for educational reasons more than anything, I think.
Okay.
At least in theory and in their mission, right?
It's not diversity for diversity sake, right?
The diversity there is really so that we acknowledge that each individual by themselves have certain
biases.
If you have a homogeneous group of people who all think alike, have similar backgrounds,
have similar experiences, then they're not actually privy and they're not very aware
of the differences that exist elsewhere.
As a result, you end up with a very myopic view.
You have a very narrow view of the way the world works.
And what that means is that when you're doing research or when you're learning, you're going
to come in with those biases, right?
People are people.
We're limited in our experience.
We don't know everything about everybody or how things could be done all around the world
or how things are done all around the world, right?
We just know our own experiences and it's the stuff that we learn in books maybe.
Okay.
We're seen on TV.
That's it.
Okay.
And as a result, right, you're going to have certain biases.
Whether you like it or not, you're going to have biases.
Everybody has some.
Okay.
Get over it.
Okay.
It's a normal thing to have.
Let me give you one bias that I had that I didn't realize that I had, right?
I grew up in California, okay?
It was a whole new world for me when I moved over to the East Coast, when I studied in
Boston, when I was working out in Pennsylvania, right?
These environments is like, well, the weather's different, right?
But the culture was different.
The people were different.
The way that they engaged with the world were different.
Their mindset, their worldviews.
And this is within the United States.
This is within the United States, let alone experiencing culture shock when I'm going
across borders to other countries.
Very, very different, okay?
So one of the things that I realized was, hey, I thought that people were such and such
a way generally.
And then I realized, no, no, no, no, no.
My experiences taught me that people in California tend to be a certain way, right?
Or not even California, right?
Because there's a big difference between the culture in Northern California and Southern
California, I think, to some degree, versus like Central California.
That's a very different culture there as well, right?
So look, it was just my limited experience.
I didn't realize I had these biases until I was exposed to people with different perspectives,
right?
That's the way biases get exposed.
It doesn't get exposed because you reflect on your biases.
That's not how it happens.
You get exposed to your biases by having somebody who has a different perspective or a different
way of understanding the world, a different way of navigating the world, right?
You butt heads with differences, and that's how you become aware that whatever you thought
as the quote unquote norm or what is, you know, common sense or obvious, maybe isn't
so common sense and not so obvious, right?
That's what it is.
Okay?
It's not a big deal.
It's not a knock on you.
That's just reality.
And here's the thing.
If you want to get at the truth, you're going to need people who have different perspectives,
different approaches to life, different experiences to come together and really sharpen each other,
right?
Like, what is that?
How does that go?
Like, iron sharpens iron, right?
You need to butt heads, right?
You need to face differences in order for you to at least have that discussion to get
closer to the truth.
That's what you need.
We need scientists to have disagreements on what path to go through, what path to go in
research.
We need sociologists to have disagreements about what is best for society.
We need these differences because it's in those conversations, it's in the conflict
that we birth better ideas.
So there's a genuine interest for colleges to invest in diversity.
In fact, I think that there's a genuine interest in any society to go ahead and invest in diversity
to ensure that we have these moments that people butt heads, right?
Now, I'm not saying let's just have people constantly arguing with each other.
That's not what I'm saying, right?
But what I'm saying is that it's a necessary process to growth.
It's a necessary process to growth.
People do not grow and change for the better if there are nothing but people who agree
with them around them, right?
You're not benefited by it.
You're not benefited by it, okay?
So if you're against diversity, it could be on some philosophical grounds of, yeah, that
actually doesn't lead to more truth.
It actually leads to more lies or something.
I don't know.
Maybe you have an argument for that.
But I'm guessing that's not the issue with most people.
Most people's issues with diversity seems to have something to do with the diversity
itself or the way that we get to having a diverse body, okay?
We'll come back to this, okay?
But look, if you have an issue with diversity, let's have a separate conversation about it,
right?
I could give you actual data points in research about why diversity could be beneficial and
when it's not beneficial, right?
There might be certain cases where it's appropriate and other cases where it's not.
I'll tell you this, in educational settings, it's extremely beneficial.
And I'm not talking just diversity in the sense of ethnicity or diversity in the sense
of life experiences.
It's also diversity in thought, right?
Political spectrum.
All these things we might want on the table.
We want people to have these sorts of disagreements and to work through those disagreements because
it benefits everybody, right?
It benefits everybody, okay?
So that's what the D, diversity, really is.
Equity is simply an acknowledgement that life is unfair.
That's all it is, okay?
I'm bringing it down for you.
I'm not going to explain it to you in some highfalutin complicated way that is often
discussed in maybe like research circles or something, right?
I'm just going to talk like I would talk to a friend and explain to them what this stuff
is, okay?
Equity just means that some people had a head start in life, okay?
This is not an insane thing, okay?
Life is unfair.
Some people are born into families without family conflict and so that helps them learn
better.
Some people are born on certain month of the year.
I don't know if people ever thought about this, right?
But the way that the school system works, you're going to be much more developed if
you were born in a certain month of the year because you'll be one of the older kids and
your brain will be more developed and you're going to get better grades and accolades at
an early age, which is going to translate into you being pushed into some of these higher
level classes later on.
Look, like that's just the reality of it, right?
Life is sometimes unfair, okay?
You know what else is true, at least in the United States, right?
Certain things seem to play a role and there's actual metrics that bear it out, right?
Which is your ethnicity, your socioeconomic status, right?
Your parents' education.
These all seem to impact whether or not you're able to get a college degree, whether or not
you're able to succeed in colleges, right?
Look, my parents knew nothing about college application or anything like that.
I definitely was at a disadvantage because as much as I try to learn and figure things
out on my own, I did not have the resources to know all the things that I needed to actually
do before I applied to colleges.
I didn't know that I had to submit for FAFSA until it was closer to the deadline, right?
It wasn't something that was on my radar.
I didn't know that I should be looking at a range of different colleges.
In fact, my search was fairly narrow because I just didn't have any help and I didn't even
think about college until it became a year or two from applying to colleges, right?
It wasn't something that was prevalent discussed in my home because they just didn't know when
or where or the timeline for how to prepare for these things, okay?
They just didn't know, okay?
I'll tell you something else, right?
My child is going to benefit greatly.
She's got a huge advantage, okay?
Huge advantage for no other reason than that both her parents have advanced degrees, right?
I didn't realize it until she went to school and I realized, oh my goodness, she's learned
so many words, right, that is going to help her advance academically so easily that we
didn't actually try to teach her.
She just was around our using this sort of language, right?
Words that might not be used in other households, right?
I remember my vocabulary was terribly weak because I came from, you know, my parents
were not English speakers.
In fact, they were terrible at English and to this day, they can barely speak English,
right?
So I wasn't learning new words at the ripe old age of like one, two years old where I
should be exposed to a lot of these words and then even later on, I just didn't know
a lot of words because I wasn't exposed to those words on a regular basis at an early
childhood and those early childhood years are critical for developing vocabulary, right?
So look, equity is all it is, it's just an acknowledgement that life is sometimes unfair.
Some people have advantages that other people don't.
That's the way it is.
And the reality is that if that's the case and that is not something that was up to the
student, then it makes sense that when you're in college, you're trying to make sure that
you are giving those who had less, give them an actual opportunity to compete with everybody
else.
That's all it is.
It's not I'm trying to boost up one specific group.
It's simply an acknowledgement that hey, society operates in such a way that certain people
tend to be at a disadvantage than others.
In the United States, let's be honest, we have a long history of racism, long history
of racism, not just slavery, but we're talking like Jim Crow laws and all of the other dog
whistly stuff and policies that exist even today.
There's a lot that especially go against brown and black bodies.
So look, this is not to try to boost some people up and make them more successful than
others.
That's not what equity is.
Equity is just nothing more than simply, hey, life is unfair.
Let's try to make it a little more fair.
If you're against equity, this is what you're telling me.
You're against fairness.
Okay.
Now you might be, again, you might be on some strong philosophical grounds, on some moral
grounds.
You're like, no, I don't believe in fairness.
I believe that whatever is, is, right?
If it's unfair, it's unfair, deal with it, right?
You might be that, fine.
That's fine.
But don't make this out to be something that is not, okay?
It is not colleges pushing some group to have an advantage over others.
That's not what it is.
It's giving the people who had no, who has suffered from disadvantages and taking away
those disadvantages, right?
This is no different than a lot of the disability laws that exist in the United States, right?
When they say like, oh yeah, we need to make sure to include like, for instance, a ramp
at this big corporate building, right?
Why?
So that people who can't like, you know, walk up stairs can actually get in and out of the
building.
Okay.
That's what that is.
All right.
That's what that is.
That's all it is.
Okay.
All right.
So inclusivity, I and D, I is just inclusivity, which means we're trying to create a space
where everyone can participate.
Okay.
Again, you might have some philosophical objection, right?
You might want to exclude some people.
You might be like, hey, I don't want people a part of the table, you know, in the decision
making table, right?
Fine.
Then stand up to it, like own up to it, right?
That's all I ask.
But the I is simply nothing more than, hey, let's create a space where everybody can participate.
Everyone feels comfortable enough and open enough and safe enough to be able to participate.
This goes hand in hand with the diversity portion, right?
Because there's no point in getting a bunch of people with different perspectives together
if they can't have a discussion, right?
If they can't have discourse.
The inclusivity part is important because it ensures that the people who are there from
different perspectives, especially those that are in the minority, especially those that
are historically been shut out of these discussions, that they're at least given that room to make
their voice heard.
That's all inclusivity is.
That's all it is.
Okay?
So let me be clear about something.
Okay?
DEI is nothing more than an acknowledgement that the world sometimes is unfair.
It's often been unfair to specific groups of people.
And so as a result, it is important to at least make sure that we are thoroughly considering
those different marginalized groups.
Okay?
And then each place is going to focus on maybe something a little bit different, but it could
be based on ethnicity.
It could be based on gender.
It could be based on socioeconomic status.
It could be based on whatever, right?
There'll be a range of different things.
But it's an acknowledgement that there is this real thing called unfairness that exists.
And it seems to exist along some of these lines as the metrics bear it out or as the
metrics bear it out with regards to that particular college, right?
Or the institution, right?
And so we're trying to make sure that we're making a conscious effort to take away those
disadvantages and to ensure that all voices that need to be heard are being heard.
All right?
That's all it is.
Okay?
This is not, right?
Don't conflate it with some quota thing where people are specifically hiring people of a
specific background just to meet some sort of quota.
That's not what this is, right?
It was meant to kind of focus college's attention to the realities of the kind of unfairness
and how that's reflected in college, and trying to rectify it to some degree so that it's
fair.
That's all this aiming for.
Its aim, its goal is fairness.
Its goal is equity.
It's to ensure that the people who started with less and are having to catch up, get
a chance to catch up.
That's all it is.
getting a leg up. They're not getting a leg up. They're just getting something that other people
already have. That's all it is. That's all it is. Now that I explained to you what DEI is, now you
can see why this whole discussion has gone off the rails. Let me start off with one thing.
I think, it's just my opinion, it's just my opinion, so don't try to make it out as if I'm
trying to affirm something in a stronger manner than I really am. It's just an opinion.
What I have seen, at least from private companies who have incorporated quote-unquote DEI,
is that they're not actually doing real DEI. It's like they use the name DEI and that's not
what they're doing. They're doing something closer to just simply, I don't know, it seems honestly,
the cynical side of me says this is just like a publicity stunt where they're just putting
certain faces on billboards or claiming that they're doing X, Y, and Z just for good public
relations or something. Look, that's not the real work. If you're doing real DEI, then here's what
you would do. You would do things like, hey, let's think about where we advertise our openings for
our company. Do we advertise only in circles where it tends to majority be of a particular background?
That seems to limit our pool and it seems to really restrict the kind of people and perspectives
that we bring on board. Maybe we should look to advertising in other places as well so that we
get a pool of applicants and we get a diverse pool of applicants and we also consider the people who
often have been excluded to now be included in consideration for these positions. That would be
an actual proper application of DEI in the workforce. Here's another one. Look,
if there's gender bias happening in the hiring process, that's a serious problem. Why? For the
company, it's actually bad for the company. What did I say about diversity? One of the things you
want is you want people to have different perspectives and be able to duke it out for
the betterment of everyone. If you're not doing this strictly for ego, then it's a serious problem
if you're hiring the wrong people. If you're hiring people who are simply going to agree with
you on everything else, and it so happens to be along the lines of gender, that's going to be a
serious concern. You might want to ask the question, look, it might just be that that's just how
coincidence, that's just how it turned out, but it could also be that there's something in
your hiring process and your promotion process that leads to the outcome that you have. In other
words, the fact that you might not have diversity is not an indication necessarily that you're doing
something wrong, but DEI, apply properly, should raise questions about why you don't have any
diversity. Let me give you an example just from my own work at Pasadena City College. So
at the academics, when we're looking for teachers, we have to go ahead and submit a blurb of what
we're looking for when we're looking for candidates to be the next full-time instructor,
for instance. We send it out there and we get a bunch of applications. Now,
the question is this, if we seem to garner a bunch of applicants that look more or less similar to
one another in their application, in terms of where they went, what degree they got, and so on
and so forth, that might be a good thing because that might be what we're looking for, but you
might ask the question, huh, is there something about the way that we explained this description
of this job that is attracting a certain group of people? This is just an acknowledgement that we
might have some bias here in the way that we constructed this advertisement that is attracting
a particular group of people so that we get this homogeneous group of applicants, right?
Whereas, if we actually took the time to think about it and say, oh, maybe the wording here,
we want to make sure that we're being a little bit more inclusive in what works,
maybe we don't want to require a PhD. It doesn't seem necessary for teaching masters,
seems sufficient. Oh, maybe when we want to advertise, not just on this particular job board
where it's predominantly people who went to research colleges and are looking to do research,
but rather we also open up the job board and post it up on all these other websites to attract
customers, sorry, not customers, but potential candidates from different sectors of the
population. Look, I don't think people would be up in arms about that. I don't think so. At least
that's just me. I'm not up in arms about it because I'm just saying, oh, we just want the
best candidate. We realize that we're getting a very specific subset of the applicant pool,
potential applicant pool, right? And so maybe we should expand our search a bit so that we could
at least attract all the people that might be well qualified for this position. That's all it is.
It's not guaranteeing somebody of a particular skin color or specific gender. It's not guaranteeing
them a specific spot on the team. That's not what it is. It's a way for companies, it should be
anyways, a way for companies to reflect. But here's the thing. I gather that most companies
are not doing this. That is my sense. From everything I've read about the kind of programs
that they implement, it doesn't seem and the kind of trainings that they seem to, at least people
who have spoken to me about the trainings that they've been required to take, right? That doesn't
seem to be what's actually happening, right? That doesn't seem to be what's actually happening,
which tells me that one of the reasons people have this impression of DEI is probably because
there are people that are implementing it in a terrible manner. It might also happen at the
college, at colleges too. It could happen anywhere because like I said, people are people, okay? It
doesn't matter. It doesn't matter your education level. It doesn't matter what company you work
for, right? People are people, right? So they're going to get these ideas and they're going to
implement it in a terrible way and then people are going to get upset. But you should not be getting
upset with DEI. You should be getting upset with the way that they're being implemented, right?
If anything, I think that people, like companies getting rid of DEI is a terrible idea. They should
just do it better. They should actually invest the time and energy to do it better. But they're not,
if they're not willing to, like what could I tell them, right? That's your choice. That's your choice.
Okay? So look, all I'm saying is this. If you're going to complain about DEI,
complain about DEI. Don't complain about some sort of perception you have of DEI, right? I have a
theory and I don't know how accurate this theory is. Somebody could go ahead and actually tell me if
there's any research on this, right? I have a theory that if people get emotionally worked up
over a term like DEI, okay, then it probably says more about them than it does about the concept
itself. The concept is just a concept. It's an idea. Okay? Your reaction to it, honestly for me,
says more about you. And I'm speaking for myself too, right? If you've listened to any of my tirades,
here's what you should be doing. You should be judging me. Why? Because I'm getting worked up
over stuff that probably doesn't bother a large portion of the population. And they can go ahead
and look at me and they can say like, look, whoa, this seems to be something you're really worked
up about that other people aren't worked up about. Seems to say something about you, right? Probably
does. Probably has something to do with me. It could be something about my personality. It could
be something about my experiences, right? I'll tell you this. Some of the stuff that I get worked
up over, it's probably because there's a long history and multiple conversations. Like what
you're hearing is a snippet at the end of a longer conversation I've been having with a bunch of
other people, right? So I'm probably getting worked up for a reason, right? And it's not about you.
It's probably about me. And I'll own that. All I'm asking is that everybody else do the same. Own
your shit, okay? If you're getting worked up over DEI, unless you have some philosophical ground
against diversity, equity, and inclusivity, okay? My guess is that you are getting worked up about
something else. Implicit bias of some sort maybe. Figure out what that is, okay? But don't go around
telling other people that they're wrong for implementing DEI, especially if you don't really
understand what it is, okay? And for the general public out there, all right, let me be honest with
you. How many of you who are getting worked up over DEI actually understand DEI and have seen it
utilized correctly? And that correctly part here is important, okay? I don't want to talk about your
individual experience at your specific company. Your company might suck in the way that implement
and they implement DEI. Here's the thing, this is what people do. They have their own personal
experience and then they just generalize. This is a hasty generalization. This is just terrible
critical thinking here, right? Hasty generalization to everybody else, okay? Don't do that, please,
all right? Take the time to actually figure out what this is and what it looks like for it to be
implemented correctly. Because I guarantee you, if it's implemented correctly, you wouldn't even know
that DEI exists. That's the beauty of it. DEI implemented well is something that should be
working in the backgrounds, not at the forefront. It's not something that you should feel like it's
something being bashed over your head. If it's being implemented correctly, it's just there.
It's just there in the background doing its thing and you just don't hear about it ever. Why? Because
if it's working well, then you just have a fruitful community where people of different
perspectives and backgrounds feel included and are able to engage in discourse and feeling
included in these conversations. Everybody's happy. That's what you have. When you have a DEI,
that's working correctly, okay? So if it's not operating the way it should be as your company,
don't blame DEI. Blame the people implementing it. And my guess, and just like I said, it's just a
hunch, okay? Is that, and based on the outcomes anyways, I'm pretty confident in this to some
degree, right? Is that a lot of these private companies that implemented DEI didn't really
actually implement DEI. They just took the name. They just took the name. And as a result,
people have this impression of DEI that is just not true. Okay? So let's correct what everyone
seems to, a lot of people I say, just seem to get wrong about DEI. Okay? And seriously,
check to make sure you're understanding these ideas correctly before you start having an opinion on
it, okay? Stop forming opinions without sufficient grounds, right? Be reasonable people. That's all
I ask. Please.