Diversity initiatives would be defunded or banned from universities and other public institutions under a slate of bills pending in Republican-led legislatures, with some lawmakers counting on the issue resonating with voters in this election year.
Already this year, Republican lawmakers have proposed about 50 bills in 20 states that would restrict initiatives on diversity, equity and inclusion — known as DEI — or require their public disclosure, according to an Associated Press analysis using the bill-tracking software Plural.
This is the second year Republican-led state governments have targeted DEI. This year’s bills, as well as executive orders and internal agency directives, again focus heavily on higher education. But the legislation also would limit DEI in K-12 schools, state government, contracting and pension investments. Some bills would bar financial institutions from discriminating against those who refuse to participate in DEI programs.
Meanwhile, Democrats have filed about two dozen bills in 11 states that would require or promote DEI initiatives. The bills cover a broad spectrum, including measures to reverse Florida’s recent ban on DEI in higher education and measures to require DEI considerations in K-12 school curricula in Washington state.
Keep in mind that there have always been (and still are) people in the hiring process making decisions on biased metrics like “women can’t work as hard” or “black people might steal”. There is already a thumb on the scale, DEI just rebalances the scale.
But surely the correct solution is to remove bias altogether rather than replacing non-codified past bias with codified future bias, right?
Like, surely we should be trying to eliminate bias completely?
I’m sympathetic to those arguments that equality is not the same as equity, and that in some cases some form of reparation needs to be made to account for past bias. The issue is that, if that’s the line you take here, then you are in fact doing what the Republicans claim, and putting less qualified people into positions that could have major impacts on the lives of other people.
And maybe your stance is that that’s fine, and it’s not that big a deal to hire less qualified candidates if it helps fix systematic racial issues. But I think then that what the Republicans are claiming is in fact just true, and they are probably right that most Americans will find that unpalatable.
You can’t remove people’s negative bias by passing laws. You can only limit the damage done by these biases.
Part of the argument here is that diversity itself has value, so that all other things equal the diverse choice is superior not just as a reparation but functionally as well.