Selective merit

 The rhetoric spewed by the Right concerning DEI is not new. It's the same rhetoric we've seen throughout history. It's the rhetoric used to count Black people as 3/5 of a person in the original Constitution. It's rhetoric that allowed Jim Crow laws and segregated buses and water fountains. It's not new. It's just been reworded.

It sounds like a reasonable argument--"the best person for the job should get it" (of course they say "the best man for the job" and it's no accident that they use that word instead of "person"). It sounds like the right policy to have--and on paper it is. But I know what it means. I know how it's used. I've seen it myself, I've heard the stories from enough people and while I'm not a huge fan of the subject I know enough history to recognize the pattern. The trouble is that it doesn't actually mean that the best person for the job will end up with it. Because people don't work like that. People have biases towards those who are similar to themselves. They have biases based on what society has taught them are good or bad. Most of this is subconscious and we don't even think about it or realize it's happening. Sometimes it's intentional. 

One of the biases that people have is that they will see their own group as individuals but other groups as all being the same--that is, if a white person steals, it's just a thief and it doesn't mean that all white people steal. But if a Black person steals, it means that all Black people are not to be trusted since they are thieves. How does this show up here? It means that in order for Black people to make white people think better of them as a group, they all need to be on their best behavior all the time because if any one of them acts poorly, they will all be judged for it. 

So what does all this have to do with DEI and the so-called "merit-based" approach to counter it? Let's consider Joe, the average conservative. He has several white co-workers who slack off. Joe thinks of them as just lazy people--they don't represent all white people because Joe is white and Joe is a hard worker. Joe also has one Black co-worker who is lazy like his lazy white co-workers. Joe sees the Black co-worker and concludes that they only got the job because DEI has quotas to fill and the company needed to hire a Black worker. (The quotas assumption is false since nearly all companies with a DEI policy do not specify quotas that must be filled.) Joe won't question whether the white co-workers deserve to have the job or not because they are white--they don't represent all white people. So because Joe has a lazy Black co-worker, he can now conclude that Black people are lazy and any company which hires Black people is doing so most likely because they have a DEI policy and they "need" to hire Black people simply to satisfy the policy and not because it's possible for Black people to be qualified for the job.

At the end of the day, the merit-based approach is just a reframing of the same old racism. It is not an argument to actually hire the most qualified for the job because, in fact, part of DEI is specifically hiring the person who is the most qualified for the job. The assumption that a person belonging to a minority group could only get a job if they had an unfair advantage over a white man is a bigoted thought, it is the result of the bias I'm talking about here. The truth of the matter is there will be people of all races, religions, sexual orientations, genders, and ideologies who are qualified and other members of each of those groups who are not qualified. 

This is Costco's DEI publication, entitled "Inclusion" or read more about their policies on their People & Community page. They don't have quotas that they're required to fill. They simply acknowledge that talent can be found from all sources and that the company does better when people from all backgrounds are included and no one is excluded on the basis of things such as skin color, religion, orientation, gender, etc. 

If it were the case that the "merit-based" argument that Trump and his supporters are spouting was really about hiring the best person for the job, then they would complain about white people who are unqualified for the jobs they've been hired to do. But I don't hear that, I only hear them complaining about people getting hired for belonging to some minority. They aren't interested in hiring the most qualified person, they're interested in having a less diverse, whiter workplace. 

I think one of the main reasons why the argument is insidious is that well-meaning people fall for it. People who aren't as overtly racist as Trump and Elon will hear the statement "the best person should get the job" and will acknowledge that sounds like a good argument, so they'll agree with it. As I said earlier, the logic itself makes sense. It is merely the application of the logic with which I disagree. If people were unbiased, I wouldn't have any issue with the argument at all. I only have an issue with it when a white person looks at an unqualified white person and sees one unqualified person but looks at an unqualified gay person and sees all gay people as unqualified--or sees a qualified Black person and comes to the conclusion that they are actually unqualified simply because they are Black.