Summary
Denmark and the Netherlands criticized Trump’s demand that foreign companies with U.S. government contracts eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).
Denmark called for a coordinated EU response, labeling the move a potential trade barrier.
The Trump administration sent letters to European firms—including in France and Belgium—warning they must comply with a DEI ban or risk losing U.S. contracts.
European officials condemned the letters, defending DEI as essential to corporate responsibility. The EU Commission is reviewing the situation, while the U.S. State Department called the effort a compliance measure.
I love that this article expands DEI into diversity, equity, and inclusion. It’s important to remember that diversity, equity, and inclusion are not primarily political devices, but a set of moral ideas meant to improve human wellbeing and harmony. DEI is used as a political device by people who are not driven by a desire for human wellbeing.
In the case of the EU however as well as a bunch of European countries, DEI is literally part of the constitution. But hey, Dump and his team would need to inform themselves on other countries to know that
It’s also useful to ask “if you don’t support DEI, is it diversity, equity or inclusion you have an issue with?”
Should certain people or certain kinds of people be excluded? Is that why inclusion is bad?
What’s bad about equity? Should things be inequitable? Should certain people get preferential treatment? If so, which people and why?
Or, is it diversity that’s the problem? Is uniformness important? Is it so important that it’s reasonable to exclude people who don’t come from the right backgrounds or don’t look a certain way?
They’re starting to adapt. They often claim,
“Overreporting” means that you purposefully overinflate supposed problems by bringing up the same story over and over again, which makes the problems seem way bigger than what they actually are, and at worst the people reading or watching half attended might actually think the problem occured another time. I’m from Hungary, and not only this method made people believe that “Roma crimes” and “disability benefit cheats” were way more widespread than they actually were, ultimately handing over the first landside victory to Fidesz (ironically, many of the sites doing these kinds of tactics claimed Viktor Orbán was both too far-left and Roma - Hungary has its own birther movement that makes critique of Fidesz extremely hard), and making the life harder for those groups much harder once Fidesz enacted its programs. Also thanks to overreporting, some of my relatives thought the knife attacker of Blaha Lujza square made yearly attacks for MP3 players up until MP3 players fell out of fashion in favor of smartphones, with some still warning me against bringing an MP3 player to Budapest, because the far-right “news” site kuruc info likes to post the anniversaries of said tragedies caused by Roma criminals, which was even worse in the very first years after the attack (TL;DR: They brought it up on a yearly basis).
Is it bad to be a minority?
That is a very insightful comment and I thank you for sharing it with us all - and it bears repeating:
Diversity, equity, and inclusion are a set of moral ideas meant to improve human well-being and harmony.
Therefore, to be opposed to diversity, equity, and inclusion would imply that one is not driven by a desire for human well-being.
I will remember this. Thank you. (Nice username!)
As much as it sounds good, this is not an argument that will convince anyone who is against DEI (and honestly while DEI usually seems implemented quite well it’s not any better of an argument than “North Korea is called the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, so they’re a democracy”).
The people that are against DEI mostly fall in 2 categories. One is flat out racists, which have no issues being against these values. The other are those that believe that the implementation of DEI is in some way bad and discriminatory. This is ime often based on sensationalized news about a few edge cases or stories that were twisted to a degree where they’re basically made up. They don’t need to be told that diversity, equity and inclusion are good values, they need to be informed about the fearmongering being just that.
Though with what trump is doing I suspect many of the latter category are already realizing that trumps version of “getting rid of DEI” is doing exactly the bad things they were told DEI does, so maybe we’re already mostly left with the racists.
Yeah, Trump and Co. are just using the term DEI as their latest bigoted dog whistle term. Here’s a Reagan subordinate explaining how they evolve it over time to avoid scrutiny (trigger warnings: repeated use of N* word, YouTube link)
They’re also just good business sense.
Diversity, equity and inclusion are about making sure that you have a wide variety of perspectives represented within your company.
Here’s a really dumb anecdote that illustrates the point; Flaming Hot Cheetos were invented by a Latino janitor. He came up with the recipe, pitched it to higher ups, and through some serious persistence managed to get them to give it a shot. It’s sold as one of those feel good stories about coming up from nothing or whatever, but the real takeaway is that it took a god damn janitor with the dogged persistence of a god to make that idea happen, because there was no one in the rooms where the decisions happened who was able to say “Hey, maybe we’d capture the Latino market better if we made flavours that appealed to them?” A more diverse company would already have been having these kinds of ideas. How much brilliance is being lost because of bad hiring practices?
Diversity makes your business more effective. A diverse workplace can attract and keep the best talent. A diverse workplace can serve the broadest range of customers, and penetrate deeper into every market it targets. A diverse workplace can build a more healthy environment for all its employees, creating better productivity. These are all good things if you are a company that likes making money.
I love this example because flaming hot Cheetos are super popular outside the Latino market, too. I bet there’s not a middle school in the country where kids don’t love them.
TIL Equity isn’t always regarding to money. I thought the E in DEI stood for equality until now.
https://i2.wp.com/interactioninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/IISC_EqualityEquity.png
(I tried to upload it but kept getting errors)
Nice thanks.
If you want you can add it to a post with
like this:The obligatory follow up image
Nice
Or, replace the chain link fence with a dodgy internet stream of the game. It’s unjust that some people don’t get to see the game, and other people who paid for a ticket do.
(only partially joking)
You see freeloaders. I see people watching a game. Could just be a park? There’s no stands or tickets or anything.
Like a rorschach test revealing some cognitive bias. Maybe some introspection is in order.
I’m not perfectly clear on your point, but it read like only people who have money should get to watch at all?
If it’s just a park, why aren’t the spectators in the park?
I think the original is just meant to be a simple concept without a fully fleshed out world. In the true original version, it’s only meant to differentiate between equality and equity. It does that by showing that equality gives everyone the same resources, but equity focuses more on ensuring everybody has the same outcomes.
By changing the wall into a chain-link fence and labelling that as justice, it basically opens the door to asking more questions about this world being depicted. Why is there a wall in the first place? In most cases when you have spectators at a sporting event who have to stand on something to see over a wall, it’s because it’s a professional sporting event that sells tickets, and doesn’t want people who haven’t bought tickets to be able to see the event.
If justice is removing the wall and replacing it with a chain-link fence people can see through, what does that mean for the world of professional sports? Are people who didn’t buy tickets entitled to view the game regardless of buying tickets to see it? If you take that concept more broadly, should people be able to access any good or service they want without having to pay for it?
I’m mostly just making fun of the over simplified world depicted in the meme.
Cool illustration! Thanks!
Think of it like, “equality of opportunity” vs “equality of outcome.” With equity being closer to the latter.