If you sit down and learn why EDI is a thing, like the history of racism in Canada and why it isn’t enough to stop doing racism, EDI starts to make sense. If you don’t, then EDI can easily be seen like racism against white people. I wonder if there’s a more universalist way to achieve the goals EDI attempts to without that perception. Perhaps applying a wealth lens instead of historically disadvantaged groups? That should catch historically disadvantaged groups as the hisotical disadvantage usually resutls in the lack of wealth. It should also not appear to disadvantage any one group on the basis of inherent characteristics they can’t change. Might even get broad support as most people don’t have significant wealth and elevating them through hiring into such institutions could be perceived as an avenue for upwards mobility. Thoughts?
EDI is inextricably tied to racial demographics. Changing it to one that’s purely related to financial economic demographics is a fundamental change to all those programs and their implementations, and would likely fail / face significant headwinds from established EDI proponents. There are also components of EDI such as representing different cultural backgrounds / upbringings, that wouldn’t get captured in a purely economic implementation – so I really don’t think you’d be talking EDI anymore if you went that route.
Admittedly, EDI being so tied to race stuff is one reason there’s such pushback. Many white men in the current generation, have been told for the past few decades during hiring interviews “You’re cut because you identified as a white male”, because there are too many old white men still at the company / government offices. While it may be true there are systemic hidden racist things going on, that interaction at a personal/individual level is pretty overtly discriminating against hiring the individual due to their race/gender… things we’re all meant to be shielded from. And while there are legal recourses for the former ‘hidden’ things if you can prove them, even an overtly stated “No because you’re a white man” is not considered racist/discriminatory by our govt. In fact our govt will straight up say that to people itself. First time I heard it from the feds was back around 2005ish – so yes, we’re literally talking about generations of men having gone through this, and when I speak to peers we all seem to have a story or two about it.
I’d argue that EDI isn’t really about fairness between individuals, and never was really. A second or third generation asian trust-fund kid in Vancouver is given preferential hiring for government work, compared to a working class new immigrant with more qualifications from eastern europe, based solely on race/gender – and it’s been done that way intentionally for political reasons. Canada’s population growth is almost entirely tied to immigration in categories that fall into the EDI spectrum – our government even took pains to separate out each different sub-culture of asian recently, to ensure they’d all continue to qualify for extra benefits. By providing custom programs/benefits to those demographics, it improves progressive party chances at the polls, since those demographics are the only ones ‘growing’ in Canada by % – locals tend to have far fewer kids, outside of one demographic group (FN). At this point, outside of a “Trump style Pierre Pollievre destroying an absurd amount of our social network”, it’s highly unlikely that any of these parties/groups would willingly give up their benefits, even when confronted by data/stats (statscan’s come out and noted that White Men are one of the least educated groups at this point, but we still disadvantage them in terms of scholarships/bursaries etc). It’s just not “in their best interests” as a demographic slice, and no ‘progressive’ party will be willing to make those sorts of compromises as it’d erode their voter base.
Besides, every political movement needs a bad guy. For right-wing facists, that bad guy is currently “lgbtq+, visible minorities, poor people”, and for progressives it’s generally “white men”. Heck, I still remember AOC’s pitch to white guys in one of her online campaign blurbs, being all “Vote in the best interests of the women in your lives” … cause she tacitly recognised that the platform the dems had put out at the time had spent 0 effort tryin to appeal to the young male/white male demographic, while being chalk full of promises/commitments to every other demographic. Pretty sure their next round will be more of the same, paired with “look what trump did” guilting.
Yeah I think targeting income brackets is the way to go. It’s a more precise target. Because not everyone from a minority group is economically disenfranchised, though of course many are. So targeting income brackets would still have the effect of increasing diversity, but at the same time it would ensure that the individuals benefiting from these programs are those that need it most.
In addition to targeting, my concern is making such initiatives socially sustainable by defusing the backlash that tends to occur when minority groups get (deserved) advantage over the majority, along with the ease of weaponization of such backlash by political actors. It should be much more difficult to get people to sign up to “We shouldn’t be giving preference to poorer people for hiring!” than “We shouldn’t be giving preference to [insert visible minority] for hiring!” because most people do not feel very wealthy and thus the former slogan goes against their own (and their children’s) interest. And thus I think the majority would tend to willingly uphold such policies on the basis of their own self-interest, similar to how the vast majority of canucks support universal healthcare.
I agree with you completely
I know it’s Alberta but they really used the American term instead of the Canadian accessibility?
The term “EDI” has been used at UofT for at least a decade. Not sure when it was introduced and what the history of “DEI” is in the US.
Presumably that acronym was chosen to place equity as the first priority.
Yeah. The related term that describes who gets preference is “equity-deserving group(s).” It makes that pretty unambiguous, which is good.
Interesting.
