What positive changes are you looking forward to as outcomes of the USA 2024 presidential election?

Judith Browning wrote:Many regulations came from important needs...for clean air and water, safe food and drugs, safe disposal of manufacturing wastes...fairness in the workplace/diversity...social services....medical needs.

I think reaccessing programs and current needs in those areas is wise...cutting them out without reassessment not so good.

This would be an area where I could not say one way or the other. I do not know what research or assessment was used to decide we needed it and then to decide we do not.

I imagine there are statistics that would favor both decisions depending on how you put those statistics together.

Judith Browning wrote:let me just say, I don't mind at all receiving 'thumbs down' or even 'apple cores' but I hope that others who are participating in this conversation might be spared just to keep an open dialog.

Yes and I appreciate the sharing of ideas and information. It has not come across to me as combative or offensive and I desire not to be combative or offensive in what I say as well.

I would like to see more localized regulation decisions. The states having more control of some regulatory decisions. I may be jumping into a fire though; Oregon is definitely split between red and blue depending on what side of the Cascades you are on. Diversity is tough, meritocracy is pretty important. Like picking teams for a game in grade school, feelings get hurt.  The "Peter Principle" does seem to be alive and well in some government selections.

The "Peter Principle" does seem to be alive and well in some government selections  

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle

 The Peter principle is a concept in management developed by Laurence J. Peter which observes that people in a hierarchy tend to rise to "a level of respective incompetence": employees are promoted based on their success in previous jobs until they reach a level at which they are no longer competent, as skills in one job do not necessarily translate to another.[1][2]

I'm personally against DEI programs. If I were king, there would be no place on a job application for sex, race, gender, religion, nationality. I would base hiring purely and exclusively on merit.  I would prefer hiring officials couldn't even see or hear the applicants, so even unconscious bias could not come into play. I think most, maybe not all, but most, people that are facing something like a dangerous surgery or an airplane trip would prefer that the absolute best qualified person were doing the surgery or flying the plane. I care not at all if my surgeon is white, brown, yellow, red, male, female, what country they are from, what religion they are, or any other diversity you can come up with.

I don't perceive any positive changes, nor any negative changes happening because a different faction happens to be in the white house or congress at the current moment. At no time in my life, have I perceived more freedom as a result of an election.

The factions seem like two wings of the same bird of prey that devours all. Minor changes might happen after an election, but the bird remains, and grows with each cycle.

Every time, i am asked my race on a form, i reply "Other: human". I think it would be positive if that question disappeared from government forms.

Judith Browning wrote:One of my specific concerns has to do with diversity, the importance of diversity in my garden, among my friends, in my community, folks we meet while traveling and internationally on line.

To what positive end have those particular areas been cut or removed from government protection?

I fear the word 'diversity' is going the way of ' liberal'?

I am very glad that the DEI programs have been removed, because I believe they took a good idea to the wrong place. Diversity is good, but diversity for the sake of diversity is not advisable. I would never plant an apple tree, a banana tree, some crab grass, a cocoa tree, some marigolds, a cedar tree, cattails, and multiflora rose in the same garden. That would be very diverse, but those plants can't all survive in the same conditions. They would be competing rather than complimenting. We create diverse gardens with a purpose, to fill each role in the ecosystem, not simply to have as many species as we can.

Every DEI program I have ever dealt with or read about cares too much about the color of your skin and what gender you want to call yourself, without paying attention to skills, ability, and character. These programs assume that a board made up of light skinned males is NOT diverse and also assumes that a board made up of half women and half men with a variety of shades of skin IS  diverse. That kind of diversity shouldn't matter. What we should care about is things like how honest you are and how good you are at the job and having different ways of looking at the world... regardless of your physical characteristics

When an airline says they are going to pay attention to the color of someone's skin and the gender they claim to be, more than skills to fly an airplane, that is scary. By saying we must hire this color skin... you are being just as racist as saying we won't hire this color skin. Their focus is on skin color instead of the skills to fly an airplane.

When a university says we are going to lower the standards if you are of a certain color skin... that sounds like an insult to me. This is the university saying those people were not smart enough to get in on their own, so they must be helped. There are plenty of people of all colors of skin who can make it in on the same standards. And there are plenty of people of all skin colors who can't. Some people are smarter than others... it has nothing to do with color of their skin.

To take this to an extreme to try to make a point... If diversity, simply for diversity's sake, is good, why don't we ever see 100lb, 5ft women on a security detail? Why don't we see a 400lb person chosen for the olympic pole vault? Why aren't there any asians in the NFL? Why do we never see a motorcyclist in the tour de france? The answer is because all of those things are based on skills and being fit for that specific task. I think just about everything should be this way. Are you good at that job or not? Who cares what you look like.

This seems to have moved on to a general discussion of race and hiring instead of answering Judith's questions, so I'm going to weigh in as a contradictory voice.

When I imagine an inner-city hospital that serves a substantially black population, and I think of a black kid getting an emergency appendectomy who sees no black doctors, I can't help but be reminded that representation matters. What life-lessons does that kid take away from that experience? And what about when it's repeated at banks and schools and city council meetings and on and on? So now, at that hospital, they're filling a slot for a new ER attending. 35 young doctors applied and they've narrowed it down to four who have essentially equal scores. The hiring board can choose the one black doctor or one of the three white doctors. Who should they pick?

To me, the social good of hiring the black doctor over the three white ones is obvious and plain.

Sometimes when it's left up to the hiring board, they realize that and make the right choice. More often (in my experience), being a bunch of white men, they're just subtly more comfortable with the white candidates and since they all have the same score, the job goes to a white doctor. If the hospital has a DEI program in place, the black candidate maybe gets an extra half a point on the rubric that helps the board pick and so they have less ability to just go with their gut.

Also, as far as I know, every government position at every level, all across the United states, and also every company that depends on government contracts, which is millions and millions of jobs, gives preferential hiring to veterans. I assume anyone opposed to these DEI programs is also opposed to veteran preference programs...right?

Christopher Weeks wrote:
Also, as far as I know, every government position at every level, all across the United states, and also every company that depends on government contracts, which is millions and millions of jobs, gives preferential hiring to veterans. I assume anyone opposed to these DEI programs is also opposed to veteran preference programs...right?

Being a Veteran is a result of a thing you accomplished. Being born a certain color is not.

I personally believe this is not a very good comparison/argument.

Josh Hoffman wrote:Being a Veteran is a result of a thing you accomplished. Being born a certain color is not.

So, your assertion is factually correct, but if the point of opposing diversity-enhancement programs is wanting the person most qualified for the job to get the job, why wouldn't the same logic apply to vets?

As Josh said, I see veteran's preference in hiring as different then DEI. Military service involves sacrifice. Remote assignments, being paid less than civilian counterparts for the same job, 24 hour duty days, being sent to war zones, and on and on. People die in military service. That program bears no resemblance to being given a job or some other benefit strictly because you were born a certain color, sex, or sexual identity.

As far as your other example of the inner city doctor, you may make a valid point if it were implemented that way. That hasn't been my experience. I have only seen DEI implemented as a quota system, where you must hire some percentage of X, X of course being a certain race, sex, gender, whatever. It isn't possible to set a percentage of X you must meet and still hire the most qualified people. I don't think it's unfair to say the most qualified person is the person I want for the job. I owned a small business for a number of years. I hired smart, hard working, motivated people, and that was my only criteria. I had different races and both sexes. I have no idea about their sexual preferences or identities, because I didn't ask and don't care. It's irrelevant to me. Taking diversity to it's extreme, I would have had to hire some not so smart, lazy, unmotivated workers to round out my team. A silly example of course, but that's why I believe in hiring for merit only.

Christopher Weeks wrote:

Josh Hoffman wrote:Being a Veteran is a result of a thing you accomplished. Being born a certain color is not.

So, your assertion is factually correct, but if the point of opposing diversity-enhancement programs is wanting the person most qualified for the job to get the job, why wouldn't the same logic apply to vets?

For the sake of clarification, veteran's preference adds 5 points to the overall score towards hiring, unless you are hiring a disabled vet that is at least 30% disabled, in which case the preference is 10 points. It isn't an automatic hire card to be played.

Christopher Weeks wrote:

Josh Hoffman wrote:Being a Veteran is a result of a thing you accomplished. Being born a certain color is not.

So, your assertion is factually correct, but if the point of opposing diversity-enhancement programs is wanting the person most qualified for the job to get the job, why wouldn't the same logic apply to vets?

My answer to Judith's question on what good will come out of eliminating DEI was: less regulation.

I would like to see all preferential treatment eliminated.

However, I do not think DEI can be justified because Veteran preference exists. They have to be separate discussions because their merits are not the same.

Josh Hoffman wrote:However, I do not think DEI can be justified because Veteran preference exists. They have to be separate discussions because their merits are not the same.

Conveniently, I didn’t suggest anything remotely like that. I was merely pointing to a potential inconsistency if you favor one sort of preferential hiring and not another, but claim that the rationale is to always get the most qualified candidate

Trace Oswald wrote:As far as your other example of the inner city doctor, you may make a valid point if it were implemented that way. That hasn't been my experience.

My experience with hiring, which is on a scale of a company of a few hundred, was that I never had 2 equal candidates. There was always something that made one person stand out and it was not their color or sex.

There are a lot of reasons why. Some folks may see their native town or state or the college they went to. For me, I always did prefer Veterans and I had the freedom to do so in the private sector.

But let's say I only wanted to hire white males, I would have the freedom to do so, as long as I never said that out loud, and the customer would have the freedom to use my services or not.

Christopher Weeks wrote:

Josh Hoffman wrote:However, I do not think DEI can be justified because Veteran preference exists. They have to be separate discussions because their merits are not the same.

Conveniently, I didn’t suggest anything remotely like that. I was merely pointing to a potential inconsistency if you favor one sort of preferential hiring and not another, but claim that the rationale is to always get the most qualified candidate

I did not intend to imply that you were doing that. I was reinforcing that they would need to be reviewed separately.

They do have in common that they are both in the preferential hiring category.

Judith, I just want to thank you for this wonderful post.  To you and all who answered all that I can say is Most Excellent !  You and I are most likely close in age and while we would not agree on a lot of things, we would agree on many.  I still want to show support for you, even if you are a big time "lib".

Sending out a big ole hug to you, stay strong in what you believe !

Peace ( and love and all those other hippy things  - Haaaaaaa )

Deane Adams wrote:Judith, I just want to thank you for this wonderful post.  To you and all who answered all that I can say is Most Excellent !  You and I are most likely close in age and while we would not agree on a lot of things, we would agree on many.  I still want to show support for you, even if you are a big time "lib".

Sending out a big ole hug to you, stay strong in what you believe !

Peace ( and love and all those other hippy things  - Haaaaaaa )

thank you!
These conversations are important to me because I sincerely believe that one on one most folks can communicate their needs and wants and expectations.

Paul has set a tone here that allows us to be who we are while respecting others who have different philosophical positions as well as different cultures.

I appreciate you Deane🌞

edit:
I admit to falling into the 'us and them' mode of judging groups of people and also stereotypes and labels.  This is helping me get past that and try to break away from that way of thinking.