And it looks like the baby has gone out with the bathwater. Sure, if DEI is out of vogue, then get rid of the DEI language. Stop talking about “alienating” users. Remove the trauma language. But the actual actionable parts seem like they could be written in rather uncontentious ways, e.g.:
Don’t require users to enter addresses in specific formats that are not consistent with the addresses of actual Americans. For that matter, don’t require addresses from people who may not have a well defined address, e.g. people displaced by disasters.
Avoid requiring people to choose “Mr.” or “Ms.”. Many Americans prefer a different title or none at all. [I’ve met plenty of cis women who prefer a specific form that isn’t in that list.]
Offer multiple languages.
Allow long forms to be completed in multiple sessions.
— - -
And, frankly, if I were making a website, I would rather see what I’m supposed do and not do rather than scrolling through a long list that seems to consist of less actual content than motivating text that could easily be seen as somewhat partisan moralizing.
Is there a word for "people largely agree with a thing when you don't mention its contentious name?" I look forward to its more patriotic replacement "All Americans" where AA hiring practices involve not just hiring from those hippy liberal colleges and including disadvanta… err um hard working communities who have boots on the ground experience! Not just those ivory tower elites but people who didn't have access… err didn't get brainwashed by college professors pushing the liberal agenda!
> disadvanta… err um hard working communities who have boots on the ground experience!
You may jest, but this is a serious point. I think I would much rather be accommodated without comment or with respect than be accommodated as a “disadvantaged” person or a person suffering from “trauma”.
On a somewhat related note, could you all please stop asking me to select my race out of a dropdown of boxes, none of which actually match how I think of myself, and also whether, if I said “white” I actually meant “Hispanic”? This is (a) generally none of your business, (b) kind of offensive, (c) thoroughly fails to capture the racial/ethnic identity of a whole lot of people, making it rather less useful even for statistical purposes than you might like to imagine. (Did whoever made this list realize that mixed people exist and are actually very very common? And that people who are quite unmixed but don’t fit any of the categories well are also common. Or that, especially for medical genetic purposes, there are all manner of useful questions one could ask about someone’s ancestry, of which basically none are captured by the list?)
The choices for race, sex, etc. self-identification are usually mandated by the government service that is requesting the data. For example, the EEOC defines [1] the racial categories for the form your employer asks you to fill out. Your employer is required to report the demographics of its employees using the prescribed categories. It is preferred that the employee volunteers this information themselves, but they cannot provide an arbitrary self-description.
These are the kinds of inclusivity improvements that DEI programs were trying to popularize, IMO.
Increased racial diversity wasn't the only goal of the movement but it's the one that lead us to this PR.
To me, this "woke ban" is like the tech industry banning DevOps because some devs REALLY don't want to use Kubernetes. Or banning agile because a minority feels strongly that story points are unrealistic.
> Increased racial diversity wasn't the only goal of the movement but it's the one that lead us to this PR.
Is it? If you look at the deleted text, you’ll find gender identity, stress, trauma, and a whole lot of verbiage in general. And, while I don’t object to the actual actionable suggestions I found in this document, it’s not so hard to see how this attitude to DEI alienates a lot of people. For example:
- I know someone who teaches a law class and has struggled to get approval to discuss and test “triggering” topics in family law. I expect most people think that classes should be able to teach their actual subject matter without this kind of bureaucracy in the way.
- Anyone who has applied for an NSF grant needs to discuss “broader impacts”. I think there’s a fair amount of consensus that it’s utter nonsense.
- Gender identity issues can be genuinely uncomfortable. Gender identity issues in sports can be extra uncomfortable. Maybe one side of the political spectrum is over the top in disliking trans rights, but perhaps the other side should acknowledge that having people with penises in women’s locker rooms would make a lot of people extremely uncomfortable.
- Have you seen some of the more egregious lists, produced by DEI offices, of words and phrases that should be banned? Maybe 1% of the contents are on point. Maybe 30% are so outrageous that it makes one question the entire process.
- There are plenty of highly questionable investigations by Title IX offices. Some are utterly outrageous. The overall process seems rather dubious, especially in the context of the US constitution.
I think the forces that pushed for all this stuff in the first place should engage in a bit of self-reflection, at least to the extent of trying to understand how they might rub people the wrong way.
If you think this is actually about curbing DEI overreach, you’re missing the point. "DEI" and "woke" are just "CRT" in new packaging, i.e. pithy buzzwords used to activate right-wing rage about uppity/crazy/Marxist liberals and restore white, male, Evangelical cultural supremacy.
> Avoid requiring people to choose “Mr.” or “Ms.”. Many Americans prefer a different title or none at all.
This goes against 1950s style family values that Republicans prefer.
> Offer multiple languages.
This makes things more accessible to immigrants and people of color. Expect things in English only from here on out.
> For that matter, don’t require addresses from people who may not have a well defined address, e.g. people displaced by disasters.
Republicans tend to view the unhoused and destitute as a drain on resources. See prosperity gospel, etc.
In other words, DEI or not, removing all this content feels completely on brand.
Ah yes, removing such awful wokeness as “making forms easy to complete, even in times of stress” and “waiting for a clear directive to collect personal data”.
Much of the actual meat appears to be the deletion of this:
https://github.com/uswds/uswds-site/blob/086f98d7e1888854506...
And it looks like the baby has gone out with the bathwater. Sure, if DEI is out of vogue, then get rid of the DEI language. Stop talking about “alienating” users. Remove the trauma language. But the actual actionable parts seem like they could be written in rather uncontentious ways, e.g.:
Don’t require users to enter addresses in specific formats that are not consistent with the addresses of actual Americans. For that matter, don’t require addresses from people who may not have a well defined address, e.g. people displaced by disasters.
Avoid requiring people to choose “Mr.” or “Ms.”. Many Americans prefer a different title or none at all. [I’ve met plenty of cis women who prefer a specific form that isn’t in that list.]
Offer multiple languages.
Allow long forms to be completed in multiple sessions.
— - -
And, frankly, if I were making a website, I would rather see what I’m supposed do and not do rather than scrolling through a long list that seems to consist of less actual content than motivating text that could easily be seen as somewhat partisan moralizing.
Is there a word for "people largely agree with a thing when you don't mention its contentious name?" I look forward to its more patriotic replacement "All Americans" where AA hiring practices involve not just hiring from those hippy liberal colleges and including disadvanta… err um hard working communities who have boots on the ground experience! Not just those ivory tower elites but people who didn't have access… err didn't get brainwashed by college professors pushing the liberal agenda!
> disadvanta… err um hard working communities who have boots on the ground experience!
You may jest, but this is a serious point. I think I would much rather be accommodated without comment or with respect than be accommodated as a “disadvantaged” person or a person suffering from “trauma”.
On a somewhat related note, could you all please stop asking me to select my race out of a dropdown of boxes, none of which actually match how I think of myself, and also whether, if I said “white” I actually meant “Hispanic”? This is (a) generally none of your business, (b) kind of offensive, (c) thoroughly fails to capture the racial/ethnic identity of a whole lot of people, making it rather less useful even for statistical purposes than you might like to imagine. (Did whoever made this list realize that mixed people exist and are actually very very common? And that people who are quite unmixed but don’t fit any of the categories well are also common. Or that, especially for medical genetic purposes, there are all manner of useful questions one could ask about someone’s ancestry, of which basically none are captured by the list?)
The choices for race, sex, etc. self-identification are usually mandated by the government service that is requesting the data. For example, the EEOC defines [1] the racial categories for the form your employer asks you to fill out. Your employer is required to report the demographics of its employees using the prescribed categories. It is preferred that the employee volunteers this information themselves, but they cannot provide an arbitrary self-description.
[1]: https://eeocdata.org/pdfs/2023_EEO_1_Component_1_Instruction...
The categories seem to here:
https://eeocdata.org/pdfs/DEFINITIONS_OF_RACE_AND_ETHNICITY_...
Sigh. So many things are confused and conflated in those definitions.
These are the kinds of inclusivity improvements that DEI programs were trying to popularize, IMO.
Increased racial diversity wasn't the only goal of the movement but it's the one that lead us to this PR.
To me, this "woke ban" is like the tech industry banning DevOps because some devs REALLY don't want to use Kubernetes. Or banning agile because a minority feels strongly that story points are unrealistic.
> Increased racial diversity wasn't the only goal of the movement but it's the one that lead us to this PR.
Is it? If you look at the deleted text, you’ll find gender identity, stress, trauma, and a whole lot of verbiage in general. And, while I don’t object to the actual actionable suggestions I found in this document, it’s not so hard to see how this attitude to DEI alienates a lot of people. For example:
- I know someone who teaches a law class and has struggled to get approval to discuss and test “triggering” topics in family law. I expect most people think that classes should be able to teach their actual subject matter without this kind of bureaucracy in the way.
- Anyone who has applied for an NSF grant needs to discuss “broader impacts”. I think there’s a fair amount of consensus that it’s utter nonsense.
- Gender identity issues can be genuinely uncomfortable. Gender identity issues in sports can be extra uncomfortable. Maybe one side of the political spectrum is over the top in disliking trans rights, but perhaps the other side should acknowledge that having people with penises in women’s locker rooms would make a lot of people extremely uncomfortable.
- Have you seen some of the more egregious lists, produced by DEI offices, of words and phrases that should be banned? Maybe 1% of the contents are on point. Maybe 30% are so outrageous that it makes one question the entire process.
- There are plenty of highly questionable investigations by Title IX offices. Some are utterly outrageous. The overall process seems rather dubious, especially in the context of the US constitution.
I think the forces that pushed for all this stuff in the first place should engage in a bit of self-reflection, at least to the extent of trying to understand how they might rub people the wrong way.
If you think this is actually about curbing DEI overreach, you’re missing the point. "DEI" and "woke" are just "CRT" in new packaging, i.e. pithy buzzwords used to activate right-wing rage about uppity/crazy/Marxist liberals and restore white, male, Evangelical cultural supremacy.
> Avoid requiring people to choose “Mr.” or “Ms.”. Many Americans prefer a different title or none at all.
This goes against 1950s style family values that Republicans prefer.
> Offer multiple languages.
This makes things more accessible to immigrants and people of color. Expect things in English only from here on out.
> For that matter, don’t require addresses from people who may not have a well defined address, e.g. people displaced by disasters.
Republicans tend to view the unhoused and destitute as a drain on resources. See prosperity gospel, etc.
In other words, DEI or not, removing all this content feels completely on brand.
at least it's under version control. Not completely removed. Would be a bit grim if it was forced to be erased from history
Well, this administration has a definite penchant for rewriting history and using force to push into other branches.
Hopefully they won't try doing it with git repositories too.
FOX News quoted the President as saying today "We need brilliant people"... but not transgenders.
It reminds me of a WW2 headline from The Onion: Women, Negroes Momentarily Useful
If theycouldunderstandgittgeywould
> [they can't understand git]
So, uh, I'm afraid I have real bad news about some of your co-workers... :p
Ah yes, removing such awful wokeness as “making forms easy to complete, even in times of stress” and “waiting for a clear directive to collect personal data”.
[flagged]