[pocket_cheese]

Fortune 500s are laughably insincere and hamfisted in how they do DEI. But these types of comments feel like schadenfreude towards the "woke moralist mind-virus"

But lets be real here ... DEI is a good thing when done well. How are you going to talk to the customer when they are speaking a different cultural language. Even form a purely capitalist perspective, having a diverse workforce means you can target more market segments with higher precision and accuracy.

[FirmwareBurner]

Nobody's is against diversity when done right and fairly. But that's not what Disney or Google is doing. They're forcing their own warped version of diversity and you have no choice to refuse, but if you do speak up then you're racist.

Blade was a black main character over 20 years ago and it was a hit. Beverly Hills Cop also had a black main character 40 years ago and was also a hit. The movie Hackers from 30 years ago had LGBT and gender fluid characters and it was also a hit.

But what Disney and Google took from this is that now absolutely everything should be forcibly diverse, LGBTQ and gender fluid, whether the story needs it or not, otherwise it's racist. And that's where people have a problem.

Nobody has problems seeing new black characters on screen, but a lot of people will see a problem in back vikings for example which is what Gemini was spitting out.

And if we go the forced diversity route for the sake of modern diversity argument, why is Google Gemini only replacing traditional white roles like vikings with diverse races, but never others like Zulu warriors or Samurais with whites? Google's anti-white racism is clear as daylight, and somehow that's OK because diversity?

[pocket_cheese]

Not trying to be combative - but you do have a choice to refuse. To me, it seems like they wanted to add diversity to account for bias and failed hilariously. It also sounds like this wasn't intended behavior and are probably going to rebalance it.

Now, should Google be mocked for their DEI? ABSOLUTELY. They are literally one of the least diverse places to work for. They publish a report and it transcends satire. It's so atrociously bad it's funny. Especially when you see a linkedin job post for working at google, and the thumbnail looks like a college marketing brochure with all walks of people represented.

[jakeinspace]

In the case of Disney, how much of the frustration comes from the fact that their entire success was built on “borrowing” European folk tales? So that now when they lazily remake those same stories with non-white casting, it causes an uproar? I’m not saying that they shouldn’t be focussing more on actually storytelling over DEI, but I also don’t think white people get as upset over movies based on non-white source material, or created whole-cloth.

[gitaarik]

So we need commercial insentive to be diversity accepting? I think it should just not matter where you are from, what your background is. We should be treated to our skills. If your skills are not required, people shouldn't have to hire you because of DEI reasons.

[8note]

"done well" is really hard to define, and its also very hard to attribute back to one thing when you do have success.

Did you get the sale with the customer because you invested in DEI? Or because you made something they want by accident?

Customers can also talk in different languages, and as a result of historic oppression, minorities tend to be able to code shift. Assuming your potential customers are unable to become customers because of their limitations might not be right

[chucke1992]

DEI should grow naturally.

[zdbrandon]

That's a bit like saying that if you want to sail from Europe to America, you should jump in a boat and let the wind take you there naturally. Don't touch the sails.

The entire hypothesis behind a formal DEI program -- whether or not you agree with it -- is that DEI doesn't happen naturally. Humans tend to gravitate toward (I.E. hire) people similar to themselves for various reasons, and that has to be purposely shifted if the organization is aiming for diversity. If they don't care where they end up, that's a different story.