[XCabbage]

Uh, what?

There's no contradiction, or even tension, between these three positions:

1. "DEI is about taking jobs from white people and giving them to undeserving others"

2. "the deserving are spread across different races and genders etc. and we should capture that better"

3. "so the government just doesn't want people to discriminate and that's a problem???"

so what exactly are you trying to say?

[ksynwa]

How is there not a contradiction between 1 and 2? If 1 is true then the jobs are offered to non-white candidates who are undeserving. If 2 is true then the jobs are offered to non-white candidates who are deserving.

[XCabbage]

I don't understand what you're trying to say. It's obviously possible for the extremely weak claim made by statement 2 to be true (i.e. for some non-zero number of "deserving" nonwhites to exist and for existing hiring to not be a perfect meritocracy) in the same universe where the sort of programs typically labelled "DEI" tend to have anti-meritocratic effects. You seem to be suggesting that if competent nonwhites exist, then anything labelled DEI will automatically have the effect of causing orgs to hire more competent people, but... why? There's zero reason that should logically follow.