[driveway]

Originally Posted by Lanny_McDonald

Wow, now I'm a victim blamer. It is amazing how quickly you can get labelled for trying to explain a position that is counter to the minority and explain why something may not be the way the minority perceives it. Really getting tired of being labeled as something I am clearly not just because one person does not like the terms or explanation put forward.

You may not think of yourself as "a victim blamer" but it is what you did. Your comment placed the responsibility for current acts of bigotry directly upon those people who are themselves the victims of that bigotry, this is exactly what victim-blaming is, if you can present a different definition of victim blaming, by all means present it.

And yes, many DEI programs are forced. When institutions have a requirement to adopt a DEI Officer to maintain accreditation, that is forced. When you a mandatory requirement to use or enforce the usage of terms, that is forced. When a program is the result of political pressure rather than operational efficiency, that is forced.

Operational efficiency? I'm having trouble following your line of thinking here. Are you stating that businesses and organizations should only adopt DEIJ policies and programs when they believe those policies and programs will enhance the 'bottom-line'? (whether that be profit or, say for an educational institution, quality of instruction)

Furthermore, how, other than through political pressure, do you suggest marginalized and oppressed groups make their needs known to those with power?

What you seem to forget is that justice is represented by balance. When you provide special treatment to one group and introduce specific ways that you have to treat that group, you affect the balance of the scales. It is why I stated these things must evolve organically so balance is maintained. When a thumb is kept on the scale the outcome is never just and never one to be broadly accepted. You may not like the schedule at which the adoption takes place, but the natural adoption is more permanent than the one where people feel the oppressive hand of regulation on their shoulder. When you regulate to provide for the minority you can make victims out of the majority.

On August 25, 1963, three days before the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, Martin Luther King Jr. and Roy Wilkins - Executive Secretary of the NAACP - appeared on NBC's Meet the Press.

...Richard Wilson of Cowles Newspaper Publications said to King that some felt he was “pushing too far too fast.”

“I don’t agree,” King said calmly. “The Negro has been extremely patient for our God-given rights. We are at the bottom of the economic ladder. We are the victims of segregation.” The march, King said, would “help not only the Negro cause, but the rest of the nation.”

Wilson asked whether “moderation” wouldn’t be a better path.

“If moderation means moving to justice, then…we must pursue it,” King said. “But if it means capitulation, it would be immoral.”

Spivak, the creator of Meet the Press asked whether it would not be better for Negroes to be given “time to digest” what they had already achieved rather than push for new laws now.

Wilkins replied: “It is incumbent on the Negro population to keep asking for more. They have been deprived so long. We cannot [reduce] the pressure for the end of evil.”

Many white people, even well-meaning ones, were not used to hearing such terms. They thought the civil rights movement was a fight to sit at the same soda fountains as whites. Now they were being told it was a struggle against evil. And they might be the evil ones.

source: https://www.politico.com/story/2013/...t-right-095919