Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We need to make the case to the white working and middle classes that 50 years of affirmative action has NOT affected them at all. They are undereducated about what it really means and how it really works. We just need to improve our messaging. Trump has messed everything up, so now we’ll need to campaign on reinstating affirmative action. That takes more than advocacy, it takes education.

Do you really believe that. This article in Compact published just this week is provocative and evokes the worst fears of DEI efforts. Hard numbers quoted below:

https://www.compactmag.com/article/the-vanishing-white-male-writer/#:~:text=By%202021%2C%20there%20was%20not,featured%20were%20white%20American%20men).

By 2021, there was not one white male millennial on the “Notable Fiction” list. There were none again in 2022, and just one apiece in 2023 and 2024 (since 2021, just 2 of 72 millennials featured were white American men). There were no white male millennials featured in Vulture’s 2024 year-end fiction list, none in Vanity Fair’s, none in The Atlantic’s. Esquire, a magazine ostensibly geared towards male millennials, has featured 53 millennial fiction writers on its year-end book lists since 2020. Only one was a white American man.

Over the course of the 2010s, the literary pipeline for white men was effectively shut down. Between 2001 and 2011, six white men won the New York Public Library’s Young Lions prize for debut fiction. Since 2020, not a single white man has even been nominated (of 25 total nominations). The past decade has seen 70 finalists for the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize—with again, not a single straight white American millennial man. Of 14 millennial finalists for the National Book Award during that same time period, exactly zero are white men. The Wallace Stegner Fellowship at Stanford, a launching pad for young writers, currently has zero white male fiction and poetry fellows (of 25 fiction fellows since 2020, just one was a white man). Perhaps most astonishingly, not a single white American man born after 1984 has published a work of literary fiction in The New Yorker (at least 24, and probably closer to 30, younger millennials have been published in total).

Obviously, elite writing does not impact the working class, but numbers like these make it very easy to wonder/spin DEI as exclusionary.

Whole article is worth reading suggesting that some white writers have shifted due to this new “marketplace”.

I have read enough books with one dimensional female characters with anthropomorphic breasts for this lifetime. Point me to a great millennial white male writer who can write female characters as actual people, and I will check him out.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We need to make the case to the white working and middle classes that 50 years of affirmative action has NOT affected them at all. They are undereducated about what it really means and how it really works. We just need to improve our messaging. Trump has messed everything up, so now we’ll need to campaign on reinstating affirmative action. That takes more than advocacy, it takes education.

Do you really believe that. This article in Compact published just this week is provocative and evokes the worst fears of DEI efforts. Hard numbers quoted below:

https://www.compactmag.com/article/the-vanishing-white-male-writer/#:~:text=By%202021%2C%20there%20was%20not,featured%20were%20white%20American%20men).

By 2021, there was not one white male millennial on the “Notable Fiction” list. There were none again in 2022, and just one apiece in 2023 and 2024 (since 2021, just 2 of 72 millennials featured were white American men). There were no white male millennials featured in Vulture’s 2024 year-end fiction list, none in Vanity Fair’s, none in The Atlantic’s. Esquire, a magazine ostensibly geared towards male millennials, has featured 53 millennial fiction writers on its year-end book lists since 2020. Only one was a white American man.

Over the course of the 2010s, the literary pipeline for white men was effectively shut down. Between 2001 and 2011, six white men won the New York Public Library’s Young Lions prize for debut fiction. Since 2020, not a single white man has even been nominated (of 25 total nominations). The past decade has seen 70 finalists for the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize—with again, not a single straight white American millennial man. Of 14 millennial finalists for the National Book Award during that same time period, exactly zero are white men. The Wallace Stegner Fellowship at Stanford, a launching pad for young writers, currently has zero white male fiction and poetry fellows (of 25 fiction fellows since 2020, just one was a white man). Perhaps most astonishingly, not a single white American man born after 1984 has published a work of literary fiction in The New Yorker (at least 24, and probably closer to 30, younger millennials have been published in total).

Obviously, elite writing does not impact the working class, but numbers like these make it very easy to wonder/spin DEI as exclusionary.

Whole article is worth reading suggesting that some white writers have shifted due to this new “marketplace”.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Affirmative action initiatives more often help less qualified candidates beat out more qualified candidates. That’s just how it is, whether we want to admit it or not.

Got data for that? Because what the data does show is that two resumes with the exact same qualifications, experience, and education and the person with the name that is not clearly white is less likely to get selected. Similarly, women are less likely to get selected for executive roles with the exact same qualifications, experience, and expertise as men.

So again, tell me about “merit” and why affirmative action isn’t needed. Provide that data, please.

There is NO credible data or research to support the repeated MAGA claim that DEI or affirmative action systematically results in unqualified individuals being chosen over more qualified candidates. Instead, these policies aim to address historical inequities and ensure fair opportunities for underrepresented groups. And in fact the benefits of DEI and affirmative action have been found to outweigh the criticisms, which are far more based on perception than reality.

For example, studies have shown that diverse teams often perform better and that DEI initiatives can lead to more equitable hiring practices.

https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2023/05/17/diversity-equity-and-inclusion-in-the-workplace/

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Affirmative action initiatives more often help less qualified candidates beat out more qualified candidates. That’s just how it is, whether we want to admit it or not.

Got data for that? Because what the data does show is that two resumes with the exact same qualifications, experience, and education and the person with the name that is not clearly white is less likely to get selected. Similarly, women are less likely to get selected for executive roles with the exact same qualifications, experience, and expertise as men.

So again, tell me about “merit” and why affirmative action isn’t needed. Provide that data, please.