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The "woke" witchhunt turning on its own.
- Thread starter Father Heathen
- Start date
At least this might show some people that a lot of corporate DEI is rooted in PR and brand polishing rather than true concern for diversity or equity. Disney is a prime example of this with its preaching about diversity and tolerance while perpetuating some of the worst examples of exploitative corporate practices.
Clizby Wampuscat
Well-Known Member
It really depends on what they mean by DEI and how it is practiced. If they mean creating a work environment where everyone is valued then ok. I don't see Chik fil A promoting men as courageous women while ignoring actual courageous women yet like Bud Light.
Father Heathen
Veteran Member
Right. They also toss their commitment to diversity under the bus in less tolerant parts of the world.
Father Heathen
Veteran Member
The massive butthurt over the Bud Light thing is embarrassing, however given that most of their customer base were insular inbred rednecks, I suppose they should've expected the spectacle.
I can't entirely blame them for that, realistically. Such large-scale cultural and sociopolitical changes tend to take significant internal efforts and sometimes decades to happen. They're generally not going to happen just because Google or Facebook uses a rainbow as their profile picture for one month out of the year or because either corporation decides to break domestic laws overseas.
There are a lot of context-dependent situations where boycotts are necessary, of course, but in general, if companies only did business with people or countries they considered to have an ethical worldview, their business would be severely limited.
Bud Light didn't "promote men as courageous women," and labeling a trans woman as a man doesn't seem to me a productive start to a discussion about the issue. The company merely ran an ad campaign with a significantly popular influencer who happened to be trans. I haven't watched all of the ads involving Dylan Mulvaney, but what I've watched contained nothing that purported to represent all women or even touched much on gender.
I think a lot of the backlash was probably a function of the beliefs of many among the audience of Bud Light. They seem to be mostly conservative and rural Americans, so the worst I could say about the ad campaign was that it perhaps didn't read the audience correctly. That's more of a marketing thing than a political or ethical issue, though.
Koldo
Outstanding Member
But it is completely alright to have a severely limited business when you are a multimillionaire company that doesn't need to make ethically questionable business to survive.
No, they didn't even do that. All they did was send some personalized swag to a popular influencer. That is all they did. The did not produce an ad, they didn't put anything on tv, or in print, or in stores, no billboards, no displays, nothing.
Of course Dylan Mulvaney did her social media thing, as they knew she would. But the only people who saw any of that would be people who follow Dylan Mulvaney.
Is it also ethically questionable for large corporations to operate in Florida, Texas, Alabama, and other states with abortion bans and increasingly prevalent anti-LGBT legislation? Is it ethical for them to operate in the US to begin with when it has been one of the worst actors on the international stage for decades?
Where should we draw the line?
The question has to be asked -- especially now, in the face of DeSantis and his "anti-woke, anti-DEI" campaign orientation:
Does being "conservative" require that one despise diversity, equity, inclusion? Does it necessitate being averse to notions of justice?
I think the calls for a boycott from right-wing figures have also contributed to the controversy, since those calls could reach and probably resonate with millions of people even if they have never even heard of Dylan Mulvaney beyond knowing that she's trans.
At this point I would make a reference to the Streisand effect, but I think they are already boycotting Barbra Streisand.
You know, there might be a bit of truth in what you suggest (that DEI is rooted in PR), but does that really matter? Isn't a positive outcome still positive, even when the motive for the initiative may not be totally unself-serving? Canada's first bank, the Bank of Montreal, was among the first corporations to provide complete benefits to all of its employees and their spouses -- of whatever gender, colour, race or (I think) height. Most Canadian companies now do that -- even the little ones. The result is that many people going though life's ordinary difficulties are no longer burdens on the state (and thus the tax-payer) but are provided for by corporate (private) benefit plans.
What's more (and I can attest to this personally from having been directly involved), DEI and work principles are making companies re-think how they hire -- and that includes allowing hiring managers to see no personal information about candidates than the accomplishments on their resumes: not their names (which could indicate sex, race, country of origin), not marital information (which could hint at non-traditiional orientations). And they are abiding by them.
I grant, these efforts will never be perfect, because humans can't by their very nature be perfect. But I can't see any reason to let the inability to achieve perfection to stop us from at least trying to be better.
I generally support positive outcomes and initiatives even if they're done for the wrong reasons, but in the case of DEI, the fact that some corporations do it for cosmetic purposes has led them to overlook harmful biases and exclude them from DEI programs just because they support or benefit from said biases.
Silicon Valley in particular and the tech industry in general have long had issues with ageist discrimination despite proper qualification of many older job applicants and employees, yet DEI programs of many tech firms like Google and Facebook have barely scratched the surface of that problem. Why? Because those corporations intentionally perpetuate that specific form of discrimination.
This is from over a decade ago:
Special Report: Silicon Valley's dirty secret - age bias
When Randy Adams, 60, was looking for a chief-executive officer job in Silicon Valley last year, he got turned down from position after position that he thought he was going to nail — only to see much younger, less-experienced men win out.
And it's still ongoing:
Ageism is forcing many to look outside Silicon Valley, but tech hubs offer little respite
A tech firm's call to hire 'old people' highlights a troubling trend in Silicon Valley
"Unlike Silicon Valley, we do not discriminate based on age," the job listing reads. "Experience matters. We hire old people."
Silicon Valley Ageism Prompting Increase In Men Seeking Cosmetic Procedures
Ageism is becoming a growing problem in the male-dominated tech industry and some are finding creative ways around it.
www.cbsnews.com
I have said before that many liberals—especially neoliberals—favor style over substance when it comes to sociopolitical issues and critique. I would argue that corporate "liberals" who entrench discrimination while patting themselves on the back for superficial DEI initiatives fall within that category.
Callisto
Hellenismos, BTW
This absolutely was an advertisement, that was the purpose of making the cans. Dylan posted what is known as a partnership ad, a form of commercial that's emerged from the rise of social media. It was no less of a commercial than if Bud Light ran a radio spot or television ad. That was the point of Bud making the cans, their product is promoted to a potential new market via Dylan's x-million followers who are outside of Bud's consumer base. That's why she also mentioned that Bud Light was running a contest with a $15,000. cash prize and the post carried the hashtag #budlightpartner.
Father Heathen
Veteran Member
In the U.S., conservatism is conflated with Christian fundamentalism, or at the very least a nominal, hypocritical, cherry-picked semblance of it; alcohol, tattoos, greed, fornication, etc. are given a pass.
There is no rational, real world justification to oppose LGBT rights. It's purely hated, fear, and ignorance fueled by religious superstition.
We Never Know
No Slack
Its funny how others go on about people attacking/running them down but yet at the same time are constantly calling these people insular inbred rednecks.
That name calling and rundown is just as pointless and bad as any of it. Why stoop to their level and stay there?
IMO it makes someone no different than them.
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I am reminded of the story a couple weeks about about Fox News going woke.
Right-Wingers Furious That Fox News Doesn't Hate Trans People As Much As They Do
Fox News guilty of 'woke trans ideology,' according to right-wing influencers, because its employee handbook contains gender-affirming policies.
www.rollingstone.com
In reality all they were doing is obeying New York state law. (at least on paper).
But I strongly encourage right wingers to boycott Chic Fil a. and Fox News, and Bud lite, and Miller lite, and Disney, and Rebok, and Nike, and Keurig, and M&M's, and Starbucks, and ....
Well, as I said, as humans we'll never achieve perfection. But I continue to think it's not a bad thing to aim for, even if we don't ever get there.
Look, I come from an IT background: I have inventions that earned my companies millions of dollars. I was written up in IBM Solutions magazine twice (not bad, for a Canadian nobody). But guess what? At 75, I'm superannuated -- and frankly for good reason. As smart as I like to pretend I am, I can't keep up with the technology of today.
By the way, I have no doubt that there are 75 year-olds out there, smarter than me, who do keep up. And I get it -- their age (and little else) disqualifies them from contributing to technology.
But this is a truth of humanity. I say again, it would be great if we could work our way through that, too -- but I don't know how we'd achieve it. After all, those old profs in university, relying on their tenure to blather on about stuff the two-generation-difference audience has to listen to -- well, so long as they have tenure, how do you get younger people into their chairs? And those younger people might just have some damned fine ideas we ought to hear about.
But let's also consider this: the business of a corporation is to increase shareholder value, nothing else. That, too, is going to have an effect on where things go. For a while, companies that paid attention to DEI made more money. What will they do if enough conservatives say, "let's not shop at Chik-fil-A because they support ****?"