I indirectly realized what DEI was, realized a fundamental aspect of lefty thought, and that apparently I'm not a lefty.
The story starts with Gender Neutrality. A little while ago, the Trump Administration made military testing Gender Neutral and I watched as there was tons of opposition by the lemmy lefties. So, over the last few days, I dug more in to it and, sure enough, the vast majority of lemmy lefties are viciously against Gender Neutrality. Highly for gender Equality; but highly against gender Neutrality.
I came up with various iffy reasonings, like that Gender Neutrality is a removing of gender instead of respecting chosen genders; but meh. The interesting thing is what I noticed under the surface. The main reasoning for hate against the gender neutral military tests is that it was assumed they would be passed by a larger amount of males than females. This is where I started to realize DEI. The lefty approach is to manipulate the tests so women have easier tests and males have harder tests; thus resulting in a genderbalanced military.
So, in a job, same approach. If not 'enough' minorities are in a job, manipulate the variables so that there are more.
So what is this? The lefty way to create equality? Unbalance the playing field just right so there are equal amounts of different types of people? The cost of Equality, gained in this way, is removal of Neutrality (sexual and ethnic).
Anyway, this was a fascinating realization; and I had kept hearing about DEI and suddenly deeply understand it along with the fight against it. So what is the best approach?
My initial thought is that periods of DEI alternating with periods of not DEI seems best unless the culture is high in appreciation of diversity with a norm of naturally bringing in diverse types of people. The reason for alternating times of DEI and not DEI is so that the norm of diversity can be created through DEI, and then, through a period of notDEI, evolution can occur naturally without artificial forces. It's like training wheels. Without change, some people are blocked from where they want to be. So DEI it up to allow them to be where was previously blocked to them. But remove DEI every once in a while and see if that "norm of naturally bringing in diverse types of people" has arisen yet. If it has, the training wheels are no longer needed; because the goal is not to forever force people to 'do the right thing', but to have a culture where the norm is to naturally do it themselves.
Anyway, I naturally prefer Neutrality, which I realize now blocks the lefty ability to create Equality. Really is fascinating. Thoughts?
A large, large, factor in not wanting these jobs is also why these jobs are taken over by cheaper, migrant labor. Sure someone could get up on roof, with a nail gun, and do roofing all day. For the same money, and likely better benefits though, they could get an office job. The office job doesn't wear their bodies out by middle age, and they can work from home, or stay in a climate controlled building all day. So, over all, office job wins out. Now the construction yard has to seek out people with fewer possible opportunities to get laborers.
Then you also factor in more cultural stuff, like the fact that women report significantly higher rates of sexual harassment, and other forms of mistreatment, in construction work, why would women want to be on the construction yard? The population at large is far less willing if they don't feel like they have to, and they also get treated worse than other work sites?