National Science Foundation (NSF) had offered $1.5 million to address structural vulnerabilities in Python and the Python Package Index (PyPI), but the Foundation quickly became dispirited with the terms of the grant it would have to follow.
“These terms included affirming the statement that we ‘do not, and will not during the term of this financial assistance award, operate any programs that advance or promote DEI [diversity, equity, and inclusion], or discriminatory equity ideology in violation of Federal anti-discrimination laws,’” Crary noted. “This restriction would apply not only to the security work directly funded by the grant, but to any and all activity of the PSF as a whole.”
Trump’s bullshit already violated those laws though. Repeatedly.
Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.
It’s a purchase of No DEI, not a donation.
How is it legal to basically say “We’ll give you some money if you promise to keep the blacks out of your organisation”
Because conservatives convinced people that DEI was literally about filling a quotas at the cost of competency, because “controlling the narrative”.
You frame it as “don’t discriminate based on skin color, as in don’t hire a black person because they’re black” while not saying any more of the quiet part out loud.
In a perfect world where nobody doing the hiring was ever even a little subconsciously racist, that would be perfectly reasonable, yeah.
Though that said we end up with a lot of nuance in the real world. Let’s say there’s a traditionally marginalised, opposed racial group. Let’s say times have changed somewhat and people suddenly accept them.
Well, the generational and cultural weight is still going to have a lasting effect even if times have changed, and it may be more difficult for people from that group to afford a good education, good job, good home, etc.
The point being that even if we all stopped being racist today and hired purely based on how good an employee someone will be, we’re likely still unknowingly skewing our decisions based on past social racial issues.
I’m probably not putting it very well but hopefully you get the idea! It’s probably pretty common knowledge anyway I guess haha, seems pretty obvious to me and I don’t even think about this stuff much :-)
Anyway, point is, we do still need to work as a society on ensuring diversity and fairness even when we’re not racist at all - I think the saying might be “Equity over Equality”, or such?
Obviously the USA Government are fascists, so they’re more interested in wiping out groups they don’t like, but they’re just another in a long line of evil governments that will eventually fall, no point thinking too deeply about why they’re being evil. They’ll eventually die off as all fascist regimes do. Hopefully we won’t have to fight a World War against them this time.
For context, I am an old white man engineer. I’ve worked in large and small companies over my career. Almost without fail, even with DEI policies in place, a non-white person or woman still had to be 10x more qualified than their white male counterparts to be hired. Once in the organization, they were generally put into some dead end role while far less qualified white men were advanced to higher positions. When I worked in the bible belt southeastern USA, you had the added factor of protestant christians ruling the roost too.
That’s depressing, but at least there were people like yourself who understood the backwards injustice of it all.
Some people and places have to be kicked and dragged into the modern day, alas.
Because Congress and the Supreme Court have been captured entirely by fascists.
“We’ll give you some money if you promise to keep the blacks out of your organisation”
I suppose that this would be against the other part, the one relative to the federal anti-discrimination laws.
I get that hiring practices should not discriminate, but in practice, what I have seen is the opposite of meritocracy. My company had many DEI hires, and they were the first to go when the money got tight.
I feel like you may not understand what DEI actually is. What, precisely, do you think a “DEI hire” is?
“DEI hire” has a different definition depending on whether you’re talking about design or implementation.
Design: Non-discriminatory hiring practices where race, gender, age, religion and disabilities are overlooked. You get hired purely on your ability to do the job. Appropriate disability supports are given if required.
Implementation: Cheap foreign labour obscured by marketing spin and a calendar of wokewashing. Applicants are hired based on a quota that in no way reflects the talent pool.
Neither of those are DEI.
I see his fully fleshed explanation, but I don’t see a counter? Not that I have any strong opinion, just curious what DEI actually means.
DEI isn’t intended to be “colorblind”, it explicitly suggests that employers give consideration to applicants from disparaged demographics, who may have otherwise been ignored during the application process. It doesn’t, however, imply hiring quotas; there is no such thing as “a DEI hire”.
Many people seem to confuse DEI for Affirmative Action, as evidenced above. This article explains the differences pretty succinctly: https://natlawreview.com/article/dei-diversity-equity-and-inclusion-v-affirmative-action-they-are-not-same
While Affirmative Action is often seen as a legal and policy-driven approach, DEI is more about cultural transformation and ongoing efforts to create a supportive and inclusive workplace. Both are crucial for building a fair and equitable society, but they operate on different levels and address different aspects of inequality. DEI initiatives, though can impact hiring, focus on the workplace and people in it. The intent is to embrace the collective, minimize bias and treat others in a respectful and understanding manner.
Also the “Implementation” part just sounds like what a really shitty company wound do, primarily trying to monetise on “DEI” … wtf.
Maybe they were the first to go because your company didn’t want them around no matter how skilled they might. It seems odd that all of them would be let go. That implies that your company decided to only hire incompetent people because of the color of their skin and refused to hire any minorities that were competent.
What meritocracy? A bunch of white dudes born into privilege that allows them the opportunities that the average person doesn’t have?
Discrimination in the name of anti-discrimination
Good for them, standing on principle 😁
what would happen if they took the money and didn’t comply?
the terms included a provision that if the PSF was found to have violated that anti-DEI diktat, the NSF reserved the right to claw back any previously disbursed funds
So even if they didn’t violate the anti-DEI, whoever controls the US gov could just decide to claw back money PSF already spent…
Yeah, this is one of those terrible ideas even if you thought that, in theory, you were onboard with ‘anti-DEI’.
Out of the blue the wrong person gets randomly pissed at you and invokes the highly subjective clause and suddenly you owe them $1.5M…
The way it’s written it’s impossible to know if you’re complying or not. They might have just said “don’t be woke” or “don’t piss us off”.
I think at this point it’s not about money, it’s about sending a message.
Who is the person downvoting the two comments in here???
I mean, votes are public in the fediverse. I wouldn’t try to read into the reasoning from a single downvoter too much though.
One downvote could be accidental. 2 downvotes in the same thread makes that seem less likely.
Downvoting/Upvoting doesn’t mean the same thing that it does for everyone. Some use it as an agree/disagree. Some use it for whether a comment is productive and adds to the conversation or not. Some use it as a visibility score whether they think a comment should be seen by others first or whether there are other comments that are better. Some may agree with most everything in a comment except for one part and then downvote because of that.
I thought the point of the system is to mark down out of context comments that doesn’t contribute to the post and not a I disagree button or super upvote.
That might be the point of the system but in reality it is definitely used for like/dislike. Someone says that they like Windows and/or dislike Linux and they are guaranteed to get downvotes.
Well, this isn’t exactly stackoverflow…!
It is rare for things to be out of context…Really, upvotes and downvotes are more or less… just… whatever made most people satisfied enough with a comment that they wanted to say they dis-/-liked it.
How do you see that?
Here is one place.
I’m an instance admin.
Checks his comment history
Seems like an okay dude. Might even be one of my alts gone rogue. Dunno why the downvote
Probably someone on the White House’s payroll who has a micropenis.
This isn’t the first time I’ve seen this meme; but what’s it from?
Batman Beyond. Takes place in a cyberpunk futuristic Gotham City, which feels like a natural direction that the crime ridden corrupt old city would transition into a new, technocorporate cyberpunk city full of crime.
There’s an often repeated theme in philosophy that any gift that comes with conditions is actually just business.
I would use the term extortion, but yup.
Oh for sure, Trumps business style is about extortion rather than collaboration. He has to win and they have to lose.
It baffles me that any business is prepared to get into bed with him. It’s practically a meme at this point that he screws everyone over and doesn’t pay his debts and with him now being president of the United States, there is zero chance you’ll be able to put a lien on him.
Even when it’s reverse? grants being conditional on DEI action has been a long time thing already
I’d say so. Yes
“getting bought” is more fitting imo.
And a nice little view behind the curtains how the fascists operate.
based Python.
This makes me love python (the programming language) even more.
I’m deeply proud of Python for standing by its community and making the right decision.
Thank God that this doesn’t prevent me from making anti DEI software using python.
Good on ya, Gents.
Fuck yes, Python.
