EDI is inextricably tied to racial demographics. Changing it to one that’s purely related to financial economic demographics is a fundamental change to all those programs and their implementations, and would likely fail / face significant headwinds from established EDI proponents. There are also components of EDI such as representing different cultural backgrounds / upbringings, that wouldn’t get captured in a purely economic implementation – so I really don’t think you’d be talking EDI anymore if you went that route.
Admittedly, EDI being so tied to race stuff is one reason there’s such pushback. Many white men in the current generation, have been told for the past few decades during hiring interviews “You’re cut because you identified as a white male”, because there are too many old white men still at the company / government offices. While it may be true there are systemic hidden racist things going on, that interaction at a personal/individual level is pretty overtly discriminating against hiring the individual due to their race/gender… things we’re all meant to be shielded from. And while there are legal recourses for the former ‘hidden’ things if you can prove them, even an overtly stated “No because you’re a white man” is not considered racist/discriminatory by our govt. In fact our govt will straight up say that to people itself. First time I heard it from the feds was back around 2005ish – so yes, we’re literally talking about generations of men having gone through this, and when I speak to peers we all seem to have a story or two about it.
I’d argue that EDI isn’t really about fairness between individuals, and never was really. A second or third generation asian trust-fund kid in Vancouver is given preferential hiring for government work, compared to a working class new immigrant with more qualifications from eastern europe, based solely on race/gender – and it’s been done that way intentionally for political reasons. Canada’s population growth is almost entirely tied to immigration in categories that fall into the EDI spectrum – our government even took pains to separate out each different sub-culture of asian recently, to ensure they’d all continue to qualify for extra benefits. By providing custom programs/benefits to those demographics, it improves progressive party chances at the polls, since those demographics are the only ones ‘growing’ in Canada by % – locals tend to have far fewer kids, outside of one demographic group (FN). At this point, outside of a “Trump style Pierre Pollievre destroying an absurd amount of our social network”, it’s highly unlikely that any of these parties/groups would willingly give up their benefits, even when confronted by data/stats (statscan’s come out and noted that White Men are one of the least educated groups at this point, but we still disadvantage them in terms of scholarships/bursaries etc). It’s just not “in their best interests” as a demographic slice, and no ‘progressive’ party will be willing to make those sorts of compromises as it’d erode their voter base.
Besides, every political movement needs a bad guy. For right-wing facists, that bad guy is currently “lgbtq+, visible minorities, poor people”, and for progressives it’s generally “white men”. Heck, I still remember AOC’s pitch to white guys in one of her online campaign blurbs, being all “Vote in the best interests of the women in your lives” … cause she tacitly recognised that the platform the dems had put out at the time had spent 0 effort tryin to appeal to the young male/white male demographic, while being chalk full of promises/commitments to every other demographic. Pretty sure their next round will be more of the same, paired with “look what trump did” guilting.
EDI is inextricably tied to racial demographics. Changing it to one that’s purely related to financial economic demographics is a fundamental change to all those programs and their implementations, and would likely fail / face significant headwinds from established EDI proponents. There are also components of EDI such as representing different cultural backgrounds / upbringings, that wouldn’t get captured in a purely economic implementation – so I really don’t think you’d be talking EDI anymore if you went that route.
Admittedly, EDI being so tied to race stuff is one reason there’s such pushback. Many white men in the current generation, have been told for the past few decades during hiring interviews “You’re cut because you identified as a white male”, because there are too many old white men still at the company / government offices. While it may be true there are systemic hidden racist things going on, that interaction at a personal/individual level is pretty overtly discriminating against hiring the individual due to their race/gender… things we’re all meant to be shielded from. And while there are legal recourses for the former ‘hidden’ things if you can prove them, even an overtly stated “No because you’re a white man” is not considered racist/discriminatory by our govt. In fact our govt will straight up say that to people itself. First time I heard it from the feds was back around 2005ish – so yes, we’re literally talking about generations of men having gone through this, and when I speak to peers we all seem to have a story or two about it.
I’d argue that EDI isn’t really about fairness between individuals, and never was really. A second or third generation asian trust-fund kid in Vancouver is given preferential hiring for government work, compared to a working class new immigrant with more qualifications from eastern europe, based solely on race/gender – and it’s been done that way intentionally for political reasons. Canada’s population growth is almost entirely tied to immigration in categories that fall into the EDI spectrum – our government even took pains to separate out each different sub-culture of asian recently, to ensure they’d all continue to qualify for extra benefits. By providing custom programs/benefits to those demographics, it improves progressive party chances at the polls, since those demographics are the only ones ‘growing’ in Canada by % – locals tend to have far fewer kids, outside of one demographic group (FN). At this point, outside of a “Trump style Pierre Pollievre destroying an absurd amount of our social network”, it’s highly unlikely that any of these parties/groups would willingly give up their benefits, even when confronted by data/stats (statscan’s come out and noted that White Men are one of the least educated groups at this point, but we still disadvantage them in terms of scholarships/bursaries etc). It’s just not “in their best interests” as a demographic slice, and no ‘progressive’ party will be willing to make those sorts of compromises as it’d erode their voter base.
Besides, every political movement needs a bad guy. For right-wing facists, that bad guy is currently “lgbtq+, visible minorities, poor people”, and for progressives it’s generally “white men”. Heck, I still remember AOC’s pitch to white guys in one of her online campaign blurbs, being all “Vote in the best interests of the women in your lives” … cause she tacitly recognised that the platform the dems had put out at the time had spent 0 effort tryin to appeal to the young male/white male demographic, while being chalk full of promises/commitments to every other demographic. Pretty sure their next round will be more of the same, paired with “look what trump did” guilting.