Originally Posted by
exochaft
Unfortunately, I think the concept of "diversity hires" is one of those things that's best described by the saying, "The road to Hell is paved with good intentions." It's similar to Affirmative Action in a way, where the end result is just fighting racism using racism. Ultimately, the question that should be asked is why are you doing such an action and is the action itself part of the problem. I've seen the arguments that it's for having more diverse experiences and opinions/perspectives, but that's assuming that just because my skin is a certain color or I have certain genitalia between my legs, I'm a monolith with anyone who has those same physical properties... also, when you delve into the minutia and supposed explanations, it's basically just 'socially accepted racism/sexism/etc.' at the end of the day. If you're hiring based upon someone's race, religion, gender, etc., that's probably a problem (unless the job specifically needs one of those things).
Despite some of the posts I've seen, the main thing that will gain the trust of the customers back has nothing to do with the social stuff... it's the products. I'm sure there's a bunch of people in this thread who have iPhones, Nikes, etc., and it's no secret the social stances and conditions in which these products are made, yet people are happy to be loyal customers. While some people will make a stand based on social issues, realize that you are in the vast minority. At the end of the day, most customers do not care what the employees are doing to each other or what the employees are subjected to in terms of working conditions. Customers want the products they paid for, and the only time they may care about the social stuff is if they see a direct link to said stuff and them not getting the product they want, when they want, for the price they want.
This isn't to dissuade people to make decisions based upon their morality, quite the opposite actually. If you don't want to be a customer to a company that you think does something immoral, that's absolutely fine. That being said, it's getting sliiiightly hard to do so when companies keep merging and businesses become larger conglomerates or essentially monopolies. Making a moral stand is much easier when there's a viable alternative, and it's much harder when there's no alternate. Such is the way of humanity, and all of us are guilty of looking the other way on some level just to get the result we want.
I could put this in a more philosophical perspective as to demonstrate why there's a rift in people about this topic, and it's about what people fundamentally believe. If you believe that humans are fundamentally good, you will likely believe that things such as forced diversity hiring is a good thing (as it's ultimately about external factors being evil, not the humans). If you believe that humans are fundamentally flawed/broken, you'll likely believe that things such as forced diversity hiring are just the same evil as it's trying to replace, leading to the same outcome that you're trying to fix (as it's ultimately about humans being humans, and the external factors are just exposing what was already there).