Cineas says, "No, DEI isn't making airplanes fall apart"
Analyzing the article
Our Analysis: 4 Fallacies
Republicans have launched an ill-informed campaign to blame diversity policies for aircraft safety issues.
At the start of the month, the door plug of a Boeing 737 Max 9 blew off mid-flight, leaving a gaping hole on the side of the Alaska Airlines plane.
Over the weekend, another Boeing passenger jet's nose wheel fell off just before the Delta flight took off.
...right-wing pundits are claiming to have found the real source of the aviation industry's troubles: DEI, or diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives.
According to these commentators, airlines hired certain workers solely to meet diversity goals and sacrificed their commitments to safety and quality in the process...
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Among them was Elon Musk, who took to his platform X after the Alaska Airlines incident to ask, "Do you want to fly in an airplane where they prioritized DEI hiring over your safety? That is actually happening."
He added, "People will die due to DEI."
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Other users questioned whether Delta has "DEI quotas for their mechanics" and stated that "DEI practices are going to cause disasters" and that "DEI actually means DIE."
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Aviation experts have never cited DEI -- programs that organizations have widely adopted to increase representation among underrepresented groups -- as a cause of air safety problems. Various investigations point to a variety of other factors.
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Conservatives' growing critiques of diversity efforts illustrate how they have turned DEI into their culture war's newest bogeyman ahead of the 2024 general election.
In the way that critical race theory became a catch-all target in 2021, DEI is the right's new punching bag... 1 Underneath the attack on DEI are racist, sexist, and anti-gay ideas that women, people of color, and those in the LGBTQ+ community do not have the qualifications, skills, or intelligence to participate in society through jobs, education, leadership, and more.
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Racial and ethnic minorities make up 35 percent of engineers for commercial airlines, up from 32 percent in 2020. Women make up 17 percent of engineers at the company, up from 16.5 percent in 2020.
2 That these diversity efforts haven't led to a notable shift in the company's demographics casts doubt on the right-wing ideas that DEI is causing safety issues.
The connection being drawn between aviation troubles and DEI isn't new. Former 3 Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson shared this line of thinking a year ago.
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The anti-DEI movement plays into tropes about the inferiority of marginalized groups The moral panic surrounding DEI is the latest way that Republicans are undermining social justice progress.
Criticism of DEI has emerged from all corners of the political spectrum, but instead of trying to unpack the ways that DEI has gone astray and remains underfunded, 4 Republicans want to tear it down and suggest that policies that ignore race are the ideal.
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The attack on DEI 1 suggests that the marginalized groups these programs are supposed to help are undeserving of opportunities.
It also suggests that people from marginalized groups lack merit and that hiring or admitting them into certain spaces will worsen outcomes for society.
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Republicans have made it clear that they are only just getting started in their campaign to roll back the very slow progress the country has made in confronting systemic injustice.
- Ad hominem • The article attacks critics of DEI by claiming their views are based on beliefs about the inferiority of marginalized groups, and "racist, sexist, and anti-gay ideas." Rather than engage the substance of the criticism, this attacks the critics' motives and character.
- Hasty Generalization • The text argues that recent diversity efforts in the aviation industry haven't led to a notable shift in demographics, implying that the critics' concerns are unfounded. However, drawing conclusions based on a relatively short timeframe may be a hasty generalization.
- Guilt by association • The article associates all criticism of DEI programs with racist and anti-LGBTQ views, without adequately distinguishing between reasoned criticism and bigoted attacks. Just because some critics express bigoted views does not mean all criticism of DEI stems from those views.
- Strawman • The article states "Republicans want to tear [DEI] down and suggest that policies that ignore race are the ideal." This exaggerates the Republican position into an easily criticized strawman. Most mainstream Republicans are not arguing to completely eliminate DEI efforts.
References
- Fabiola Cineas (2024, Jan 25). No, DEI isn't making airplanes fall apart.
https://www.vox.com/politics/24049675/dei-boeing-airline-accidents-republicans-blame-diversity
Disclaimer
Note that there being one or more apparent fallacies in the arguments presented in this article does not mean that every argument the arguer made was fallacious, nor does it mean there are not other arguments in existence for the same or similar position that are logically valid. Also note that checking for fallacies is not the same as verification of the premises the arguer starts from, such as facts that the arguer asserts or principles that the arguer assumes as the foundation for constructing arguments. For more about this, see our 'What is Fallacy Checking?'
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