Usually, when DEI or affirmative action come up, the left wing cope is that it's not discriminatory and is just levelling the playing field (however that is defined - even an explicit preference for "minorities" gets framed as levelling the playing field) so people who are not straight white men can get a job (it's weird how they could get jobs before all that, but anyway).
But what is the cope when straight white men are explicitly ruled out from consideration?
Here is an empirical investigation, based on a post shared on Only In Canada about Memorial University barring basically all straight white men from consideration for 5 job postings. I have looked at each poster defending this (of which there were 15 in total) and classified the copes in each person's comments (duplicate posts, i.e. the same type cope by the same poster, are not double counted).
I had seen many of these copes before, but some seemed new. Either way, examining them is a fascinating insight into left wing thinking:
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In descending order of frequency, we have:
1) Those who point out the problem are hateful, uneducated and/or whiny, or otherwise criticising OP in some way, i.e. attacking the messenger and not defending the discrimination (including doxxing one of the other commenters and harassing his wife): 9 people
Unsurprisingly, this was the most popular type of cope. It is far easier to not have to somehow justify explicit racism, sexism and heterophobia.
This suggests that at some level, left wingers know that they are being dishonest in defending their racism, sexism and heterophobia.
2) Equity is not discrimination or unfair as their staff are disproportionately white men: 4 people
This was the next most popular type of cope. It is left wing gospel that (straight) white men are disproportionately represented, so discrimination against them is always both good and justified.
Tellingly, none of the 4 attempted to empirically verify that Memorial University's staff are disproportionately white men.
Yet, according to the Memorial University Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Anti-Racism Strategic Planning Report: What We Heard and What We Learned (2024), they have "72% of employees identifying as white".
According to Statistics Canada, in 2021, almost 70% of the Canadian population reported being white. So technically white people are overrepresented at Memorial University, but not vastly.
Furthermore, Canada may not be the appropriate reference population. Memorial University is located in Newfoundland and Labrador, which is the whitest part of Canada. 96.6% of the province are "not a visible minority" and indigenous people are 9.3%, so white people are 87.3% of the population. So white people are actually disproportionately underrepresented at Memorial University, compared to the province.
Of course, a further cope might be that the desirable type of posts that straight white men are being barred from are still disproportionately white, but the 2024 report does not give such breakdowns.
And of course, this cope breaks down the moment (straight) white men are no longer disproportionately represented, and you need to move to another type of cope.
3) Explicit hatred for white men (including repeated incoherent posts about white people being albinos): 3 people
We know that left wingers hate straight people, white people and men, so white men and especially straight white men are especially hated. So the dropping of the mask, despite protestations, is unsurprising.
4) Justifying modern discrimination based on historic discrimination in the other direction: 3 people
I've never seen this argument fully fleshed out on any of the times it's trotted out, but it seems to be based on an unholy juxtaposition of inherited sin, group rights and the "an eye for an eye" mentality.
And ironically, this comes from the people who claim that the massive human rights violations that happened during covid happened a long time ago, so we should stop talking about them, and people who still do are losers (naturally, they still go on about how horrible chattel slavery and the transatlantic slave trade were).
5) This is diversity: 3 people
There was no elaboration on this point, but it seems "diversity" is taken to be an axiomatically good thing, so lots of bad things can be justified in pursuit of it.
6) It's approved by the authorities: 2 people
Apparently something that's legal and government-supported must be good.
Ironically, these are the same people who tell us apartheid, slavery and the Holocaust were legal, so legality is not a guide to morality.
7) Racism and sexism mean qualified minorities don't get the job, while incompetent straight white men do instead, so banning straight white men means you get better performance: 2 people
These people believe that there is still, on balance, massive hiring discrimination against "minorities", which is a very extreme claim.
Of course, this claim about discrimination was not justified by any evidence, much less given the context of academia, which is known to lean left.
Meanwhile, we do have some evidence that "minorities" are more likely to get hired in academia, including from:
Ceci & Williams (2015)
Ceci & Williams (2015) (2)
We can also see that in the US in 2023, women were overrepresented, at "54.5 percent of assistant professors, 58.6 percent of instructors, and 56.1 percent of lecturers".
Furthermore, the original claim is very strong - that incompetent straight white men get hired instead of competent minorities.
In what is probably the seminal paper on hiring discrimination, Bertrand & Mullainathan (2004) found a 2.39%-4ish% advantage for "white" applicants in callback rates vs "black" ones (with the best "white" candidates getting a 11ish% callback rate).
Questions of statistical discrimination (i.e. discrimination against black applicants because blacks on average are less qualified) and how not all black names are equally black (e.g. some "black" names are a lot more uniquely black than others, some "black" names are associated with the hood, some "black" names are given by uneducated mothers etc) aside, a what is at most 5% difference in callback rates does not seem to be equivalent to incompetent straight white men being hired instead of competent "minorities". If incompetent white men were really being hired all the time, you'd expect probably a callback rate of at least 50% (bearing in mind that a callback doesn't mean you'll be hired).
Furthermore, a newer paper, Kline et al (2022), found that "Distinctively Black names reduce the probability of employer contact by 2.1 percentage points relative to distinctively white names" (this was 12% lower odds of a callback) and that this discrimination was highly concentrated (i.e. most companies discriminated much less than this).
In addition, the same paper found that "the estimated average effect of sex is small and statistically insignificant.", i.e. there is no discrimination against women.
Furthermore, the difference in callback rates is less for other minorities.
Quillian et al. (2017) found that "Since 1989, whites receive on average 36% more callbacks than African Americans, and 24% more callbacks than Latinos". Meanwhile, Resumego (2019) found that "White Applicants received 55% more callbacks than Black applicants and 31% more callbacks than Asian applicants".
So the original claim about incompetent straight white men being hired over qualified minorities becomes even weaker.
Given the large body of evidence, this cope seems motivated (as all of them are) by animus against straight white men rather than reality.
8) This is equal opportunity: 1 person
This person clearly did not know what "equal opportunity" meant.
9) Banning straight white men ends an unfair advantage: 1 person
This is a weaker variant of 7, which I have already devoted extensive space to debunking. But it is interesting to note that in response to a slight alleged advantage, a total ban on the allegedly advantaged group is seen as "fairness" (presumably this rests on an equity consideration of fairness).
10) Straight white men are advantaged in society: 1 person
Apparently because straight white men are advantaged in general, they must be disadvantaged in hiring.
Presumably this revolves around some generalised cosmic idea of "fairness".
11) This does not materially affect white men: 1 person
Presumably, the claim is that discrimination is okay if it's on a small scale.
Naturally, we know that if the tables were turned, left wingers would not accept even small scale discrimination against their preferred groups.
Ironically, this comes from the people who believe that "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere" and "Nobody's free until everybody's free". Clearly, straight white men are exempt from all this.
12) Racial etc quotas are needed to appeal to customers who expect a certain demographic of employees: 1 person
Apparently discrimination is okay or good if your customers expect your employees to be of a non-white straight man demographic.
Of course, if customers wanted to interact with straight white men... good luck getting left wingers to endorse the same blanket, extreme discrimination against hiring other groups.
13) Denying that straight white men are banned (i.e. top tier cognitive dissonance): 1 person
This is either a failure of comprehension or (more likely) a petulant refusal to acknowledge the facts.
14) It doesn't matter because it doesn't adversely affect anyone because it's for current employees and straight white men probably earn more in their current roles already: 1 person
Again, this is just false.
The 5 positions that straight white men are banned from applying for are:
a) Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in AI-driven Navigation for Arctic and Harsh Environments
b) Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Computational Biochemistry
c) Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Musculoskeletal Health and Genomic Map of the Newfoundland and Labrador Population
d) Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Knowledge, Youth and Digital Technology
e) Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Community Health and Substance Use Research
These are all Canada Research Chair positions, which Memorial University describes as established "in order to enable Canadian universities to achieve the highest levels of research excellence for the benefit of all Canadians".
A Tier 2 Canada Research Chair makes $100,000 annually. Meanwhile, a Tier 1 one makes $200,000. This compares to an average salary of $82,930 per year for an assistant professor. Postdoctoral fellows earn even less, at $46,432 per year.
So we can see that left wingers just keep on lying to try and manifest reality.
15) It can be okay depending on the positions and how they're funded, e.g. Indigenous people have the right to prioritise Indigenous people: 1 person
This argument seems to be that those who fund jobs have the right to decide who gets them.
Canada Research Chair funding comes from the federal government. They do not explicitly ban straight white men, though they do have extensive quotas: "racialized individuals 22%, Indigenous Peoples 4.9%, persons with disabilities 7.5%, and women and gender equity-seeking groups 50.9%".
Admittedly, we can't rule out the federal government telling Memorial University, sotto voce, that these 5 Canada Research Chair positions cannot be open to straight white men, but this seems very unlikely given the "progress" they have made towards meeting the quotas.
Furthermore, this argument would not be accepted for all groups. For example, if an outside benefactor wanted to fund a position only open to straight white men, this would not be accepted.
16) More positions are open to everyone than restricted so this means nothing: 1 person
This is a variant of cope 11).
17) Diversity is more important than getting the best person for the job: 1 person
As with 5), if "diversity" is held to be such an axiomatically good thing that lots of bad things can be justified in pursuit of it, one can't really argue against it, but then this comes down to competing values. Someone else could hold that privileging straight white men was a good thing, and one wouldn't be able to argue against it either.
18) Straight white men can be disabled so this isn't discrimination against Straight white men: 1 person
This is a silly argument.
Disabled straight white men are a small proportion of straight white men, and just because someone can qualify based on one aspect does not mean he isn't being discriminated against on other aspects.
If I refuse to hire black people for a job - but I would make an exception for my black neighbour, does this mean I am not discriminating against black people?
This "argument" would not be acceptable if applied to any other group, of course.
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With this extensive survey of copes, I've pretty much covered all the common copes for explicit and absolute discrimination against straight white men in hiring. I'm sure more can be found, but in my experience these are most of them.
