Billie Eilish joined Bad Bunny in speaking out against ICE during her acceptance speech at the Grammy Awards, slamming the organization after winning song of the year for “Wildflower.”
The singer was bleeped as she said “fuck ICE,” giving strong commentary during the speech. “Thank you so much. I can’t believe this. Everyone else in this category is so amazing. I love you so much,” she said, standing next to her brother Finneas. “I feel so honored every time I get to be in this room. As grateful as I feel, I honestly don’t feel like I need to say anything but that no one is illegal on stolen land. And, yeah, it’s just really hard to know what to say and what to do right now, and I feel really hopeful in this room, and I feel like we just need to keep fighting and speaking up and protesting, and our voices really do matter, and the people matter, and fuck ICE. That’s all I’m going to say. Sorry. Thank you so much.”
DEI tends to encourage the hiring of diverse people because they have been historically underrepresented due to past policies and systemic injustices. One could argue DEI is people making choices due to the behavior of people from previous generations. It seems at odds to support that and not acknowledge some concept of debt owed to people wronged by society in the past.
Also, DEI is not about lowering standards. It’s a pretty common dog whistle to suggest that corpos pick less qualified candidates because of DEI. I’m not suggesting you intended it that way, but going forward it’s good to keep that in mind.