It’s difficult to prove, not impossible. To begin with some people aren’t that subtle and leave evidences or witnesses. Other people might also denounce them. A method that is fine with me, and has recently been allowed as evidence in French courts (don’t know about other countries) is “testing”. For instance, send a nice black, well-dressed, couple to a club. If they aren’t let in (too many people in already, whatever), send a similar nice, well dressed white couple. If those are let in, rinse and repeat. Do the whole thing with a sworn in witness (don’t know if you have those in anglo-saxon countries but I guess you could find some equivalent). If there’s a clear pattern, go to court.
Generally, since discrimination is difficult to prove, I favor heavy punishments for it. Even if they aren’t themselves racists, business owners (a club in my example, but it might be a house rental business, for instance) can have strong incentives to discriminate (people might not want to come in a club with too many “arabs” or someone might not afford to lose the business of a prejudiced landlord) and the risk of being caught is very low. So, those incentives should pale in comparison with the consequences of being caught.
For instance, the culprit could be barred from operating a business for a very long time, a massive fine be levied on the business, and the specific person or people who discriminated (the house rental business owner/operator/employee as well as the racist landlord) send to do some comparative race behavioral studies behind walls and bars. The sought after result being to hear your typical agent saying : “Hmmm…Sir, I’d rather have you bring your business to my competitor on the other side of the street”
Note that on the other hand I’m strongly opposed to positive discrimination.
I’m not sure what you mean by “raise the possibility.” Given the hypothesis in the original post, it’s completely within the range of normal expectations if there is no discrimination.
And the bottom line question is what society should do in such a situation. Should the employer or school be put through the expense of a civil rights investigation? Should they be pressured to change their standards so that more blacks will be accepted?
Not sure, but I doubt it. Rather a personal sensibility, I think. I just have a relatively low level of confidence in people, and would expect the worst from most of them if they were handed data to feed their prejudices (or even to create prejudices).
Yes to the first question, no to the second. AFAIU it is harder now to change standards and not to expect a reverse discrimination lawsuit, eternal vigilance is still needed to ensure that people follow the law both in favor of the minority and the majority.
Also, note that the current US president is black, not white, despite genetical and educational evidences to the contrary. Once he won’t be black anymore, I’ll consider releasing the data.
There are many possible ways to explain those hypothetical test results. IQ disparities along racial lines seems one of the least likely explanations. They may exist, but they obviously aren’t huge differences that prevent one race from competing at all with another race.
We know racial discrimination exists, and we want to avoid it as much as possible to have top-quality fire departments. So in this case you’ll want to do some work to find out is discrimination is at play here. Also, you’d look at how you are recruiting potential firefighters, in order to get the best quality recruits from a variety of demographic areas. If a good-faith effort is made in both of those areas, then you just take the best potential firefighters. You don’t even have to worry about whether there are inherent IQ differences between races in that scenario.
The only meaningful difference would be that when you saw differential outcomes on color-blind tests/assessments for two groups in hiring, education, performance, you would eschew any impulse to treat the outcomes as discriminatory rather than diagnostic, and thus you would eschew any impulse to implement “remedies” to address the (non-existent) discrimination.
Out of curiosity: Has there been any survey recently that asked people what they thought of minorities relative to IQ?
I do agree that lowering test score standards for any minority applicant is a horrific practice - it contributes to racial tensions and exasperates bad stereotypes, not to mention its backwards and racist (and ethnocentric on part of the white elite).
If my chances of getting into Harvard as a black student just gave me significant advantage over white kids with much higher scores, what does that say about black Harvard graduates? I can say that Asian kids who get in to Harvard must be the creme de la creme, because that will work against you.
I hope you’re not fighting the hypothetical here as some are (the OP asked us to assume that there are genuine intelligence differences – the existence of disparities in test scores, etc., on racially neutral tests, is not, then, in itself proof or even a suggestion of discrimination, any more than different 40 yard dash times is proof that the 40 yard dash is discriminatory).
So if you’re not, and if you mean that there is actual disparate treatment of equally objectively qualified people – that is, two guys run the 40 yard dash neck and neck, but for some malicious reason, the timing guy clicks the stopwatch a second later for guy B – than you’d address it the same way you address any other bad hiring/promotion decision – on a case by case basis. Oh, it turns out Manager X favored candidate A over candidate B because A was his brother in law? Well, that violates our anti-nepotism policies, we’re going to have to re-consider the hiring decision and potentially discipline X. Same for racial discrimination or any other non-qualification-related discrimination. Businesses and so forth, of course, have little systemic incentive to hire unqualified people when they could hire qualified people for the same rate, so this will be a comparatively rare problem.
My point being, you wouldn’t imagine businesses enacting affirmative programs to seek out and give preference to people who had no familial or relational connection at all with the company as a means of furthering an anti-nepotism policy; why would one imagine doing so for irrational racial discrimination either?
I’m going to assume you don’t mean that there exists rational racial discrimination. As to your question, if I understand it correctly, then here is my answer: because it was common in the past, and apparently still occurs.
You can avoid policies that assume that there should be equal group representation and assume discrimination or unfairness when that doesn’t happen (see below). Instead, I agree you should simply treat people as individuals and avoid looking at their group background.
The problem is assuming that unequal proportions are prima facie evidence of discrimination. In fact, based on test results, you wouldn’t expect equal proportions from different ethnic groups. That’s a point that Professor Amy Wax makes. She proposes either adjusting disparate impact rule to reflect statistical differences, or abolishing it.
Except that you’re excluding the middle ground between “It’s evidence of discrimination” and “It’s not evidence of discrimination” which is “It’s evidence of potential discrimination”. If an employer is only hiring white guys there may be a perfectly reasonable explanation for it or he might be a white supremacist but I’d want to dig further before coming to either conclusion.
Well, the 4/5 rule is only evidence of potential discrimination. Wax’s point is that unfortunately the most predictive job tests often invariably will lead to compliance issues because of group differences. So if you’re looking for a policy implication, it would be in relation to that. She discusses the Ricci case which is a classic example.
There are plenty of (disgusting) policies you can justify with this.
Why fix US schools? Black people are never going to learn anyway, so why use our limited education funds trying to get people in the inner city to university? If they are destined for a life of servitude, so why give them the same kind of education we expect for our kids? If we give them an education based on job skills, that should be enough.
Intermarriage is now a bad thing. A white person who has children with a black person is dooming their child to a statistical likelihood of being less intelligent. Why would you do that to your child, and to the world as a whole. Better that people stick to their own.
There is no need to be outraged at black prison rates or other social problems in the black community. These can all be explained by intelligence. It doesn’t show structural problems in society, but rather that black people are barely able to function on their own.
Which is also, incidentally, a good argument for keeping races separate in living situations, and perhaps increasing police surveillance and restricting freedoms.