Do you agree with at least one of the following two bullet points from the OP’s list?:
If so, why would you expect no massive differences in outcome based on race, ethnicity, gender, gender identity, etc. given that culture varies significantly between different groupings? For example, would you say that the small % of male nurses is indicative of a lack of opportunity for men to enroll in and succeed in nursing programs?
Conservative thought is based on:
Unequal outcomes are the just/correct result for them.
If black people have lower academic achievement it’s because there is something inherent in their “blackness” which is justifiably causing it. That could be genetics (as our racial realists think) or “cultural” (but ONLY culture which is embued with “blackness”), but either way fighting against the proper nature of the world is a mistake.
I think it’s almost impossible, if not entirely impossible, to separate such things from the question of fairness and equality of opportunity.
No, it’s indicative of flaws in our patriarchal culture that put (unfair!) limits on what careers are considered “masculine” or otherwise appropriate for men. That’s an example of something that’s unfair in our society.
Which races are on the lesser end of motivation and work ethic, so we shouldn’t expect people of that color to be proportionally represented at the top?
You are misstating the OP. He is not saying that some liberals believe that every single individual would have the same outcome, he is saying that some liberals believe that given equal opportunity there would not be a disparity in outcomes between races.
The reason that he thinks some liberals believe this is because some of them flat out say so, some of them support policies to give more opportunity to one race over another based on disparity in outcome, the notion that if there is a racial disparity, then it must be a result of a difference in opportunities.
Did you ask to see TimeWinder’s liberal card when he said that? Remember, it doesn’t count as an official statement of the liberal position if he doesn’t show the card.
Also Sterling Archer
“with large populations it should be safe to assume that opportunity and results would be extremely closely aligned.”
To some extent Airbeck:
“If you believe that all people have potential and that one type of person is on average equal to other types of people, then you would expect equality of opportunity across all types of people to lead to a closer equality of outcome for everyone.”
To echo Kearsen1 “We STRIVE for equality of opportunity. We can NEVER reach equality of outcome.”
Nobody is saying things are perfectly fair right now but much of the policy coming from the woke SJW crowd is not interested in equality of opportunity, they are interested in equality of outcome.
We can have fairly wide disparities in outcome between racial groups despite even opportunities. Culture plays into it a lot. Culture can affect your choices and some cultures promote better choices than others.
Oh, well then I’m okay with that. I’m not the spokesman for the liberal position but, speaking for myself, I believe that there’s no inherent racial connection to merit. I don’t believe that any racial group is inherently better or worse on average than any other racial group. So if one racial group is achieving significantly more or less than the average, I think the answer is outside factors affecting that group rather than inherent traits within the group.
And another person who believes that we don’t have equality of opportunity until we have equality of outcome
Maybe this sentiment isn’t as rare as you guys think (especially when some of you are the same ones holding this view).
I will own this. When the disparity of outcomes is radically different and it closely follows the arbitrary social distinction between races, I very strongly believe that it’s highly suggestive that there was not true or meaningful equality of opportunity. I think it’s a pretty extraordinary claim to say otherwise.
How do you know some cultures promote poor choices, or something like that, if we don’t have a fair society with equality of opportunity to test this in? In an equal society, yes, if some groups appeared to be left behind, then culture (or some other group-specific, rather than society-wide thing) must be to blame. But if our society is very unequal in opportunity (as I believe it to be), then how do we know if some group is “behind” due to culture or due to that widespread unfairness?
It’s not purely driven by wealth. The poorest racial group in NYC has higher academic achievement than the richest racial group in NYC.
If you include how people parent their children as a form of opportunity then you are effectively including culture as part of someone’s opportunity. But people don’t usually say having good parents is a form of opportunity disparity because they think it’s racist to say one group is better at parenting than another.
That’s reasonable, though I’d only consider certain aspects of society’s cultural baggage to be “unfair”. To me, if individual men are facing barriers to becoming nurses, or women are facing barriers to becoming computer scientists (IMO, barriers would include discriminatory treatment from teachers/professors/hiring managers, scorn from peers or elders, not being taken seriously, etc.), then that is unfair - but men not wanting to be nurses, or women not wanting to be computer scientists, in disproportionate numbers, is not IMO unfair. Of course, it’s tricky because maybe a lot of people don’t want to be X because of the barriers that they face - but I think we can work towards removing barriers without having equality of outcome as the goal in mind.
He said some.
some/= all
So if culture doesn’t make a difference, how do you explain the poorest racial group in NYC outperforming the richest racial group in NYC? Should we be throwing a little affirmative action towards rich white kids to equalize their opportunities?
I’m not so sure it’s all funding though. My kids go to a magnet school that’s 44% black, 23% white, 24% hispanic and the balance being asian and multiracial. The school has a 12.6 student-teacher ratio, and is pretty well funded by the district since it’s one of 3 magnet schools. It’s located in a historically black housing development (not apartments, but rather single-family homes) that’s squarely middle-class, and where the local kids are not subject to the magnet admissions process (i.e. if you live nearby, you go to that school).
But for some reason, the same exact pattern seems to come out there that you see elsewhere- the white and asian kids blow away the others on testing and in-class performance in pretty much all grades.
I suspect there are serious cultural issues that cause this- another thing I’ve noticed is that despite the fact that the school is somewhere around 75% minority, nearly all the parental organizations (PTA, Dad’s Club, watchdogs, etc…) are overwhelmingly white parent dominated, as are the actual volunteers for those organizations’ events.
I think there’s going to have to be some kind of cultural sea change in the black and hispanic communities before we’re going to see similar outcomes w.r.t. education to white people.
I would like you to elaborate your views on this.
To keep it simple, let’s focus on just two racial groups in the United States; black Americans and white Americans.
Let’s take it as a given that neutral statistics tell us that black Americans are (on a per capita basis) more likely to be convicted of a crime than white Americans; more likely to be incarcerated than white Americans; more likely to be unemployed than white Americans; more likely to collect public assistance than white Americans; more likely to not have a high school diploma white Americans; and more likely to live below the poverty line than white Americans.
So what do you, personally, attribute these statistics to? Do you feel they are the result of social factors that affect black Americans and that do not affect white Americans? Or do you feel they are the result of inherent differences between black Americans and white Americans? In other words, do you feel that if black Americans grew up in an identical environment to white Americans, they would still on average be more likely to commit crimes, not have a job, drop out of school, and be poor?
Some cultures value education more than others. It’s not the color of their skin but the culture of their community. That culture affects their choices. Their choices affect their outcomes.
Do you have anything to say about the overall thesis or are you just looking for particular sentences you can criticize?
Is there a belief among some liberals that you do not have equality of opportunity unless you have equality of outcome?
Noone is saying that we have achieved equality of opportunity but in some policy arguments where there is no identifiable disparity in opportunity, the argument for intervention is that the disparity in outcomes is proof of disparity in opportunity and we need to provide more opportunity to some groups over others.
Sure, but it’s not like the entire change has to occur within those communities.
It’s a separate debate, but there’s pretty good evidence going back…oh centuries now that the way those communities are viewed, pre-judged, and treated by people outside those communities has its own significant and lasting impact. It’s well and good to say some change has to come from within those communities (which is true and does happen) but I would hope it is not simply used to absolve other communities of any responsibility for their own roles in the state of affairs or excuse them from taking any additional action.
Innate sexual disparity in interests and abilities makes much more sense than racial disparity, since ‘race’ is 99% social, and we’re all mixing genes all the time anyway. However, this is the way that I think this pans out:
There are four abilities/decisions that will help you get paid well in this world.
I’m pretty sure that the group of people who are shit at task #4 contains an extremely large proportion of women. I wouldn’t be hoping anyone got better at it though.
At a societal level, whether or not there are differences in particular interests and skills between men and women on average (and I actually believe there are, though I believe they’re small) the fact that men tend to get more money than women is unfair unless you believe that men are contributing more to society.
I think it’s illogical to believe that.
Why?
Because we believe in evolution. People have always divided themselves into societies with equal numbers of men and women, and we’re all the descendants of the most successful societies. If it was useful to the success of a society to have the distribution of skills and abilities of women be the same as that of men … well, evolution knows how to do that. The only reason for it not to happen is that this is not actually optimal for the success of a society.
Logically, whatever the group “men” and the group “women” are doing, they ought to, on average, be equally valuable. If they’re not, on average, being equally rewarded, then something has gone wrong