There is a very big and unpleasant question that remains, after we accept that there may be different averages, and overlap, and brilliant and idiotic members of each ethnicity, and we are making our choices on the basis of the individual.
Does a smaller fraction of executives or professors or political leaders or whatever, of an ethnicity, than their fraction of the entire population, prove discrimination?
I think that if averages were identical, an underrepresentative fraction proves some discrimination somewhere; and if the averages aren’t proven identical, an underrepresentative fraction does not prove discrimination (though it may be a useful observation to include in a body of evidence that builds an understanding of possible discrimination).
I doubt anyone on this board is blunter than I in expressing the opinion that we are our genes, and that most of the differences we find are driven more by genetic differences than any other driver.
It’s not clear to me that this changes our fundamental obligation: we should take care of one another. Feed the hungry; clothe the cold; minister to the sick. We are all the family of man and we are all responsible to steward the earth. Group differences, whether genetic or circumstantial, are irrelevant from the standpoint of my personal responsibility. What difference does it make? Surely the strong and privileged, whether by accident of birth or luck of life circumstance should seek to extend a hand to the less fortunate.
If differences exist at a group level, it seems to me the only fair approach is to make accommodation for those groups wherever possible while at the same time pursuing a long-term goal of getting rid of the divisiveness which results from grouping based on appearance. Obviously this often results in diametrically opposed short-term strategy: If we set aside a race-based quota, we risk increasing the division between “races.” On the other hand, if there are real innate differences between (even self-described) racial/ethnic groups, no amount of opportunity normalization will equalize outcome, so we’ll never get to a world where all groups feel an equal participation if we don’t set aside group-based quotas.
It’s my personal position that the existence of innate group-based differences is precisely the reason why we need group-based quotas for now, until such time as we no longer care what group you belong to…but those sorts of decisions happen at the societal/governmental level.
But at a personal level? I don’t give a rat’s patoot what your group is. Every man’s death diminishes me because I am involved in mankind. The bell tolls for me when it tolls for anyone. I’m just finishing up paper work to join a group that sends medical teams to places like Haiti. I don’t think I get to weasel out of an obligation to give back just because it might not be my “group” I’m helping out.
Two parables come to mind.
The first is from Jesus: In reply to “Who is my neighbor?” he told the story of the Good Samaritan in which the only one with the heart to help a broken man was an individual from the Outsider Group.
The second is from Aesop: The mighty lion feels magnanimous and lets the mouse free; in the end it is the mouse who saves the lion.
We do well to remember that we are all neighbors and that none of knows who of us will remain mighty.
I like everything else you said and admire you for it. However, I think there’s an error of fact in this one detail.
Quotas are one way to create numerically equal participation in spite of (hypothetical) innate differences. But there are others. For example, if you try to illuminate and disperse inner city areas of blight by favoring them with extra public transportation, or community colleges with liberal scholarship assistance, or targeting them with extra career guidance and advertising, you will preferentially help people in a population that preferentially represents disadvantaged demographic groups, without quotas. In fact this even has an element of fairness to it that overlooks ethnicity completely, because it attempts to break up cycles of failure from generation to generation without regard to whether specific ethnicities have been put at numerical advantage.
Moreover, people may “feel an equal participation” if they have reason to believe they have full and equal opportunity to apply their abilities, to the best of those abilities. They won’t necessarily feel that, but they might, and anyway they ought to have that opportunity whether the feeling is what we hope for or not.
There may be a need for quotas, but quotas are not the only way of accomplishing what they are usually advertised as accomplishing.
that doesn’t make any sense at all… i suppose there is going to be a quota system as well, and a preference for applications to government jobs? I just want to affirmatively understand these actions of yours…
I read The Bell Curve a few years ago and I found big chunks of it quite compelling. You could rip out the whole section on ethnic differences - the weakest part of the book - and have a very strong case for changes in social policy based on the book’s conclusions.
It would still be controversial but the ethnic differences bit was pretty much putting a big target on the book saying “please ignore me, I am discredited”. It wasn’t good science and - more important - it wasn’t useful.
There is a great discussion to be had about the correlation between IQ and social economic status (SES) but it’s almost impossible to have that discussion because of the racist overtones.
This reads very much like what you’re saying is that you assume the premise given in the OP is in fact true, and so your response is that we’d finally be able to look at things the way they are; no? Otherwise what does our current equal protection scheme have to do with anything? Disparate impact is based on the fact that this kind of disparity has not been proven.
As far as inefficient constraints, I’d say that some things are more important than idealistic economic expectations, and that your assumption about uncompetitiveness relies on a further assumption that the entire industry (or whatever) isn’t sharing in the prejudice, which flies in the face of the precedent behind those kinds of laws in the first place.
Why wasn’t it useful? As noted above, policies that proceed on the expectation of group equality are not grounded in reality. The results from the book on ethnic differences haven’t gone away and sooner or later science will uncover the reasons for this.
And that was one of the points the Bell Curve made wasn’t it? That rather than implementing policies to create group equality (ie. treating individuals as members of groups) people should be dealt with as individuals.
One of the justifications for those policies though, is that group inequality is the result of unfairness. So it is justified to discriminate against individuals from an advantaged group to address the overall imbalance. However, if group inequality can’t simply be blamed on unfairness then that justification loses much of its weight. Here are some policy that is based on the idea that there should be group equality.
But of course you will come right along behind me to say that whatever test I am using does not measure abilities because it does not produce the distribution of ehtnicities that you expect from [ta-da] prior expectation of group equality.
I didn’t mean you personally. But racial egalitarianism is a religion. I worship in its church myself (I literally wept with joy at Mandela’s inauguration) but if we can prove that black people are indeed on average cleverer than white people, good luck getting that reflected in public policy.
It will take a strong leader - probably a black one - to make the case that equality of opportunity is a more realistic goal than equality of outcome. It would also be fairer - and more effective - to focus affirmative action efforts on equal opportunities for poor kids rather than kids from an ethnic minority.
It’s undeniable that minorities - blacks especially - suffer serious discrimination but I think that everyone would be better served by dropping quotas and focusing instead on making sure that academic success depends on your ability rather than your parent’s bank balance or the colour of your skin.
I totally get the spirit of what you’re saying but I have to disagree based on real-life practicalities. Guessing at an individual’s ability based on membership is “useful” in the sense that it saves time.
There’s another a dirty word that describes a similar process: stereotyping. We all do it because it saves our poor brains from having to measure and evaluate everybody.
We use group membership as a proxy to play the odds of saving time & effort – at the possible expense of not finding the absolute best individual. It is certainly possible that an individual that graduated from a community college with a C average in accounting could be smarter and ultimately more successful running the company than any of the MBA graduates from Harvard. But we play the odds by using Harvard as prescreen filter to save is time. We knowingly overlook some diamonds in the rough. It’s a tradeoff.
There are 6 billion people. We inevitably have to resort to thinking of everyone in terms of groups instead of individuals. We have a job position to fill and 500 resumes. There’s not enough time in the world to force our brains to consider 500 individuals as 500 separate measurements. We mentally filter out the 500 into various groups. Saves time.
If I’m not in the stupid group, then I hope nothing changes. More stupid people, and measurably stupid people, makes me looks better in comparison. I would not do anything to rid society of these genes but would do as much as I can to spread it.
I’ve never in my life seen any evidence that any one ethnic group is “stupider” than any other. I will say that I suspect that the definitions of “proven” and “stupider” will always be formulated in such a way as to favor the ethnic group of which the person doing the proving is a member.
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