sundin13 said:
JuliusHackebeil said:
If you misunderstood me and think I am against government help for black people, say, in the USA (or elsewhere), let me clarify: I am not. I am against government help for black people in the USA (or elsewhere) if that help is contingent on them being black, or minorities, or lgbtq, or whatever the next flavor of the day is gonna be. More generally to your first paragraph: I never said I was for government hand outs at some point and then suddenly changed my opinion when minorities might have also benefitted from them. What a bad faith reading. It is these quotes and answers that make me think it is effort in vain to talk to you. I'll quote your second paragraph: "Meritocracy cannot exist without starting from a place of equality." I agree. But equity is not equality. In fact these principles (equity and equality) are mutually exlusive. The moment you argue for one, you will argue against the other. It is either the case that 1) people are treated equally and can expect different outcomes between groups, or 2) that people are treated unequally and can expect simillar outcomes between groups. To say: I am for equality therefore different races should be treated differently - That is something I cannot intellectually follow. I recommend Thomas Sowells "Discrimination and Disparities" to combat the detrimental belief that disparities in outcomes between groups must be because of unfair discrimination and an unequal playing field. |
I was talking about society changing their views. This flip is something that happened, like, 50 years ago so I'd presume you weren't alive at the time (respect to the old-heads who were around and don't suck though). Sorry for the lack of clarity on that. My point with my second paragraph though, is that we can't expect meritocracy to bloom out of society that had its thumb on the scale for hundreds of years. That shit has consequences, simply taking your hand off the scale doesn't right those wrongs, and it doesn't put society in a good position to give the best to its best. To me, equality is a goal more than a pathway. I'd love to get to a point where people get out of society what they put in, but when so many black Americans are born so much further behind than many white Americans, we clearly are not there yet. And this wasn't an accident. These situations were in many ways designed by the public policy of the past. So, we have a responsibility to set those communities back onto a path where they are able to get out of society what they put in. There are a lot of ways to do that, and a lot of it involves specifically putting resources in to build back those communities, or provide opportunities to the people in them. This will inherently be skewed racially, because the policy of the past that new policy should address were also racially skewed. That doesn't mean that a white person from the inner city shouldn't get opportunities or that we shouldn't also provide assistance to rural communities who face a different set of challenges and are more white, but we have a specific responsibility to the people suffering under the unjust actions of the government of the past. Also, I think Sowell misses a lot of the complexity of this issue. For example, he brings up the absence of criminal background checks during hiring, and says that many employers are not discriminating against black people due to individual racism, but instead to reduce the likelihood of hiring an ex-felon, but this misses the pretty clear issue that the increased proportion of black Americans in the criminal justice system is in itself in no small part a symptom of discrimination and past racism. In a way, he is kind of advocating for a "systemic" approach to racism and not an "individual" approach. Racism is not merely something that individuals do, but instead is largely something that is imparted by the weight of systemic decisions of the past. |
I think I get the sentiment. In the past people did things wrong in one way. So you want to do things wrong in another to make everything right. I would argue that we should do things right now, because you cannot make good on past wrongs with more wrongs (like discriminating against people on the basis of their race, like lowered standards for colledge admissions (USA killed that thankfully, even though in practice it is still a problem), like hiring just from the minoritiy pool (as Britain did for government jobs the last two decades), etc.).
I even could be wrong about past injustices being insignificant for black peoples wealth in the USA today. (Even though it is almost insignificant for your wealth if one of your grandparents were wealthy.) Perhaps those past injustices are actually significant. But what to do about it? Envourage racist policy? I don't think that is the righ way when so many others also suffered from various injustices. I think you would agree that there are many, many poor people, who are poor because they faced injustices, not because of their own doing. So why concentrate so much on the supposed reason for people being poor and helping just those specific ones for those specific reasons? I would say we should try help everybody irrespective of their skin colour.
(Even though you could argue that the reason for the black plight in the USA is important for helping them effectively. Unemployment was low. Family cohesion was high. Violent crime was low. And then the wellfare state came in. And after I don't know how many billions, nothing is better. Quite to the contrary.)
"we can't expect meritocracy to bloom out of society that had its thumb on the scale for hundreds of years" -"had"- past tense. We cannot expect meritocracy to bloom out of society that favours one group over another on the basis of their skin colour.
"we clearly are not there yet" -How do you come to this conclusion? Because of different outcomes? Since that tells you fairly little.
"So, we have a responsibility to set those communities back onto a path where they are able to get out of society what they put in." -This is a too tribal mindset for me. My responsibilities are not to one community over another, only to my fellow citizens. And how do you know that any community does not get out what they put in? Different outcomes again?
"we have a specific responsibility to the people suffering under the unjust actions of the government of the past." -This responsibility only extends to making the government just. Not to overcorrect for poeple with a victim complex.
"the increased proportion of black Americans in the criminal justice system is in itself in no small part a symptom of discrimination and past racism" -I think people are in prison because they commit crimes. And black people are free not to commit them. When Roland Fryer (the ex Harvard prof) talked about his cousins, he said they were in prison on purpose, to get cool tattoos.
And why is it that so many Africans (I read a statistic about Nigerians in particular) and Asians coming to the USA much later, that lived there in extreme poverty for only one generation, are now better off than most black poeple who already lived in that country, this time with a big headstart on their part (with Asians doing even better than white people)? No racist can see the difference between a black person in the country for one generation vs 6 generations.
Ultimately I think we should concentrate on what is effective. The single biggest predictor for success is if you had both your parents at home. So this is what we should promote as a nation - family cohesion, not handouts that have not been effecitve so far in closing any gap. Quite the contrary.
