Razor sharp and refreshingly honest. Touches on cultural issues that restrict supply side of a diversified candidate pool in "elite" professions, exploitation of diversity by culturally parasitic groups, and much more.
Blaming racism (an abstract bogeyman that can never be defeated) and focusing on equalizing outcomes (or meeting a diversity quota) is a problem because it sabotages the real efforts necessary to improve things that have very little to do with race: deeply dysfunctional governance, across justice, education, policing, and in policy-making.
It's easier to say "silent whites are complicit" than it is to ask how we can lift everyone up without tearing others down.
In US, fed vs local state split -- is also making reforms more difficult, but on the other hand -- it probably prevents monopolization of political opinion + economic will.
So over all the separation is good.
I would like, however, federal laws to be updated to protect people from discrimination due to criminal past.
I think a federal law that prevents employers of asking/using criminal past in hiring decisions -- would go a long way of re-integrating previous offenders back into society.
Probably there are specific federal charges that should be hidden -- but majority must not be used for employers, and must not be asked during job application.
I am a sure if such a law would be in effect, a number of people who resource to additional criminal activity, after previous conviction -- would drop at least 10 fold.
These kinds of changes is a must on a road to a more just society.
I think a lot of the papers and essays that are opposed to Affirmative Action and/or deny the existence of institutional racism seem to share a few characteristics, down to even the the words used (like being honest and decent.) Examining the tone of the piece:
> But I’m afraid that a segment of the community [people of color] – either well-intentioned or not – has chosen to weaponize the issue of diversity in a way that is not only hostile and disingenuous, but counterproductive to its own cause.
> Recklessly and indiscriminately warmongering over diversity is the business world’s equivalent of breaking windows and looting.
While some might characterize the piece as a little tone-deaf, they're the same sort of arguments that've been made since the introduction of Affirmative Action. First, a misrepresentation of sociological concepts like "institutional racism," and the conflation those who discuss its effects or potential solutions to "weaponizing" diversity or claiming that it is caused by malicious actors. The author even goes as far as to say:
> There are historical, cultural, and socioeconomic reasons ... that explain why a disproportionately small number of people in certain ethnic/minority groups are able to achieve the high levels of performance and economic success
But the author doesn't seem to even touch on what those are, other than drilling into the issue being "cultural." The "culture" of people of color has long been blamed as the cause of inequality since at least the Civil Rights Movement. Other, rather cryptic references exist for what the real reason for inequality is, right before the author jumps to a different point:
> If we’re honest, we’ll first acknowledge all of the nuances and complexities – some of them clearly uncomfortable – about the background sources of the problem.
I'm not sure what exactly what that's supposed to mean.
I think articles like this gain momentum due to the "Candice Owens" effect, and the defensiveness of all people to perceived claims of racism. It is a fundamental misrepresentation of what diversity advocates actually advocate, in the name of being "honest" or "decent." It's unfortunate that the author doesn't engage with actual strong arguments in favor of diverse workforces, namely the clear, well documented benefits to both businesses and individuals that a diverse workplace provides, rather than this strawman of someone "weaponizing diversity."
Very well articulated. The author unfortunately uses generic phrasing to paint a mischaracterizing image. Like so many other examples, it appears to be an attempt to fit words over preconceived, negative feelings. There are good versions of this argument, but this isn't one of them.
I think I wrote that sentence a bit weird, what I meant to convey was that the "cultural" reasons were the only ones drilled into.
The claim that non-white cultures are inferior to white culture in some way has historically been a justification for inequality (and for colonialism, slavery, and other systems we'd likely agree are manifestly unjust.) I'm disappointed the author didn't engage with diversity advocates or their claims in a more meaningful way. He acknowledges the well-researched sociological evidence for institutional racism, and I feel like a discussion that starts there is more valuable than one that knocks down this strawman of the person who "weaponizes diversity."
Though to the author's credit, the piece doesn't read like it's intended to dismantle an entire field of study, rather it seems to jump between sharing anecdotes and extrapolating widespread political solutions from those experiences.
I rarely hear opponents of affirmative action deny institutional racism as much as its proponents. It's proponents would rather eat their own hat than admit that systemic efforts to favor specific racism groups for employment (for the noble ends of countervailing other forms of systemic discrimination) are in themselves a form of institutional racism. This denialism has run so deep hacks in sociology have gone to the extreme of outright redefining the word racism to allow for the concept of "non-racist" racial biases in hiring. This is what I would characterize as "extreme defensiveness".
I don't actually think proponents of affirmative action are without a point I'm just tired of seeing a group of people in such deep denial of their own systemic racism seeing everybody else as the deniers and acting above it all when they're not even as non-racist as the average moderate.
That was a fantastic piece. The author takes great pains to point out the nuance and complexity behind successful outcomes that clearly belie the “structural racism” trope, while acknowledging the realities.
The issue with this essay, while it is clear in it's wording (as written by a lawyer). It's still has it's fundamental flaw. It's argument boils down to this, which the author spells out
> If the world I was living in had deep, systemic discrimination against latinos, surely I was an easy target. And yet here I am.
So many of these articles are a single person who succeeds and as a result declares racism must not exist. A personal anecdote is always convincing (as many people know), but anytime an actual rigorous statistical study of this comes up it's shows that clear systemic racism exists.
And people love to read anecdotes like this, because it's a very easy way to ease discomfort. The discomfort that shows that deep seated racism exists in the US, and that our country in a number of areas isn't doing a good job of living up to its ideals. But in the end it's an anecdote and data shows it's not the case.
> anytime an actual rigorous statistical study of this comes up it's shows that clear systemic racism exists.
All the statistics I've seen have made it clear that it doesn't. Well, except for that in the opposite directions you'd claim, as in open anti-Asian discrimination.
Yes I’m familiar. The inability to replicate findings. With faulty data, tests, experiments I’m especially skeptical of most of the BS posted on blogs. Excuse me for not trusting “all the statistics”
Well, there is a ton of statistics. If any of it showed clear signs of systemic racism, you could just post it and say, here it is! Usually it gets debunked -- weak-ass research that doesn't replicate being one category -- those addressed by controlling for some obvious variables another.
The thing is, it's pretty easy to back claims that racism happens in the small, because it's true.
But "systemic racism" is a different claim than that.
It's certainly much easier to write a long, thoughtful and nuanced post about a serious topic than to just call out "nah, its racism lol".
Who are you kidding man? Are you really this disingenuous or do you just not have any experience with minority communities? Maybe you should think twice about who's "easing their discomfort" here.
> So many of these articles are a single person who succeeds and as a result declares racism must not exist.
That is not the evidence the author is submitting. His argument rests on the fact that Cuban immigrants outperform Mexican immigrants in many metrics, which thus disproves the racial discrimination hypothesis. He likewise cites the dramatically different performance of Ghanaian immigrants versus African Americans. These statistics are not subjective.
He then draws on his own experience in the Latino community and hypothesizes the disparity of performance in Mexican immigrant communities stems from a parental culture that encourages short term gains at the cost of long term reward.
There is more to the article but I’m going to butcher it by summarizing it. It is well worth reading and thought provoking.
What I don’t understand about the whole cultural piece is the selection bias. My understanding is that the Cubans that came here had different circumstances, different opportunity and different resources (they came because they were successful).
Otherwise are we just saying that Mexicans are lazy compared to Cubans and that is just culture? Or African Americans aren’t as hardworking as Ghanaians and that stereotype is what it is and we should just operate around it?
Yes, I think that is the author’s point. The values and habits of the Cubans who fled Cuba and Ghanaians who left Ghana are ones which lend to successful lives. These values and habits, such as placing importance on higher education and academic achievement, are partly what culture consists of.
The alternative hypothesis, if one rejects the notion of value and habit transfer, is to claim that intelligence is genetically transmitted. That opens a very ugly can of worms and to my (limited) knowledge is unsupported by scientific evidence.
In either case though, I think it is clear that the Cuban and Ghanaian example precludes the possibility of racial discrimination.
It seems to me this has deep implications about effective and ineffective policies to raise the living standards of Mexican immigrants and African Americans. If we fail to address the root cause (poor cultural practices vs racial discrimination), the problem won’t get fixed.
The author acknowledges every culture has its own upper strata
There are selection mechanisms which can amplify or inhibit the effect of this upper strata - compare Cubans and Mexicans.
For black Americans, that selection mechanism is racism.
In 1921, whatever the black upper class had achieved in Tulsa Oklahoma was burned to the ground by white supremacists - businesspeople were ruined by racism.
Whatever opportunities the black upper class could have made of home ownership were dashed by redlining, the creation of suburbs excluded them from the foundational middle-class wealth building exercise of the 20th century.
Policy created the ghettos at large, with economic pressure for exploitative landlords which incentivized short term earnings to pay the rent, including crime.
For black Americans, the upper strata have never gotten a fair break by design of policy (until very very recently).
Despite this, a lot of black Americans carry the exact same ethos that the author acknowledges - go read Malcolm X.
The idea of 'let's lift ourselves up first' is very old in the black community - the reason it doesn't work is because racist policy always puts the boot on it.
The author comes close to describing the problem, but fails at the solution.
"Let's do better guys!" doesn't work - even when a man as charismatic as Malcolm X proposes it.
Nowadays, the failure of the black family is used to argue against government intervention to assist African Americans.
But the man who pioneered the idea that a failure of the black family would lead to chaos, Daniel Moynihan, actually had genuine policy based ideas on how to rebuild the black family after years of racist destruction of it: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/10/the-bla...
He would agree 100% with the author and Malcolm X and others who recognize the role of family, but he would put the blame directly at the feet of white supremacy.
I agree that diversification is being weaponized.
The author acknowledged he was speaking from his limited perspective, and again just as a Latino.
One thing I wish would happen is that we would go back to the language of redress for past injustice, not diversity.
That was the original point of affirmative action.
Every social justice movement has scope creep.
We go from "Here are these African Americans, descendents of enslaved people who have been plundered and abused for centuries - we owe them redress and opportunities" to "Diversity is good". From "Black People" (and their very very specific struggle) to "People of Colour" (and feel-good-ism about diversity).
Happens in the LGBTI movement too. It's gone from people with very specific, very innate differences which have made them targets of brutal violence...
... to the LGBTQ+ movement which is about every other teenager feeling quirky for 'experimenting with their sexuality' and 'not using labels' to be 'progressive'.
We even replaced the most observably biological group in the acronym (I - intersex; literally born with mixed chromosomes, genitalia and/or hormone levels) to the most ideological/political letter we could (Q - queer; which is literally defined as something subversive and simply 'different' in a very political sense).
At least as far as black people are concerned, systemic racism is the problem - it has killed the black upper strata for centuries.
It killed the black family and created the conditions which the author properly describes in his essay.
And, like Moynihan said, it needs to be resolved with policy, but instead it's being 'resolved' with policing and mass incarceration, which has exacerbated the problem.
23 comments
[ 2.3 ms ] story [ 56.3 ms ] threadBlaming racism (an abstract bogeyman that can never be defeated) and focusing on equalizing outcomes (or meeting a diversity quota) is a problem because it sabotages the real efforts necessary to improve things that have very little to do with race: deeply dysfunctional governance, across justice, education, policing, and in policy-making.
It's easier to say "silent whites are complicit" than it is to ask how we can lift everyone up without tearing others down.
I would like, however, federal laws to be updated to protect people from discrimination due to criminal past.
I think a federal law that prevents employers of asking/using criminal past in hiring decisions -- would go a long way of re-integrating previous offenders back into society.
Probably there are specific federal charges that should be hidden -- but majority must not be used for employers, and must not be asked during job application.
I am a sure if such a law would be in effect, a number of people who resource to additional criminal activity, after previous conviction -- would drop at least 10 fold.
These kinds of changes is a must on a road to a more just society.
> But I’m afraid that a segment of the community [people of color] – either well-intentioned or not – has chosen to weaponize the issue of diversity in a way that is not only hostile and disingenuous, but counterproductive to its own cause.
> Recklessly and indiscriminately warmongering over diversity is the business world’s equivalent of breaking windows and looting.
While some might characterize the piece as a little tone-deaf, they're the same sort of arguments that've been made since the introduction of Affirmative Action. First, a misrepresentation of sociological concepts like "institutional racism," and the conflation those who discuss its effects or potential solutions to "weaponizing" diversity or claiming that it is caused by malicious actors. The author even goes as far as to say:
> There are historical, cultural, and socioeconomic reasons ... that explain why a disproportionately small number of people in certain ethnic/minority groups are able to achieve the high levels of performance and economic success
But the author doesn't seem to even touch on what those are, other than drilling into the issue being "cultural." The "culture" of people of color has long been blamed as the cause of inequality since at least the Civil Rights Movement. Other, rather cryptic references exist for what the real reason for inequality is, right before the author jumps to a different point:
> If we’re honest, we’ll first acknowledge all of the nuances and complexities – some of them clearly uncomfortable – about the background sources of the problem.
I'm not sure what exactly what that's supposed to mean.
I think articles like this gain momentum due to the "Candice Owens" effect, and the defensiveness of all people to perceived claims of racism. It is a fundamental misrepresentation of what diversity advocates actually advocate, in the name of being "honest" or "decent." It's unfortunate that the author doesn't engage with actual strong arguments in favor of diverse workforces, namely the clear, well documented benefits to both businesses and individuals that a diverse workplace provides, rather than this strawman of someone "weaponizing diversity."
The author very clearly described how:
1. His community prized shorter term economic gains over longer term ones.
2. How he was denigrated, called a “coconut” and accused of acting white, for choosing to study and perform academically.
The claim that non-white cultures are inferior to white culture in some way has historically been a justification for inequality (and for colonialism, slavery, and other systems we'd likely agree are manifestly unjust.) I'm disappointed the author didn't engage with diversity advocates or their claims in a more meaningful way. He acknowledges the well-researched sociological evidence for institutional racism, and I feel like a discussion that starts there is more valuable than one that knocks down this strawman of the person who "weaponizes diversity."
Though to the author's credit, the piece doesn't read like it's intended to dismantle an entire field of study, rather it seems to jump between sharing anecdotes and extrapolating widespread political solutions from those experiences.
I don't actually think proponents of affirmative action are without a point I'm just tired of seeing a group of people in such deep denial of their own systemic racism seeing everybody else as the deniers and acting above it all when they're not even as non-racist as the average moderate.
It also gives me guidance as a father on how to help my children succeed just a bit better than I did.
> If the world I was living in had deep, systemic discrimination against latinos, surely I was an easy target. And yet here I am.
So many of these articles are a single person who succeeds and as a result declares racism must not exist. A personal anecdote is always convincing (as many people know), but anytime an actual rigorous statistical study of this comes up it's shows that clear systemic racism exists.
And people love to read anecdotes like this, because it's a very easy way to ease discomfort. The discomfort that shows that deep seated racism exists in the US, and that our country in a number of areas isn't doing a good job of living up to its ideals. But in the end it's an anecdote and data shows it's not the case.
All the statistics I've seen have made it clear that it doesn't. Well, except for that in the opposite directions you'd claim, as in open anti-Asian discrimination.
The thing is, it's pretty easy to back claims that racism happens in the small, because it's true.
But "systemic racism" is a different claim than that.
Who are you kidding man? Are you really this disingenuous or do you just not have any experience with minority communities? Maybe you should think twice about who's "easing their discomfort" here.
That is not the evidence the author is submitting. His argument rests on the fact that Cuban immigrants outperform Mexican immigrants in many metrics, which thus disproves the racial discrimination hypothesis. He likewise cites the dramatically different performance of Ghanaian immigrants versus African Americans. These statistics are not subjective.
He then draws on his own experience in the Latino community and hypothesizes the disparity of performance in Mexican immigrant communities stems from a parental culture that encourages short term gains at the cost of long term reward.
There is more to the article but I’m going to butcher it by summarizing it. It is well worth reading and thought provoking.
Otherwise are we just saying that Mexicans are lazy compared to Cubans and that is just culture? Or African Americans aren’t as hardworking as Ghanaians and that stereotype is what it is and we should just operate around it?
Yes, I think that is the author’s point. The values and habits of the Cubans who fled Cuba and Ghanaians who left Ghana are ones which lend to successful lives. These values and habits, such as placing importance on higher education and academic achievement, are partly what culture consists of.
The alternative hypothesis, if one rejects the notion of value and habit transfer, is to claim that intelligence is genetically transmitted. That opens a very ugly can of worms and to my (limited) knowledge is unsupported by scientific evidence.
In either case though, I think it is clear that the Cuban and Ghanaian example precludes the possibility of racial discrimination.
It seems to me this has deep implications about effective and ineffective policies to raise the living standards of Mexican immigrants and African Americans. If we fail to address the root cause (poor cultural practices vs racial discrimination), the problem won’t get fixed.
The author comes close to describing the problem, but fails at the solution. "Let's do better guys!" doesn't work - even when a man as charismatic as Malcolm X proposes it. Nowadays, the failure of the black family is used to argue against government intervention to assist African Americans. But the man who pioneered the idea that a failure of the black family would lead to chaos, Daniel Moynihan, actually had genuine policy based ideas on how to rebuild the black family after years of racist destruction of it: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/10/the-bla... He would agree 100% with the author and Malcolm X and others who recognize the role of family, but he would put the blame directly at the feet of white supremacy.
I agree that diversification is being weaponized. The author acknowledged he was speaking from his limited perspective, and again just as a Latino. One thing I wish would happen is that we would go back to the language of redress for past injustice, not diversity. That was the original point of affirmative action. Every social justice movement has scope creep. We go from "Here are these African Americans, descendents of enslaved people who have been plundered and abused for centuries - we owe them redress and opportunities" to "Diversity is good". From "Black People" (and their very very specific struggle) to "People of Colour" (and feel-good-ism about diversity). Happens in the LGBTI movement too. It's gone from people with very specific, very innate differences which have made them targets of brutal violence... ... to the LGBTQ+ movement which is about every other teenager feeling quirky for 'experimenting with their sexuality' and 'not using labels' to be 'progressive'. We even replaced the most observably biological group in the acronym (I - intersex; literally born with mixed chromosomes, genitalia and/or hormone levels) to the most ideological/political letter we could (Q - queer; which is literally defined as something subversive and simply 'different' in a very political sense).
At least as far as black people are concerned, systemic racism is the problem - it has killed the black upper strata for centuries. It killed the black family and created the conditions which the author properly describes in his essay. And, like Moynihan said, it needs to be resolved with policy, but instead it's being 'resolved' with policing and mass incarceration, which has exacerbated the problem.