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ZorbaTHut  1yr ago (text post)   35165 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 19, 2022

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Right-Libertarian anti-racism policy.

I’m sure you’ve all seen a lot of awful anti-racism/diversity/etc policies put in place by leftists; every thread here features at least some examples.

That said, I really don’t like racism. It is one of the most disgusting instances of collectivist thinking: judging an individual for the actions of a group of people that ostensibly contains him; in this case people get lumped together by skin color.

Suppose you are a billionaire and want to decrease the amount of racism in the world; what decent options do you have?

Suppose you are a CEO of a corporation, what policies do you put in place to ensure there is no discrimination based on skin color in hiring, promotion, etc?

Suppose you are a billionaire and want to decrease the amount of racism in the world; what decent options do you have?

Assuming I live in the United States, partake in litigation against affirmative action. Continue to press on the blatantly racist measures Harvard and other elite institutions have implemented to exclude academically qualified Asian-American and flyover white Americans.

Suppose you are a CEO of a corporation, what policies do you put in place to ensure there is no discrimination based on skin color in hiring, promotion, etc?

Well, it's going to be hard, because the way EEOC rules work in the United States, I pretty much have to put a thumb on the scale in favor of black candidates. Then once they're hired and (as a cohort) underperform their peers, I have to have HR continue putting a thumb on the scale at each level of promotion, lest I be said to racistly only hiring them, but not promoting them.

Personally, I'd prefer to do away with those measures altogether, but trying to avoid the voracious testers and attorneys of the United States Justice Department isn't easy.

Couldn’t an employer concerned about meeting diversity targets without compromising performance actively recruit from highly skilled West Africans and get them H1Bs? Or at the very least, make a special effort to recruit from US citizens who are first or second generation West African migrants? These groups seem to outperform ADOSs by pretty much every metric, from skills to income to educational attainment, and - in the UK at least - some West African groups outperform White British on standardised tests. Obviously this is to some extent an immigrant-filter effect, but then why not take advantage of that as an employer by e.g. advertising job vacancies in Nigerian media?

Probably (and I'm pretty sure universities are doing exactly that), but I wouldn't say that this satisfies the stated goal of having a less racist society. It's probably the optimal thing to do from an employment compliance perspective, but it doesn't seem to improve life for any of my countrymates of any race. I guess maybe it furthers some global anti-racist goal, but this is not a goal of mine.

I largely agree, but the normative framework of contemporary corporate anti-racism is that of equality, diversity, and inclusion, and I think suggestions like mine can be framed as satisfying that. What they don't satisfy is a murkier (but probably more important) set of anti-racist principles concerning something like restorative justice and fairness; I can imagine an ADOS looking at these diversity efforts and not unreasonably saying something like -

My ancestors were sold into slavery and we have been subjected to generations of mistreatment, exclusion, and abuse, resulting in us being a damaged and vulnerable community to this day. Puritanical whites then looked at our suffering and decide to repent by implementing a system in which people who superficially look like me but don't come from my community and haven't been subject to our suffering are brought in to assuage their consciences! What outrage, what insult. It's like trying to assuage your guilt about the suffering of the meat you just ate by letting your dog chew on the bones!

And they would have a damn good point. This is NOT restorative justice by any measure. On the other hand, I have some mild-Bryan Kaplanesque sympathy for systems that can attract the best of global talent from around the world and provide opportunity to bright and ambitious people in the developing world, so I do like this aspect of the policy on those grounds.

equality, diversity, and inclusion

The E in DEI is actually 'equity', which is an altogether different concept that equality. It focuses on outcomes and historical redress, instead of opportunity.

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