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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?

In the USA in 2022 the vast majority of skin color based discrimination occurs under the guise of so called "affirmative action" programs. These programs pretend to be anti racist but at their core they are just racial discrimination against whites and Asians. So the question becomes, "what is the most effective way to fight affirmative action" and I think the answer is just spreading awareness of the extent of discrimination that goes on, especially in elite universities. Affirmative action already polls as quite unpopular but I find that in my own social circle many less online people are shocked to see the extent of discrimination that is going on. In public school I was fed lies about affirmative action, I was told it never meant picking a less qualified candidate it only meant considering the underrepresented candidate thoroughly or using race as a tie breaker for equally qualified candidates. A quick look at admission statistics disproves these lies quickly. Another pervasive lie is the idea that AA helps underprivileged students but at elite universities the main beneficiaries are wealthy blacks, not kids from the ghetto. I think if this knowledge was more widespread public support would collapse even further and hopefully the supreme court would be pressured to make a strong ruling.

In the USA in 2022 the vast majority of skin color based discrimination occurs under the guise of so called "affirmative action" programs.

Looking at the way policies are de jure defined, of course, but if one starts from the assumption that disparities in outcomes reflect the magnitude of discrimination, you can conclude that there must be a lot of "discrimination dark matter" out there that necessarily more than cancels out any official policies pointing in the other direction. So the direction one would go with this challenge depends on whether one makes that assumption or not.

but if one starts from the assumption that disparities in outcomes reflect the magnitude of discrimination

One can always prove too much if one starts from false assumptions.