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Notes -
Richard Hanania writes we need to shut up about HBD.
https://www.richardhanania.com/p/shut-up-about-race-and-iq
He defines HBD as believing:
Populations have genetic differences in things like personality and intelligence. (group differences)
Groups are often in zero-sum competition with one another, and this is a useful way to understand the world. (zero sum)
People to a very strong degree naturally prefer their own ingroup over others. (descriptive tribalism)
Individuals should favor their own ingroup, whether that is their race or their co-nationals. (normative tribalism)
And he goes on to criticize 2-4. I tend to agree with those criticisms, but I think it’s fairly common in these kinds of circles to believe a version of 2 focused on ideological competition, not between racial groups, where the social justice left and its preferred policies to rectify group differences can only be defeated by using the facts to explain group differences that won’t be rectified through policy.
While I accept Hanania’s point that the facts frequently don’t matter in which political ideas rise to the top, I still feel like Cofnas has a point (whom Hanania is responding to).
I’m quite philosemetic, for example. The best argument against antisemitism based on observing Jewish overperformance and concluding it’s due to some kind of plot is explaining that intelligence matters and the Ashkenazim underwent a particular history and we now observe them having very high average test scores.
Hanania himself wrote not so long ago about how Jewish personality traits might be needed to fully explain their political interest and influence, beyond just intelligence.
Using biology to explain overperformance but not underperformance seems like a strange compromise.
In much of today’s polite society, if one points out the achievement gap among groups, you’re a racist.
But if one doesn’t acknowledge the achievement gap between groups to justify affirmative action, you’re a racist.
And that’s without even mentioning biology! Watching lefties like Kathryn Paige Harden and Freddie deBoer try to (admirably) describe these kinds of issues while trying to remain in the good graces of polite society is enlightening.
Now, if you could guarantee me a return to a more race-blind culture and legal system if we shut up about genetics then I would take that. But we are on a path towards learning the murky details of (and being able to influence) genetics of both groups and individuals. I don’t think the elephant in the room will stay quiet.
It’s a bit remarkable to read Hanania write:
I think he means, “talk about something publicly” as opposed to at all, but actually I’ll easily bite those bullets and say we ought to understand the disadvantages short men face due to female preferences and that we ought to know just how much we expend society’s resources on the severely handicapped.
Social desirability bias is incredibly powerful and one should choose one’s battles. Polite society in the West went from being quite racist, in ways that didn’t always align with the facts, to correcting hard (thanks, Hitler) to race is only skin deep, which also doesn’t align. And then we got the influence of Kendiism.
Even ignoring immigration (where he doesn’t cover the Garret Jones stance), a lot of US politics comes down to this issue, and HBD was mostly in a quietist tradition the last few decades with little influence for being outside the Overton Window.
I know Trace doesn’t like HBD much, but wow is that like the whole story of his FAA traffic controller storyline. If you listen to the Blocked and Reported episode, he and Jesse aren’t shy about pointing out it was an insane policy to completely jettison meritocracy, but they dance around the general point that if you set a fairly high intellectual bar for a job, it’s going to look like the racists are right. If you allow self-selection, you also very well might make it look like the sexists are right.
The elephant in the room is only growing larger for anyone following the facts. Conceding the present Overton Window is unassailable is I think conceding defeat to the social justice left.
I think he is correct. I find HBD plausible in principle, but it's terrible political tool in practice. For one, its radioactive and attracts a high proportion of radioactive supporters. Second, many better tools already exist (standardized tests, colorblind policy, merit based immigration vetting). HBD is a worse substitute than existing policy frameworks. It purports to partially explain a wide variety of complex human behavior of ill defined groups. Interesting in principle; a bad policy tool for a nation that focuses so much on the individual (culturally and legally).
Sure, and then when you use those tools and a disparate racial impact is found the courts find you've run afoul of the Civil Rights Act.
Yes, the disparate impact standard needs to go, and should be a top priority.
How do you expect to convince the legislature or courts to reject the disparate impact standard except through convincing them HBD is true? If it isn't true disparate impact makes perfect sense. If I believed in my heart that every group really was fundamentally equal, I would love the disparate impact standard. Nothing else would make sense!
Yeah, it definitely helps.
Differences in everything else would also matter. Cultures differ, life opportunities, etc. also matter and anything that's influenced by these could have disparate impact in some direction or another.
Pre-existing widespread disparities can cause disparities in otherwise fair measures, and are not indicative of discriminatory intent, the latter of which was what the civil rights act was supposed to address.
There are a pair of long effort-post replies I made to a mutual on Tumblr (who also posts here rarely) that I should probably slightly edit into an effort-post here, on the legal-academic understanding of "racism" and civil rights law, starting with an argument I encountered pushing back on the usual criticism of Griggs, and extending through a sort of steelman of "Kendiism" (including references to Kendi's works and definitions).
To try to tl;dr summarize, "discriminatory intent" is irrelevant. The EEOC stands for "Equal Employment Opportunity Commission," and they define "equal opportunity" as the absence of "disparate impact." It doesn't matter if there's no discriminatory intent by any party, the mere fact that something (such as IQ tests) causes an ethnic minority to have a lower likelihood of being hired makes it presumptively forbidden. This may not have been the intent behind the civil rights act, on the part of many of its supporters (though I've seen people argue that for many of the more academic sorts, addressing "disparate impact" was always the goal, and "discriminatory intent" mattered only in that it was theorized as the primary cause), but it's how the enforcement bodies, and the academic consensus, very quickly came to interpret it. And, as they say, personnel is policy, therefore, so long as those same people are in charge of enforcement, no amount of "no really, this is about discrimination, we really mean it this time" from legislators is going to stop them from targeting "disparate impact."
That's probably fair. That said, a favorable supreme court ruling might be able to make a little of a difference. The law as it exists is clear enough, just badly misinterpreted. I'd be interested in seeing the effort posts. Could they mandate some standard of evidence, with it specified what sorts of things could count? (explicit evidence of intent counts, ratios that are off does not)
If legislators really wanted to rein in rogue agencies, I bet being able to sue individual employees for agency misbehavior that they participated in would do the trick, though that could be kind of extreme and lead to further breakdown of the government.
They could try, perhaps, but if the EEOC decides to ignore that and stick to the current (academic) consensus — "ratios that are off" matter, "evidence of intent" unnecessary — what is the recourse, then
Requires a number of factors that I find unlikely, most notably cooperative courts. AIUI, there are many precedents holding a broad immunity to this sort of thing, and I doubt they'd like to weaken those. And, of course, even if Congress grants you the ability to sue, they can't grant you the ability to win. If the courts find against the plaintiff and rule that there was no "agency misbehavior" in 100% of the cases brought before them, then does it really matter?
What breakdown?
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