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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 26, 2024

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The main argument against repealing the Civil Rights Act is that if people have the option to discriminate against racial minorities in jobs, housing, and school admissions, they will do so. In order to know if this is true, we would need to look at a country that has a similar racial mix to America, but no anti-discrimination laws, then compare the life outcomes of Africans or other historically oppressed groups in America to their life outcomes in that country.

Can anyone think of such a country to use as a test case?

I recently found out that France does not have anti-discrimination laws, but also that they don't collect data on race, so it might not be possible to use them as a comparison.

The elite networks and organizations of today discriminate in favor of minorities and the philosophy associated with civil rights act and how it has applied in practice does not take sufficiently seriously any even handed aspects to the law as written.

At such, not only repealing civil rights act but empathising that it is racism and illegal to screw over the non progressive associated identity groups would be necessary.

There is absolutely no reason whatsoever to entertain the framework of historically oppressed protected groups, as a valid framework. In fact, to the extend discrimination is illegal, or comes with fines, such framework would end up costing for those who apply it.

The arguement that civil rights act might no longer be necessary as the minimum arguement might had made more sense in the past, but if the arguement of civil rights act has been about pervasive influence or conspiracy of groups like KKK, today we can observe a different pervasive ideology. Saying that there isn't racism today would be inaccurate and adopt the framework of progressive idea of racism where they don't count the racism in favor of minorities and against say whites.

You are basically fighting the old war. I also don't see why we need to face these questions in such an indirect way, instead of directly observing whether current American society is favoring, trying to be neutral towards, or mistreating X or Y group. So we will directly reach the truth of the matter you want to investigate, by investigating it directly. I sincerely do not buy into this idea that such things are such as inherently complex mystery that is hard to ascertain. It is convenient politically to be a mystery for one side that their side has a weak case based on the evidence. Actually, who a society favor is going to be reflected in the rhetoric of elites, the dominant NGO groups, the laws and how they are enforced, and so on, and so forth. If you do know that groups that can be favored can even perform worse due to HBD for example, although there are differences in behavior that aren't just HBD and other factors that can also lead to groups that are favored to do worse on some metrics of success, there isn't really a mystery here about what is happening.

Some issues are not actual debates where both sides have a valid case, just because there are two sides that are unwilling to compromise. Although, there is some compromise, well sort of. When you see the celebration paralax that is telling enough. The opposite side to what I argue will sometimes admit that it is true but "what you are going to do about it" i.e. might makes right, or use an arguement like its karma, revenge, and celebrate it basically.

Some of the rhetoric of progressives about protecting groups from discrimination does have a validity today. But it is about protecting from progressive racist "antiracist" movement, including "conservative" politicians that have aligned with it and such ethnic lobbies.

However, obviously, if you are to use power to oppose a cartel that screws X to benefit Z, you ought to be very careful about overcorrection if the goal is to oppose discrimination and be willing to reverse things if they have gone too far. And actually take seriously even handed applications of the law if anti discrimination is the goal. Contrary to the assertion that I have seen that even conservatives shouldn't reverse things, lest they become reactionaries, reversal of bad policy is a preresequite of wise governance in general.

Since anti-discrimination laws end up applying in intent of many involved with bringing them in fruition and practice as a manner of screwing over the progressive and their ethnic and other identity groups it comprise as permanent outroups, that negative precedent should be empathized as part of revoking not only civil rights act but Britain's and other country's equality act, hate speech laws, etc, etc, and to pass laws in favor of removing from influence and prosecuting with high prison time people who under the pretense of anti racism violate the civil rights of any group progressives dislike. Especially goverment officials but big business too and also industry wide regulations, or cartels. People behind trying to make this into reality or making this into reality should not just be excluded from influence but find themselves in legal trouble.

We need to be explicit about the betrayal of anti discrimination promise into discrimination towards natives, Christians, europeans, right wingers and associated groups, men, etc, etc. However a motte and bailey between antidscrimination and for discrimination for protected groups, against oppressors, have been a key part of these civil rights movements and their protagonists. So, we should be clear about the nature of it, and denounce it like Stalin has been denounced. We need to aknowledge the problems with such unwise and unjust policy and movement which was an overcorection and has become a very unjust monstrosity at this point.

The situation we are at is that good and moral policy is to enforce this at this stage. Considering how they have succeded in infiltrating the goverment and large corporations and be influential even with FBI with ADL as the worse, based on the ideology of the people who captured institutions. NGO's whose political influence is to do this discrimination activity which would be correctly considered a crime should become illegal, or at minimum fined and excluded to the level that KKK was. But power should be used to minimize the influence of the worst influential NGOs of this type and those who collaborate with them in power.

Like with civil rights act, fines can also be used for organizations for whose reason of existence can be more neutral like a social media, or media platform, where they are incentivized to remove the kind of leadership that is slanted in such direction. A correction against the excesses of our progressive dominated age is the correct way to analyze the current situation. It isn't 1960s where we have to predict how things will turn up. We can see how they did.

I kind of agree here. I’m very firmly in favor of weak affirmative action, which is more of a tie-goes-to-the runner version of AA. What that means is that if I have two candidates equally good for the role I’m hiring for, I should choose the minority. The issue most people seem to have with AA is not “they’re hiring black people, women, gays, etc.” but the fact that minority status is trumping other qualifications for the position. In short, the position that you don’t have to be nearly as good at the position, or as qualified for school is what people seem most upset about.

Weak AA doesn’t actually do that. It might require looking for more minorities to apply for the job, which isn’t that hard. It doesn’t forgo requiring relevant qualifications and skills and even testing for them. It simply means that once you have that pool, you should hire the most qualified and if two are equal, then give the nod to the minority.

'Weak affirmative action' as you describe it, doesn't exist. It can't exist, because, outside of academic studies with fake resumes, there is no such thing as two equally qualified candidates. Equally qualified candidates would have to be literally identical, and real candidates obviously differ in terms of their work experience, academic background and interview quality.

In practice, 'tie-goes-to-the-runner' acts as a fig leaf for more aggressive discrimination. I've seen this first hand. I had to shortlist candidates for an academic programme, giving each one a score. This list then went to the higher-ups, who simply removed the five lowest scoring male candidates, even if they had higher scores than the female candidates. The remainder were given offers. Although the official guidance said preference should be given to the 'minority gender' when deciding between two equally qualified candidates, in practice they just penalised the male candidates.

In practice, 'tie-goes-to-the-runner' acts as a fig leaf for more aggressive discrimination.

It shames me that as a kid I actually believed that this kind of phrase was anything other than obfuscation for the sake of reducing cognitive dissonance. But what I'd actually love to see is a true "tie-goes-to-the-runner" affirmative action implemented in real areas where true "equally qualified candidates" can and do exist. Such as baseball, which is what that phrase alludes to. No need to have extra innings, if the game is tied at the end of 9, then the team with more aggregate oppressed identities on the team wins. If the Super Bowl is a tie at the end of regulation, then give the Lombardi Trophy to the team that has more oppressed identities in aggregate. If two Jeopardy contestants have the same score at the end, then the person who is more oppressed gets to stay on and the other guy gets kicked off like any other loser.

If we truly believe in "tie-goes-to-the-runner" as a proper way to fix problems in society, then let's walk the walk.