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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   25271 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 26, 2024

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Because unlike most of the users here, I am not working backwards from a preexisting conclusion.

That's not an answer to the question you were asked.

To reiterate the argument that everyone's saying:

  1. We try to instantiate raceblind meritocracy.
  2. We see racial disparities, because they'll continue to exist (and get worse, after the loss of affirmative action) and we're in a society that's going to track that kind of thing.
  3. Progressives say, "See, people are racist, we can't have a meritocracy, we need to fix this with some law mandating equality"
  4. Everyone finds this compelling, and we lose our raceblind meritocracy

What many proponents of HBD-ish things want is:

  1. We try to instantiate raceblind meritocracy.
  2. We see racial disparities, because they'll continue to exist (and get worse, after the loss of affirmative action) and we're in a society that's going to track that kind of thing.
  3. Progressives say, "See, people are racist, we can't have a meritocracy, we need to fix this with some law mandating equality"
  4. Others point out, "Those are due to differences in ability, not discrimination; this was to be expected"
  5. We get to keep our raceblind meritocracy.

I'm sure you've heard this argument at least 30 times at this point. Is there a reason that it's wrong? (It might be tricky to get to work in practice, because people don't like the idea of racial differences of ability. But it's appealing, at least—just explaining why something is the case is always a tempting possibility when people are insinuating that it's the case for other reasons and so endorsing bad policy.)

I don't think most users here are working backwards from a preexisting conclusion; I think you're uncharitably lumping everyone in one bucket.

Edit: And you seem to be the one working backwards from a preexisting conclusion? You've made literally no, as far as I can see, arguments that none of the disparity between groups is genetic, you've just been arguing that those who hold such a position are morally bad.

Missing from this paradigm:

  1. We try to instantiate raceblind meritocracy.
  2. We see racial disparities, because they'll continue to exist (and get worse, after the loss of affirmative action) and we're in a society that's going to track that kind of thing.
  3. Progressives say, "See, people are racist, we can't have a meritocracy, we need to fix this with some law mandating equality."
  4. Others point out, "Those are due to nature being racist, not discrimination by humans; we need to fix this with gene editing or something of that sort."
  5. We get to keep our raceblind meritocracy and close the racial gaps.

Sure. (though I don't expect gene editing etc. to be unique to the disadvantaged)

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