From When Race Trumps Merit: How the Pursuit of Equity Sacrifices Excellence, Destroys Beauty, and Threatens Lives. Heather MacDonald. 2023. Kindle online sample.
From introduction:
Does your workplace have too few black people in top jobs? It’s racist.
Does the advanced math and science high school in your city have too many Asians? It’s racist.
Does your local museum employ too many white women? It’s racist, too.
After the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, prestigious American institutions, FROM THE MEDICAL PROFESSION TO THE FINE ARTS, PLEADED GUILTY TO “SYSTEMIC RACISM.”
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How else to explain why blacks are overrepresented in prisons and underrepresented in C-suites and faculty lounges, their leaders asked?
The OFFICIAL ANSWER FOR THOSE DISPARITIES IS “DISPARATE IMPACT,” a once obscure legal theory that is now transforming our world.
Any traditional standard of behavior or achievement that impedes exact racial proportionality in any enterprise is now presumed racist.
Medical school admissions tests, expectations of scientific accomplishment in the award of research grants, the enforcement of the criminal law—all are under assault, because they have a “disparate impact” on underrepresented minorities.
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When Race Trumps Merit provides an alternative explanation for those racial disparities.
THE EXPLANATION FOR RACIAL DISPARITIES IS LARGE ACADEMIC SKILLS GAPS that cause the lack of proportional representation in our most meritocratic organizations and large differences in criminal offending that account for the racially disproportionate prison population.
The need for such a corrective argument could not be more urgent.
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Federal science agencies now treat researchers’ skin color as a scientific qualification.
Museums and orchestras choose which art and music to promote based on race.
POLICE OFFICERS AVOID MAKING ARRESTS AND PROSECUTORS DECLINE TO BRING CHARGES to avoid disparate impact on minority criminals.
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When Race Trumps Merit breaks powerful taboos.
But it is driven by a sense of alarm, supported by detailed case studies of how disparate-impact thinking is jeopardizing scientific progress, destroying public order, and poisoning the appreciation of art and culture.
AS LONG AS ALLEGED RACISM REMAINS THE ONLY ALLOWABLE EXPLANATION FOR RACIAL DIFFERENCES, WE WILL CONTINUE TEARING DOWN EXCELLENCE and putting lives, as well as civilizational achievement, at risk.
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From book sample:
The year 2020 may go down as a pivotal moment in American history.
Major institutions—from corporations and the media to higher education and professional sports—endorsed the view that the United States is defined by systemic racism.
The death of George Floyd under the knee of a Minneapolis, Minnesota, police officer in May 2020 epitomized such bias, according to elite opinion leaders.
The RIOTS FOLLOWING FLOYD’S DEATH WERE PORTRAYED AS A WAKE-UP CALL: ADDRESS AMERICA’S PERVASIVE DISCRIMINATION OR FACE EVEN GREATER DISRUPTION.
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Those fiery months spawned a cultural revolution that could prove as transformative as its 1960s antecedent.
That earlier youth-led upheaval challenged the adult establishment’s allegedly oppressive norms of propriety in the name of liberation.
This time THE TARGETS OF THE RIOTERS AND THEIR SUPPORTERS ARE THE VERY FUNDAMENTALS OF A FAIR SOCIETY: MERITOCRACY, FEALTY TO THE RULE OF LAW, AND RESPECT FOR OUR CIVILIZATIONAL INHERITANCE.
All are now tarred as impediments to racial justice.
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The driving concept behind this revolution is disparate impact.
UNDER THE DISPARATE IMPACT IDEOLOGY, ANY STANDARD OR BEHAVIORAL NORM WHICH NEGATIVELY AND DISPROPORTIONATELY AFFECTS BLACKS IS PRESUMED TO BE A TOOL OF WHITE SUPREMACY.
If academic admissions standards for colleges and high schools result in a student body in which the percentage of black students is less than that of the national population (13 percent), then those standards must be lowered for the sake of racial equity.
If the enforcement of criminal law results in a prison population that is more than 13 percent black, then that enforcement must be unwound.
If hiring and promotion criteria mean that a workplace is not proportionally “diverse,” then those criteria must be abandoned.
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Disparate impact analysis first arose in the law as a way to expand the reach of civil-rights-era discrimination statutes.
Those early statutes banned deliberate discrimination: an employer could only be found guilty of a civil rights violation if he intentionally discriminated against a minority applicant.
A 1971 Supreme Court case, Griggs v. Duke Power Co., changed that rule.
Even if an employer had no intent to discriminate and had used color-blind standards for hiring or promotion, the court held he could still be liable under the 1964 Civil Rights Act if those job requirements, such as a certain level of literacy or NOT HAVING HIGH SCHOOL DIPLOMA, DISPROPORTIONATELY AFFECTED UNDERREPRESENTED MINORITIES AND WERE NOT REQUIRED BY BUSINESS NECESSITY.
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Disparate impact analysis has been used to invalidate school discipline policies, bank lending standards, and written tests for first responders.
Now the disparate impact approach has jumped from judicial opinions and the Code of Federal Regulations into the world at large.
Disparate impact analysis is no longer primarily a legal tool but a cultural one.
EVEN IF DISPARATE IMPACT WERE EXTIRPATED FROM THE LAW, IT WOULD CONTINUE TO ALTER OUR WORLD BY DISCREDITING HIGH STANDARDS AND COLOR-BLIND POLICIES.
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The key to disparate impact thinking is the presumption of racial proportionality.
ABSENT SOME FORM OF UNFAIRNESS, IT IS ASSUMED THE RACIAL DEMOGRAPHICS OF EVERY INSTITUTION WOULD MATCH THAT OF THE POPULATION AT LARGE.
If blacks are underrepresented in science research labs or overrepresented among arrested felons, the only allowable explanation is racism.
The possibility that such racial disparities reflect the actual distribution of skills or differences in behavior is taboo.
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In 2021 THE REAL ESTATE WEBSITE REDFIN DECLARED IT WOULD NOT PROVIDE POTENTIAL HOME BUYERS WITH INFORMATION ABOUT NEIGHBORHOOD CRIME RATES.
According to Redfin’s chief growth officer, there were “troubling signs” that crime data were biased.
The victims of crime were “more likely to describe their offender as young, male, and Black than would be expected given the representation of those groups in the population.”
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IT WAS NOT CONCEIVABLE YOUNG BLACK MALES MAY IN FACT COMMIT CRIME AT A HIGHER RATE THAN THEIR POPULATION PERCENTAGE.
In June 2022, bioethicist Ezekiel Emanuel and epidemiologist Cary Gross called on Congress to require the National Institutes of Health (NIH) fund science researchers who “look like the country.”
Currently, blacks receive less than 2 percent of NIH support for the most cutting-edge science—a mark of funding inequity according to the NIH itself.
(end of section 1)
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(own comments)
"The explanation for racial disparities is the large academic skills gaps."
Another explanation is the victimization trap, if you're constantly told you're being held back because of racism and lack of personal betterment and achievement is not your fault you'll cry more and try less.
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"If hiring and promotion criteria mean that a workplace is not proportionally 'diverse,' then those criteria must be abandoned."
The reality of free market economics is people are hired, promoted, paid, fired and treated based on their productivity value not their skin color or sex.
If Company A will not hire, pay, and promote Person X “fairly” according to value competing Company B will.
Company A will fail and Company B will prosper.
In a free market economy companies that succeed discriminates based on economics, not based on race or sex.
If Person X is not satisfied by their employment result, the solutions are looking for another employer, self-improvement, or starting own company, not crying to government or blaming and denigrating as racists a group of people who have a different skin color.
Other than economics, if Person X behaves well including staying out of trouble and cooperating with the police they will be fine.
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"The targets of the rioters and their supporters are the very fundamentals of a fair society: meritocracy, fealty to the rule of law, and respect for our civilizational inheritance."
Growing acceptance of the "everything bad is caused by racism" doctrine is magic and a dream to dem demi-commies.
To make sense of the negative Democrats’ illiberal illogical racism illusion nonsense We must realize Dems and supporting bleak-chic mainstream media stand for and desire Marxist negation of free market economics and tear-down bad behavior zat enables zeir dream.
Corrupt and bankrupt America be zeir fundamental shake-down take-down tools.
Zeir dream be nightmare communist government full control equal-misery-equity socialism prison.
Zei want All We 47.5% positives to be throttled, bled and dead under zeir 5% shapeless-form politburo mafia quarks' communist control.
Zeir woke unspoken goal be America per antecedent USSR and current Kim-North Korea model.
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