Are
disparate outcomes always the result of discrimination against
protected groups? Many on the left claim claim that, but are
they factually correct? They seem to want to deny all evidence
that discrimination is not a significant cause, and to attack
anyone trying to present such evidence of differences in merit
as "racist", "sexist", "homophobic", or "xenophobic" to shame
them into withdrawing their evidence. But do such attacks have
any merit themselves? Are differences in hiring, lending, or
congressional district drawing the result of "institutional
racism" or whatever is the latest popular target for scorn?
It is the thesis of this article that while there are cases of
what might be called "institutional racism" at play, for the
most part it is now almost insignificant, and attacks on it more
often an attempt to deny selection for merit in ways the accuser
doesn't like or doesn't want to accept.
The touchy issue centers on IQ, used as an estimate of general
intelligence g. Despite ages of
attempts to measure it in an unbiased manner, too many measures
appear which attempt to measure it that tend to agree, which
tend to estimate the average IQ of white Americans as 100, of
Black Americans as 85, of Hispanic Americans and Native
Americans as 90-95, of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean Americans,
and Scots, as 105. and Ashkenazi Jews as 115. Those numbers tend
to predict the success of those groups in school and in the
workplace.
Those who attack those who make these points generally commit an
error in logic and statistics, They try to cast them as
asserting that everyone in one of these groups Has the average
IQ of that group. They way to use the statistics is to compare
the performance of persons of about the same IQ from any group.
If those performances are about the same, and they are, then
that can be taken as compelling evidence of the absence of
discrimination of one group by another, contrary to the doctrine
of some that there is pervasive systematic discrimination
operating. The evidence is clear. There might be a little
discrimination at work, and that is troublesome, but the amount
is so little that it doesn't make any difference to average
performance. It may then be seen as not just the best predictor
of performance, but the only one that matters. That is not the
result that satisfies the narrative of "social justice
warriors".
A perverse effect of such disparate outcome jurisprudence is
that it tends to validate the proclivity of "social justice
warriors" to find bigotry everywhere, even where none exists.
That enables them to shame virtuous people into irrational, and
ultimately harmful, behaviors.
Notes:
1. Disparate impact was established United States Supreme Court
as Ricci v. DeStefano. At the heart of the Ricci case
was the doctrine of disparate-impact discrimination, which the
Supreme Court first articulated in its 1971 decision in Griggs v. Duke Power Company. At issue
in Griggs was the
requirement that employees hired into service jobs at the power
company's facilities had to possess a high-school diploma and
achieve a minimum score on an IQ test. The plaintiffs argued
that these rules disqualified too many black job applicants,
thereby violating Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964,
which prohibits employment discrimination based on race, color,
religion, sex, or national origin.
The Supreme Court agreed, ruling that job criteria with an
adverse or exclusionary effect on minorities — even if those
criteria were "neutral on their face, and even neutral in terms
of intent" — could violate the Title VII ban on race
discrimination in hiring. The Court further stipulated that
employers could escape liability for "disparate impact" only if
they demonstrated that their adverse selection practices had "a
manifest relationship to the employment in question" or that
they were justified by "business necessity."
In the Ricci case, a
5-4 majority of the Court read the facts narrowly to conclude
that New Haven's civil-service exam was sufficiently related to
the jobs in question to survive scrutiny and ultimately sided
with the firefighters who had sued to have their scores
reinstated.
2. The Dead End of “Disparate Impact”, Amy L.
Wax, National Affairs, Summer 2012
"In the sphere of employment, the key questions are: "Why do
some people compete more effectively than others for jobs and
social rewards?" and "What can be done about it?" These
questions are complicated and pressing, and the law of disparate
impact does nothing to address them. It in fact only distracts
us from finding urgently needed answers."
3. Why Cognitive Inequality Matters, Stefan
Molyneux.
4. Heterodox Academy. Challenge political
correctness.
