While as always you make some good points, Steve, I think some parts need to be better distilled.
First off, "Affirmative Action" is often the term used in the US for the concept more accurately called "Positive Discrimination" sometimes in the UK. The concept is that intentional, official discrimination now and into the future, is a help…
While as always you make some good points, Steve, I think some parts need to be better distilled.
First off, "Affirmative Action" is often the term used in the US for the concept more accurately called "Positive Discrimination" sometimes in the UK. The concept is that intentional, official discrimination now and into the future, is a helpful part of the cure for both official and unofficial discrimination in the past or present. Since technically, "Affirmative Action" can also include non-discrimination, and is specific to only the US, let's use the more accurate term for the concept - "Positive Discrimination". That acknowledges that it is indeed discrimination, while asserting that it's for a positive intention.
In much more recent times, some have used the term "DEI" as a sloppy alias for PD (or for AA). Again, it's sloppy because "DEI" is a much broader movement, and PD is at most one component.
So when we are discussing PD specifically, lets use the term PD (Positive Discrimination), not AA which is both broader (including non-PD facets) as well a narrower (AA is only applicable to the US, PD is a philosophy used in many nations). And using "DEI" as a synonym for PD is even worse.
An example. Positive Discrimination is by definition not race neutral or "color blind". You can't do "positive" discrimination on the basis of race, while being racially neutral or colorblind. So when you say "Affirmative Action, at least on paper, was meant to be colourblind" the only logical interpretation I can take is that the non-discriminatory (non-PD) subset of the broader thing called Affirmative Action was colorblind, even if the PD component was inherent color conscious. Since the topic was PD (or the PD subset of AA), that is just confounding clarity.
OK, let's move from clarifying the terminology to dealing with the content.
The original sales case for PD (then as a component of the Affirmative Action umbrella) was to suggest that if you have two candidates (for employment or admission) who were virtually equally qualified, the minority candidate should be chosen. That is, PD would consist of only a very light thumb on the scales of meritocratic selection.
Alas, many suspect that the need to meet informal quotas has resulted in a PD culture of "place as much weight on the scale as it takes to achieve the numerical outcome targets". And the selectors (for jobs, contracts or admissions) have tended to be extremely opaque about how much "thumb on the scale" they are actually using to achieve their goals - how much they are compromising merit to achieve informal quotas. The very fact that the administrators of PD are so uniformly secretive, combined with anecdotes of hiring incompetents (anecdotes do not generalize to statistics), has led to suspicion that quality has been more severely compromised than the administrators want to admit, to appease the "equal outcomes not equal opportunity" pressures.
Actually, there are two ways such Positive Discrimination (when implemented by the lowering of standards) can operate: selectively and universally. In the former, the standards are lowered ONLY for those favored by the PD; in the latter, the standards are lowered for everyone. An example of selective lowering of standards it the proposal to grade Black math students differently than white or Asian students; and example of the latter was when Oregon removed the requirement of passing some ability tests to graduate High School, on the grounds that there were too many people of color failing the tests - but the removal of that requirement was for everybody, not just people of color.
Being concerned about slippage of quality control is not the same motive as wanting to keep minorities oppressed, no matter how much Critical Social Justice ideologues try to tactically conflate those two, so they can dismiss ANY question of lowered standards as simply an expression of some ism or phobia.
So the people calling perceived incompetence being a "DEI xxxxxx" are basically asserting (in a terminologically problematic way that I have already critiqued) their perception that certain people are getting positions they are unqualified for based on meeting quotas without sufficient concern for competence.
Let's just say that a hypothesis that substantial reduction in merit based or competence based filtering is occurring in order to meet external quota goals ("a workforce more representative of the nation's demographics") is NOT prima facie ridiculous, immediately dismissible as impossible. I would like to hope that hypothesis is wrong, but hoping doesn't make that true.
But the way to show it is wrong is to show real world data to validate the opposite (no meaningful increase in incompetence based on quota filling), rather than trying to silence/excommunicate the questioner as a racist/sexist/etc. Supporters of PD almost always question the questioners' motive, while preventing any real unbiased assessment of the degree of statistical truth behind the assertion.
This question of prioritizing demographic outcomes over merit is separate from the argument over whether intentional official discrimination is a feasible path to ending or redressing the human tendency to unofficially discriminate, which you and Coleman reference. I think it's important not to suggest that anybody questioning such a well-intended strategy must be a racist right winger.
Handicapping like in chess, golf or sports betting is to give a inferior player or team a somewhat equal chance against a superior player or team. Those are charged words (inferior/superior) that lead to the idea of the unqualified being placed over the qualified but jobs, promotions and educational opportunities are not a game. AA/DEI/PD are seen as handicapping at best or loaded dice at worst. Affirmative action was needed years ago, is it still?
It is hard to argue against the idea that using equity of results as a measure of equality of opportunity has an element of injustice for whomever is getting discriminated against. [Edited]
The core problem here is the pursuit of equity. Black people spent centuries being excluded from public life. And the discrimination that resulted from that was never going to be overcome by *just* saying "okay guys, you can't discriminate anymore." Some "affirmative action" was necessary to give black people a chance to enter society.
I'd argue that those efforts have mostly been failures and have even been counterproductive at times. And yes, conflating equity with equality (where most people think of opportunity) is the source of a lot of that counterprodctivity.
Dave, could you rephrase your last sentence to have somewhat fewer negatives?
As I try to unravel it, I suspect that there may be an extra and unintended negation. I think you may intend to say there there likely IS an element of injustice, but the plain structure of the sentence appears to say that there is no element of perceived injustice.
I want to note that I was NOT exploring perceived unfairness among the disfavored, I was exploring societal dysfunction which can affect all. At one end of the spectrum could be a doctor or pilot or civil engineer whose political elevation beyond their ability could cause harm to many - but there can also be widespread decrease in competence in a hundred thousand smaller ways. For example, many of the "computer errors" which afflict us in interacting with systems are really data entry errors among humans feeding the software its inputs.
It's clear that "thumb on the scale" PD based employment offers, admissions or contracts is far from the only sources of incompetence affecting society, but to the degree that it's widespread, it could potentially add significantly to the overall toll.
Note that nowhere am I in any way suggesting that people of any population group are innately more or less incompetent purely on the basis of group membership. My critique, if this is a real trend, would be of the system which yet further reduces the signal to noise ratio of merit, not on the individuals upon which such a system bestows its favors.
As an example, Claudine Gay appears to have been a mediocre scholar who would have been very unlikely to become president of a premier educational institution on her own merits - even without the unsurprising degree of plagiarism that was easy for others to find once the filters were off. In this case, the meritocratic distortion did not appear to come from nepotism, random chance, or quid pro quo with a major donor - but from a significant PD "thumb on the scale" in the selection process based on her intersectional demographic. In any case, I would find the fault not in Gay for going through the doors opened for her, but on the system causing those doors to be selectively opened for the sake of a particular vision of social justice, a vision which I believe in the end will set back rather than advance the better society. Good intentions need not lead to good outcomes.
I DO NOT know how widespread such a factor really is in society overall. I am just reporting on the assertions, and the effects if true - in regard to the hypothesis of positive discrimination potentially reducing the degree to which merit is justly assessed and used in assigning positions of authority.
When typing on a cellphone it is easy to miss something when going back to rephrase something.
As for the virtue of brevity, when relating an incident (story telling) it is easy to become long winded, but when directly trying to express an idea, less can be more.
When taking a multiple-choice test with answer choices that are a bit verbose, the shortest answer is often correct for example.
"Affirmative Action" is often the term used in the US for the concept more accurately called "Positive Discrimination" sometimes in the UK. The concept is that intentional, official discrimination now and into the future, is a helpful part of the cure for both official and unofficial discrimination in the past or present"
Yes, sadly there's a lot of confusion around the terminology. So much so that it's often used incorrectly. Affirmative action, properly speaking, is the name for efforts to make hiring and admission practices colourblind. As you can see in the legislation from which it came, the idea was to hire people "without regard to race, national origin, etc." It was about recognising that racial bias was a thing and simply ending the practice of *excluding* black people wouldn't be enough.
But as I mention, there soon came the question of how to ensure that "affirmative action" was being taken. Do you just take employers' word for it? In such a racist climate, that would be foolish. So quotas and concepts like diversity began to creep in as a way of checking that concrete efforts were being made. Not terrible ideas in and of themselves, but clearly a slippery slope. Positive discrimination is a little different, the UK's racial issues are different from those in the US, but similar in end result.
Eventually, those checks became synonymous with the anti-discrimination. And that's when the metaphorical thumb began to sit heavier and heavier on the scale. Organisations that couldn't get enough black people or women had to find ways of engineering the result. And so, there were lowered entry requirements, treating race as a positive factor, and somewhere along this timeline is where I would place the switch from AA to DEI.
AA and DEI are often used synonymously but they shouldn't be. The presence of the word "equity" in the initialism is the clearest evidence of this.
I didn't suggest that concern about lowering standards was a desire to keep minorities oppressed. Not sure if that was directed at me specifically. But the people talking about "DEI ..." are clearly not just expressing their concern for lowered standards. The accusation of being a DEI mayor, for example, IS prima facie ridiculous, and would never be levelled at an elected official who wasn't black. And, of course, there's the fact that there are many, many people who are incompetent at their jobs or who just make mistakes, many of them white, who are rarely if ever accused of not deserving their position. And never accused of attaining it on the basis of their skin colour by the people railing against DEI. The double standard should be obvious.
Perhaps the fundamental mistake here is the idea that prior to AA or even DEI, hiring/admissions practices were purely merit based. This is incredibly obviously not true. I have no problem with people objecting to unfair race-based hiring practices as regards DEI. I object to them too. But I do definitely look askance at people who think that the only example of unfair hiring practices based on race are found in DEI. Or who are deafeningly silent except on the issue of practices designed to benefit minorities.
So if they find themselves being "excommunicated" for questioning DEI, which, obviously, I object to (both the excommunication and the discriminatory aspects of DEI), it might benefit them to ask themselves whether the reason people call them racist/sexist is that they never, ever, *ever* bring that same vigour and thirst for fairness to practices that benefit white men like themselves. Because the fact remains, even today, that the only reason we need to talk about these practices is that minorities do face obstacles in many areas. And let's not forget, the overwhelming majority of them get no benefit from DEI.
What are some ways we could end "practices that benefit white men"? Definitely end legacy admissions. But what are some other examples and ways around them?
I like the idea of color blind admissions and job applications, but as I said in another comment, the inequality begins in early childhood with an unequal school system and unequal resources at home, and it compounds every year. By the time it comes time to apply for college, the gap is far too wide and color blind admissions would result in underrepresentation of black and latino people.
As politely as I can, Passion, I would really appreciate a little work on brevity; this is far, far, far from the first time.
I’m reading on my phone with failing vision but I read to the end because you make good points but I wager you could make them with a quarter the length.
While as always you make some good points, Steve, I think some parts need to be better distilled.
First off, "Affirmative Action" is often the term used in the US for the concept more accurately called "Positive Discrimination" sometimes in the UK. The concept is that intentional, official discrimination now and into the future, is a helpful part of the cure for both official and unofficial discrimination in the past or present. Since technically, "Affirmative Action" can also include non-discrimination, and is specific to only the US, let's use the more accurate term for the concept - "Positive Discrimination". That acknowledges that it is indeed discrimination, while asserting that it's for a positive intention.
In much more recent times, some have used the term "DEI" as a sloppy alias for PD (or for AA). Again, it's sloppy because "DEI" is a much broader movement, and PD is at most one component.
So when we are discussing PD specifically, lets use the term PD (Positive Discrimination), not AA which is both broader (including non-PD facets) as well a narrower (AA is only applicable to the US, PD is a philosophy used in many nations). And using "DEI" as a synonym for PD is even worse.
An example. Positive Discrimination is by definition not race neutral or "color blind". You can't do "positive" discrimination on the basis of race, while being racially neutral or colorblind. So when you say "Affirmative Action, at least on paper, was meant to be colourblind" the only logical interpretation I can take is that the non-discriminatory (non-PD) subset of the broader thing called Affirmative Action was colorblind, even if the PD component was inherent color conscious. Since the topic was PD (or the PD subset of AA), that is just confounding clarity.
OK, let's move from clarifying the terminology to dealing with the content.
The original sales case for PD (then as a component of the Affirmative Action umbrella) was to suggest that if you have two candidates (for employment or admission) who were virtually equally qualified, the minority candidate should be chosen. That is, PD would consist of only a very light thumb on the scales of meritocratic selection.
Alas, many suspect that the need to meet informal quotas has resulted in a PD culture of "place as much weight on the scale as it takes to achieve the numerical outcome targets". And the selectors (for jobs, contracts or admissions) have tended to be extremely opaque about how much "thumb on the scale" they are actually using to achieve their goals - how much they are compromising merit to achieve informal quotas. The very fact that the administrators of PD are so uniformly secretive, combined with anecdotes of hiring incompetents (anecdotes do not generalize to statistics), has led to suspicion that quality has been more severely compromised than the administrators want to admit, to appease the "equal outcomes not equal opportunity" pressures.
Actually, there are two ways such Positive Discrimination (when implemented by the lowering of standards) can operate: selectively and universally. In the former, the standards are lowered ONLY for those favored by the PD; in the latter, the standards are lowered for everyone. An example of selective lowering of standards it the proposal to grade Black math students differently than white or Asian students; and example of the latter was when Oregon removed the requirement of passing some ability tests to graduate High School, on the grounds that there were too many people of color failing the tests - but the removal of that requirement was for everybody, not just people of color.
Being concerned about slippage of quality control is not the same motive as wanting to keep minorities oppressed, no matter how much Critical Social Justice ideologues try to tactically conflate those two, so they can dismiss ANY question of lowered standards as simply an expression of some ism or phobia.
So the people calling perceived incompetence being a "DEI xxxxxx" are basically asserting (in a terminologically problematic way that I have already critiqued) their perception that certain people are getting positions they are unqualified for based on meeting quotas without sufficient concern for competence.
Let's just say that a hypothesis that substantial reduction in merit based or competence based filtering is occurring in order to meet external quota goals ("a workforce more representative of the nation's demographics") is NOT prima facie ridiculous, immediately dismissible as impossible. I would like to hope that hypothesis is wrong, but hoping doesn't make that true.
But the way to show it is wrong is to show real world data to validate the opposite (no meaningful increase in incompetence based on quota filling), rather than trying to silence/excommunicate the questioner as a racist/sexist/etc. Supporters of PD almost always question the questioners' motive, while preventing any real unbiased assessment of the degree of statistical truth behind the assertion.
This question of prioritizing demographic outcomes over merit is separate from the argument over whether intentional official discrimination is a feasible path to ending or redressing the human tendency to unofficially discriminate, which you and Coleman reference. I think it's important not to suggest that anybody questioning such a well-intended strategy must be a racist right winger.
Handicapping like in chess, golf or sports betting is to give a inferior player or team a somewhat equal chance against a superior player or team. Those are charged words (inferior/superior) that lead to the idea of the unqualified being placed over the qualified but jobs, promotions and educational opportunities are not a game. AA/DEI/PD are seen as handicapping at best or loaded dice at worst. Affirmative action was needed years ago, is it still?
It is hard to argue against the idea that using equity of results as a measure of equality of opportunity has an element of injustice for whomever is getting discriminated against. [Edited]
The core problem here is the pursuit of equity. Black people spent centuries being excluded from public life. And the discrimination that resulted from that was never going to be overcome by *just* saying "okay guys, you can't discriminate anymore." Some "affirmative action" was necessary to give black people a chance to enter society.
I'd argue that those efforts have mostly been failures and have even been counterproductive at times. And yes, conflating equity with equality (where most people think of opportunity) is the source of a lot of that counterprodctivity.
Dave, could you rephrase your last sentence to have somewhat fewer negatives?
As I try to unravel it, I suspect that there may be an extra and unintended negation. I think you may intend to say there there likely IS an element of injustice, but the plain structure of the sentence appears to say that there is no element of perceived injustice.
I want to note that I was NOT exploring perceived unfairness among the disfavored, I was exploring societal dysfunction which can affect all. At one end of the spectrum could be a doctor or pilot or civil engineer whose political elevation beyond their ability could cause harm to many - but there can also be widespread decrease in competence in a hundred thousand smaller ways. For example, many of the "computer errors" which afflict us in interacting with systems are really data entry errors among humans feeding the software its inputs.
It's clear that "thumb on the scale" PD based employment offers, admissions or contracts is far from the only sources of incompetence affecting society, but to the degree that it's widespread, it could potentially add significantly to the overall toll.
Note that nowhere am I in any way suggesting that people of any population group are innately more or less incompetent purely on the basis of group membership. My critique, if this is a real trend, would be of the system which yet further reduces the signal to noise ratio of merit, not on the individuals upon which such a system bestows its favors.
As an example, Claudine Gay appears to have been a mediocre scholar who would have been very unlikely to become president of a premier educational institution on her own merits - even without the unsurprising degree of plagiarism that was easy for others to find once the filters were off. In this case, the meritocratic distortion did not appear to come from nepotism, random chance, or quid pro quo with a major donor - but from a significant PD "thumb on the scale" in the selection process based on her intersectional demographic. In any case, I would find the fault not in Gay for going through the doors opened for her, but on the system causing those doors to be selectively opened for the sake of a particular vision of social justice, a vision which I believe in the end will set back rather than advance the better society. Good intentions need not lead to good outcomes.
I DO NOT know how widespread such a factor really is in society overall. I am just reporting on the assertions, and the effects if true - in regard to the hypothesis of positive discrimination potentially reducing the degree to which merit is justly assessed and used in assigning positions of authority.
“ Dave, could you rephrase your last sentence to have somewhat fewer negatives?”
The council failed to overturn the ban.
For that, I need to draw a diagram. Dave’s sentence would hard to reduce.
When typing on a cellphone it is easy to miss something when going back to rephrase something.
As for the virtue of brevity, when relating an incident (story telling) it is easy to become long winded, but when directly trying to express an idea, less can be more.
When taking a multiple-choice test with answer choices that are a bit verbose, the shortest answer is often correct for example.
“Created equal” is sloppy wording. It means “ possess identical rights under law” but phrases it as an obvious falsehood.
How much dispute we could have avoided with a few minutes reflection on the wording.
"Affirmative Action" is often the term used in the US for the concept more accurately called "Positive Discrimination" sometimes in the UK. The concept is that intentional, official discrimination now and into the future, is a helpful part of the cure for both official and unofficial discrimination in the past or present"
Yes, sadly there's a lot of confusion around the terminology. So much so that it's often used incorrectly. Affirmative action, properly speaking, is the name for efforts to make hiring and admission practices colourblind. As you can see in the legislation from which it came, the idea was to hire people "without regard to race, national origin, etc." It was about recognising that racial bias was a thing and simply ending the practice of *excluding* black people wouldn't be enough.
But as I mention, there soon came the question of how to ensure that "affirmative action" was being taken. Do you just take employers' word for it? In such a racist climate, that would be foolish. So quotas and concepts like diversity began to creep in as a way of checking that concrete efforts were being made. Not terrible ideas in and of themselves, but clearly a slippery slope. Positive discrimination is a little different, the UK's racial issues are different from those in the US, but similar in end result.
Eventually, those checks became synonymous with the anti-discrimination. And that's when the metaphorical thumb began to sit heavier and heavier on the scale. Organisations that couldn't get enough black people or women had to find ways of engineering the result. And so, there were lowered entry requirements, treating race as a positive factor, and somewhere along this timeline is where I would place the switch from AA to DEI.
AA and DEI are often used synonymously but they shouldn't be. The presence of the word "equity" in the initialism is the clearest evidence of this.
I didn't suggest that concern about lowering standards was a desire to keep minorities oppressed. Not sure if that was directed at me specifically. But the people talking about "DEI ..." are clearly not just expressing their concern for lowered standards. The accusation of being a DEI mayor, for example, IS prima facie ridiculous, and would never be levelled at an elected official who wasn't black. And, of course, there's the fact that there are many, many people who are incompetent at their jobs or who just make mistakes, many of them white, who are rarely if ever accused of not deserving their position. And never accused of attaining it on the basis of their skin colour by the people railing against DEI. The double standard should be obvious.
Perhaps the fundamental mistake here is the idea that prior to AA or even DEI, hiring/admissions practices were purely merit based. This is incredibly obviously not true. I have no problem with people objecting to unfair race-based hiring practices as regards DEI. I object to them too. But I do definitely look askance at people who think that the only example of unfair hiring practices based on race are found in DEI. Or who are deafeningly silent except on the issue of practices designed to benefit minorities.
So if they find themselves being "excommunicated" for questioning DEI, which, obviously, I object to (both the excommunication and the discriminatory aspects of DEI), it might benefit them to ask themselves whether the reason people call them racist/sexist is that they never, ever, *ever* bring that same vigour and thirst for fairness to practices that benefit white men like themselves. Because the fact remains, even today, that the only reason we need to talk about these practices is that minorities do face obstacles in many areas. And let's not forget, the overwhelming majority of them get no benefit from DEI.
What are some ways we could end "practices that benefit white men"? Definitely end legacy admissions. But what are some other examples and ways around them?
I like the idea of color blind admissions and job applications, but as I said in another comment, the inequality begins in early childhood with an unequal school system and unequal resources at home, and it compounds every year. By the time it comes time to apply for college, the gap is far too wide and color blind admissions would result in underrepresentation of black and latino people.
As politely as I can, Passion, I would really appreciate a little work on brevity; this is far, far, far from the first time.
I’m reading on my phone with failing vision but I read to the end because you make good points but I wager you could make them with a quarter the length.