Jonah Goldberg over at National Review Online’s The Corner blog makes the point that the election of Mr Obama, by a landslide, does rather crush the idea that colour is any longer a serious bar to achievement in the US. Well he has a point, although I am sure there are still plenty of racists around who might try to hinder the efforts of others on grounds of race. But as we free marketeers like to point out, outside the world intermediated via political coercion, being a bigot imposes a serious cost on the bigot, since being prejudiced against a smart, hardworking person on the grounds of their skin colour is stupid. A rational employer, for example, even if he is a bigot, will employ people if he or she can get a competitive edge thereby. That is why markets can have a general tendency, if they are allowed to work vigorously, against bigots, even if racial prejudices persist.
With the institutions run by the state, meanwhile, Mr Goldberg argues that with the election of Mr Obama, it is going to be much, much harder for defenders of racial quotas in things like university admissions to continue with the idea that reverse discrimination is required any longer. Hmmm. I personally am a bit skeptical: there is such a large vested interest in maintaining the politics of grievance that getting rid of reverse discrimination will not be easy. But I think one welcome aspect of Mr Obama’s election is that he will emphatically knock down the image of America as closed to non-whites. It has been nonsense for years of course, as a prominent, black economist like Thomas Sowell has been pointing out. Condi Rice and Colin Powell’s advancement to the summit of government hardly squares with the idea of a bigoted Republic, although having served under Republican administrations, they do not get much of a pass from the MSM. But the grievance industry, as an unintended consequence, just took a big hit with the election of the Community Organiser from Chicago. That is surely a good thing.
I think Goldberg is confusing arguments made for racial quotas with reasons for racial quotas. They are, of course, not reasons, but justifications; the support for racial quotas is antecedent, and with old justifications under assault by reality, new ones will emerge.
Of course, the employer could just be statistically racist which is, apparently, a perfectly rational response which nevertheless leads to a cost.
Never under-estimate the ability of even the most rational person to fuck up.
Every cloud has one.
Yet I suspect the likes of Sharpton and Jackson will be around for many years to come.
As long as American universities want to continue with legacy admissions that favor the children of alumni (given the incentives it creates for generous alumni donations that might be quite a while) affirmative action based admissions criteria will continue as well. Of course the most desirable course of action is the depoliticisation of university admissions in its entirety. Personally I am in favor of scrapping all subjective entrance criteria and making acceptance both transparent and purely conditional on academic merit, particularly where said academic institutions want to feed at the tax-payer funded trough
I really doubt it will change much. As a straight white male I’ll still be blamed for others failure to succeed, no matter how many hand out they are given.
“… it is going to be much, much harder for defenders of racial quotas in things like university admissions to continue with the idea that reverse discrimination is required any longer.”
One big beneficiary of affirmative action is now First Lady — paid over 300K for a made-up job so the University could hire a black woman. No, it’s here to stay.
There is no “reverse” discrimination.
It’s all racist and discrimination.
As one of the earliest organizations to embrace non-discrimination , the U.S. military DID capture some competetive advantage compared to civilian employers by providing better advancement possibilites for blacks. No system is perfect, and the military certainly isn’t. But enlistment and retention by blacks has been higher than among whites.
The whole point behind switching to a “diversity-“based line of argument rather than the traditional “historical grievances” one was so that affirmative action proponents could avoid having to make exactly this concession. It’s no coincidence that all the “diversity” newspeak really got in gear in the late 80s – precisely at the time it was becoming obvious to everyone that blacks were no longer being discriminated against in any systemic way.
“… it is going to be much, much harder for defenders of racial quotas in things like university admissions to continue with the idea that reverse discrimination is required any longer.”
No defense will be needed because no objections will be heard. Objections will soon be Hate Speech.
And you know how decent people hate Hate!
the biggest problem with racism in the US is not bigotry but the culture of victimhood when you are a minority.
i hope that with Obama’s win there will be less “woe is me because America is KKK”
Mark Green:
I hate to be the one to raise some unpleasant points, but…
No, statistical discrimination, if based on stereotypes that are statistically true (and employers usually know which ones are) does not lead to a cost — on the contrary, not practising such discrimination leads to a cost if everyone else in the trade is practising it. This is a true fact that’s rarely, if ever addressed by libertarians. It is probably possible to convincingly argue that even deeply rooted statistical discrimination will eventually be overcome by rational actors without government involvement, or at least that government involvement is likely to make matters only worse in any case (e.g. from a public choice perspective). But I almost never hear intelligent arguments from libertarians along these lines; I just keep coming across the same worn-out false claims that discrimination can be practised by businesses only at a loss, even though anyone smart enough to pass Microeconomics 101 should be able to see why this is false.
In fact, even when it comes to taste-based discrimination, it’s not possible to dismiss it outright by simplistic arguments that the market will eliminate it because it incurs costs. If most people really have a preference to discriminate, then they will be ready to pay extra for a segregated environment, and the market will produce discrimination in accordance with consumers’ preferences. The standard libertarian simplistic argument is akin to claiming that since it incurs costs to paint, decorate, and clean a store, a free market will result in all stores looking like dirty, ugly, barren warehouses, because no store owner could ever be competitive if he wasted money on making it look nicer.
Again, I’m not saying that these arguments cannot be addressed adequately from a libertarian standpoint. In fact, I’d love to see a thorough, intelligent, and honest treatment of these issues from a free market perspective, but nobody seems to be trying. Endlessly repeating the “bigotry incurs cost” mantra is perhaps good enough to counter some even more simplistic arguments that are often parroted by leftists, but it’s entirely useless at any higher level of discussion.
Look it’s time the word racist as applied so liberally to those of us with white skin is retired. Whites are the least ‘racist’ beings in the world. Non-whites exclude the “other’ on principle everywhere and furthermore all these excluders have superiority complexes larger than the universe.
For too long whites have accepted all the nonsense that the problems in the non-white world stem from racism and colonisation. What rot.
The colonisation of Asia and Africa occurred because these areas were basket cases. The colonisers left and the colonies reverted to being basket cases. The one exception to this is India where the Hindu population had been subjugated before the raj by Muslims. The British neutralized the Muslim conquest and the non-Islamics removed themselves from the basket case side of the ledger.
So please stop calling everyone with white skin a real or potential racist. The world is full of masses of others who can legitimately claim the description.
Vivictius is right….whiners and liars don’t change when their lies are proven lies.
In logic and reason you are correct J.P. – but the left hate logic and reason.
I know that Peter Hitchins is a nasty man in some ways – but he is right when he claims (for example in todays “Mail on Sunday”) that the Obama Administration will lead to MORE not less of this race based stuff.
Peter Hitchins is also correct when he asks what is the point of sending troops thousands of miles to fight for American principles in various Hell holes around the world – when those same principles are being destroyed at home.
For example the schools and universities of the United States mostly teach hatred for traditional American principles.
And, yes, the various Marxists individuals and groups cooperate with radical Muslim individuals and groups. They give each other money from their charitiable foundations (often money that comes from dead Republicans) and they give each other university place and other nice jobs.
The life of Barack Obama (such as getting into Harvard Law School by the influence of Khalidi – and later paying Khalidi back by Obama and Ayers making sure that charitable money went to Khalidi’s projects) is a case in point.
Chicago stinks with the cooperation of these people – and the whole nation may go the same way.