A few thoughts on rascism / affirmative action

[hmkpoker]

Let's say you are an employer of a certain business in technologies. You have one job opening, and you have two candidates. Both are of the same sex, same socio-econimic status, and have identical qualifications. There is only one variable: one is white, and one is black.

You are not regulated by affirmative action, and you want to choose the best employee. You recall reading a study that conclusively found a correlation between race and IQ, and it was clearly demonstrated that white people, on average, get higher IQ scores than black people. This being the only meaningful variable, you believe that there is a slightly better chance that the white candidate will be smarter/perform better than the black candidate.

Your logic would be flawed. A random black person might be more likely to have a lower IQ, but what if we knew that the black person was applying to a skilled, white-collar job? Isn't it equally reasonable to believe that this study might suggest that such a correlation might mean that blacks are less likely to be in such a situation in the first place? Knowing that this particular black person is in this situation despite the increased unlikelihood, wouldn't this render whatever inference you drew from the data meaningless?

Moreover, surely you know that this situation never happens. We do not make judgements about people in a vacuum. When are we in situations when you deal with a "random black" or a "random white"? All these decisions must exist in some kind of context, and the presence of these persons in that context provides us with more partial information that we are undoubtedly better off using. Poker books are full of ways to interpret various factors at the table: what it's likely to mean if the fellow wears a bowtie, what it's likely to mean if the guy furrows his brow, what it's likely to mean if the guy bets in a certain situation, etc. But when we are actually at the poker table making these decisions, we are not judging categories; we are taking a critical look at the individual, and judging him.

Suggesting that it is somehow meaningful to take a test and say "well whites are more X and blacks are more Y" is preposterous. Race is but one small factor in drawing a conclusions about somebody, and we are always provided with more meaningful information. How old is this person? What sex is he/she? Education? Background? Family life? Political beliefs? Religious beliefs? What does this person dress like? What kind of personality does this person have?

The sum of these variables is far more important in elucidating a meaningful judgement. No one can make a judgement about someone in a vacuum based solely on race. If I tell you "person X checks...what hand do you think he is holding," you would certainly know that you have completely insufficient information to render a meaningful decision. Putting so much emphasis on one variable leaves you equally crippled in your decision making.

We run into other problems when we place so much emphasis on our grouping mechanisms. A lot of people on this forum believe that affirmative action is justified. When the groups are given identity, the logic is enticing: blacks, statistically, aren't making as much as whites. Blacks are more likely to come from poor socio-economic backgrounds, and the correlation between early SES and later success in life is well understood. Affirmative action results, therefore, in just redistribution: rich whites are giving to poor blacks.

But this is not the case. In any hiring situation where affirmative action is involved, two people who are going for the same job have their outcome influenced by the AA variable. Now, if it were the case that these people were random whites and blacks functioning in a vacuum, yes, it would be more likely that the white person got a better shot at life and should give the black person his/her turn. But you'd be ignoring the context: the two people in this situation are applying for the same job. The justification for the affirmative action in the first place, which assumed that white people are more likely to have better social positions than blacks, is inherently voided. You're not taking a job away from the higher, statistically average white person that you'd like to be taking it away from, and giving it to a disadvantaged black; you're taking a job away from some white schmo who, despite a slightly higher unlikelihood, is in the same [censored] position. It would be more accurate to say that affirmative action redistributes opportunity from whites to blacks of similar socioeconomic positions, but suddenly that doesn't sound very just, now does it? The only difference is that you have created a victim: the consumer, who now must be serviced by someone who was chosen for the job for any reason other than his qualifications.

And meanwhile, the guy writing the checks to the employee is still going to be very rich, very priviledged, and (probably) very white anyway.

Race is but one variable of our being. It is no better or worse than the style of our fingerprints, the size of our feet, or the color of our eyes. We could certainly correlate any one of these with socioeconomic variables, attempt some sort of affirmative action accordingly, affect entirely different lives than we would affect had we chosen to group people in another fashion. Race is not the core of our being. It is not the entirety of our being. There is more to a black person than being black, yet to suggest that someone's jobs should be decided by this variable is to give irrational and unnecessary emphasis on this variable. It also specifically means that we must give people different moral rights; that some should be forcibly allowed priviledges that others are not allowed. It is to fly against everything that the civil rights leaders fought for. You cannot have both equality of opportunity and equality of result. It is impossible.

Argue with my logic, not my personal position in life.



Sincerely,

A priviledged upper middle class white male