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In order to create a situation where people have equality of opportunity, it's often necessary to ensure that the individual had an equal outcome that creates t

In order to create a situation where people have equality of opportunity, it's often necessary to ensure that the individual had an equal outcome that creates the necessary starting state.

ralusek 8y ago
Conflating those two inherently different concepts for the sake of convenience will not net good systems. Equality of outcome is NOT a substitute for equality of opportunity. Even if attempting to create as equal as possible of a starting state has some surface similarities with equality of outcome, it's important to maintain the distinction.
tomp 8y ago
In theory I agree but in practice that often leads to racism. For example, some people support discrimination for blacks (& against whites) at e.g. college admissions, purportedly to offset their (statistically) worse family background (in terms of education and wealth). Clearly, that's a terrible and racist solution, with the better and obviously correct solution being... to support people from worse family backgrounds! Instead of targeting the proxy for the problem, you solve the problem itself.
- fzeroracer 8y ago
  The flaw with this argument is that if you recognize that for example, black people are generally worse off in family background than white people, then you end up back at the point where you on average offer more aid for black families than white ones which by your argument would be racist. You're not solving the problem at all by attempting to sweep racism under the rug; quite the opposite in fact because it fails to address how race affects family background and discrimination in the first place.
  - gdy 8y ago
    Why on Earth supporting poor people regardless of their race would be racist by anyone's criteria? It would seem you are the racist here thinking a person needs support because he is black, not because he is poor.
    - fzeroracer 8y ago
      You need to reread my argument if that's what you came out of it with.
      - gdy 8y ago
        You need to reread my argument if that's what you came out of it with.
        fzeroracer 8y ago
        It's clear you're not here to actually argue in good faith, which is a shame.
        gdy 8y ago
        It's clear you're not here to actually argue in good faith, which is a shame.
    - ForrestN 8y ago
      Think of it like this. If you wanted to support all individual poor people in America equally, you'll end up helping a disproportionate number of black people, because black people are disproportionately poor. So it's actually reasonable to say "black people need a disproportionate amount of help" if you're trying to help poverty in an unbiased way.
      - gdy 8y ago
        That is imprecise to the point of being unreasonable. In your example help isn't given to all black people, only to the poor ones. If you consider help given to poor black people vs. help given to poor white people, it becomes proportional.
  - tomp 8y ago
    > which by your argument would be racist. You seem to have misunderstood my argument; maybe I wasn’t really clear in that part. I think a policy that helps lots of poor black people, some poor white people, and doesn’t help Obama’s daughters (because they don’t need help), is a good, fair, and most importantly effective policy. A policy that doesn’t help poor white people is racist. A policy that helps Obama’s daughters is ineffective (and I don’t want my tax money to go to that cause).
    - fzeroracer 8y ago
      A policy that affects one group of people more than others by racial lines sounds like a racist policy, don't you think? Which was my entire point. You're in effect, arguing for a policy that is racist by your own prior argument. We have affirmative action policies and the like because we admit that some groups of people are disadvantaged due to a multitude of circumstances and we attempt to do things in such a way as to ensure that they can mitigate those circumstances.
      - DuskStar 8y ago
        I think you're conflating the two different definitions of racism here. In one, something is racist if it has different impacts on people of different races - not due to their race, but due to some correlated variable. In another definition of racism, something is racist if it uses race as a determining factor in behavior or treatment. Providing aid to low-income families is racist by the first definition, but not by the second. But (damn near) everything is racist by the first definition.
stmfreak 8y ago
Why? There are many, if not the majority, of examples of mobility across outcomes. People don’t have to be born rich to become rich. Nor poor to remain poor. So many millions of people have taken advantage of equal or even unequal opportunities to create better outcomes for themselves and their descendants, why now are those successes all invalid and only by shoveling equality of outcome onto the “disadvantaged” are we able to make things fair?
candybar 8y ago
Doesn't this mean Harvard should accept everyone? If equality of outcome is important - and I'd argue that it is to a much greater extent than most people would consider acceptable - doesn't it stand to reason that we should care about it at the level of individuals, not merely populations? What's strange to me is that people seem to think that equality is only important when talking about small differences across arbitrary social constructs, while entirely ignoring much larger gaps in individuals.

In order to create a situation where people have equality of opportunity, it's often necessary to ensure that the individual had an equal outcome that creates the necessary starting state.

ralusek 8y ago

Conflating those two inherently different concepts for the sake of convenience will not net good systems. Equality of outcome is NOT a substitute for equality of opportunity. Even if attempting to create as equal as possible of a starting state has some surface similarities with equality of outcome, it's important to maintain the distinction.

tomp 8y ago

In theory I agree but in practice that often leads to racism. For example, some people support discrimination for blacks (& against whites) at e.g. college admissions, purportedly to offset their (statistically) worse family background (in terms of education and wealth). Clearly, that's a terrible and racist solution, with the better and obviously correct solution being... to support people from worse family backgrounds! Instead of targeting the proxy for the problem, you solve the problem itself.

fzeroracer 8y ago
The flaw with this argument is that if you recognize that for example, black people are generally worse off in family background than white people, then you end up back at the point where you on average offer more aid for black families than white ones which by your argument would be racist. You're not solving the problem at all by attempting to sweep racism under the rug; quite the opposite in fact because it fails to address how race affects family background and discrimination in the first place.
- gdy 8y ago
  Why on Earth supporting poor people regardless of their race would be racist by anyone's criteria? It would seem you are the racist here thinking a person needs support because he is black, not because he is poor.
  - fzeroracer 8y ago
    You need to reread my argument if that's what you came out of it with.
    - gdy 8y ago
      You need to reread my argument if that's what you came out of it with.
      - fzeroracer 8y ago
        It's clear you're not here to actually argue in good faith, which is a shame.
        gdy 8y ago
        It's clear you're not here to actually argue in good faith, which is a shame.
  - ForrestN 8y ago
    Think of it like this. If you wanted to support all individual poor people in America equally, you'll end up helping a disproportionate number of black people, because black people are disproportionately poor. So it's actually reasonable to say "black people need a disproportionate amount of help" if you're trying to help poverty in an unbiased way.
    - gdy 8y ago
      That is imprecise to the point of being unreasonable. In your example help isn't given to all black people, only to the poor ones. If you consider help given to poor black people vs. help given to poor white people, it becomes proportional.
- tomp 8y ago
  > which by your argument would be racist. You seem to have misunderstood my argument; maybe I wasn’t really clear in that part. I think a policy that helps lots of poor black people, some poor white people, and doesn’t help Obama’s daughters (because they don’t need help), is a good, fair, and most importantly effective policy. A policy that doesn’t help poor white people is racist. A policy that helps Obama’s daughters is ineffective (and I don’t want my tax money to go to that cause).
  - fzeroracer 8y ago
    A policy that affects one group of people more than others by racial lines sounds like a racist policy, don't you think? Which was my entire point. You're in effect, arguing for a policy that is racist by your own prior argument. We have affirmative action policies and the like because we admit that some groups of people are disadvantaged due to a multitude of circumstances and we attempt to do things in such a way as to ensure that they can mitigate those circumstances.
    - DuskStar 8y ago
      I think you're conflating the two different definitions of racism here. In one, something is racist if it has different impacts on people of different races - not due to their race, but due to some correlated variable. In another definition of racism, something is racist if it uses race as a determining factor in behavior or treatment. Providing aid to low-income families is racist by the first definition, but not by the second. But (damn near) everything is racist by the first definition.

stmfreak 8y ago

Why? There are many, if not the majority, of examples of mobility across outcomes. People don’t have to be born rich to become rich. Nor poor to remain poor. So many millions of people have taken advantage of equal or even unequal opportunities to create better outcomes for themselves and their descendants, why now are those successes all invalid and only by shoveling equality of outcome onto the “disadvantaged” are we able to make things fair?

candybar 8y ago

Doesn't this mean Harvard should accept everyone? If equality of outcome is important - and I'd argue that it is to a much greater extent than most people would consider acceptable - doesn't it stand to reason that we should care about it at the level of individuals, not merely populations? What's strange to me is that people seem to think that equality is only important when talking about small differences across arbitrary social constructs, while entirely ignoring much larger gaps in individuals.