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The underlying important question is what do you define as equality? Equality of outcomes, or equality of opportunity? This is a very slippery slope when some

The underlying important question is what do you define as equality? Equality of outcomes, or equality of opportunity? This is a very slippery slope when some definitions are not equal, or stated, as we’ve come into a recent crisis of definitions being rewritten unnaturally (I understand the meaning of words change over time, but there have been recent inorganic changes, I’d argue) The classic opportunity of outcome is proven to be doomed, and is not aligned with your imperfect world assertion. I can get behind equality of opportunity, which I’d argue affirmative action’s impact was antithetical to this vision. We’ve come to a point where the new generation is being held accountable for something they had no hand in. We shouldn’t be trying to treat these diversity reports as a checkbook that needs to be balanced. I heard something that resonated with me, and will probably get me downvoted to oblivion (if it hasn’t already happened): those that want to look for racism, will find it. Once a certain area is solved so to speak, some groups tend to look even harder, and we get to a point now where we have this ever-widening definition of what racism is, the goal posts ever expanding, and this endless loop is our culture eating itself alive. I shouldn’t have to say this, but this doesn’t imply racism doesn’t exist. But it does imply that our definitions of it have radically evolved, and perhaps is being used for ulterior motives outside of “equality”

djur 3y ago
How exactly has equality of outcome been "proven to be doomed"? At the aggregate level, at least?
- kneebonian 3y ago
  Equality of outcome is just a fancy way of saying tyranny. Freedom can only exist and only be freedom if you have the right to fail or succeed, if no one can fail or succeed because everyone is made the same there is no freedom, there is no choice. Those that advocate for equality of outcome desire to make again a slave state, where they as "superior educated white people" can ensure that black people are "taken care of" by ensuring they all have jobs, they all have housing, they all have healthcare, they all have food, and that they have no freedom.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- dcow 3y ago
  Equality of outcome can only be enforced currently by a tyrannical government. It’s wholly doomed unless we can identify and correct for every hidden variable affecting outcomes.
- akomtu 3y ago
  If the outcome doesn't depend on your actions, there's no point in doing anything. Such a lethargic society cannot function, so to push it into motion the ruler has to use force and cruelty. The people will do the work, not because they hope to get something, for the outcome is always the same - cheap food and 4 hours of sleep - but because they want to avoid punishment.
  - wizofaus 3y ago
    I don't think anyone seriously suggests "equality of outcome" should mean "regardless of any actions/decisions you take in life". I would treat it as meaning "given two different large subsets of society that differ markedly/measurably on key indicators, there shouldn't be a difference in average outcomes between those born into one subset vs the other". Depending on the indicators/subsets in question that may well be a worthwhile & achievable goal. Particularly if the "outcomes" being measured go beyond just material wealth (e.g. health/wellbeing outcomes).
    - akomtu 3y ago
      This premise about large subsets falls apart when you apply it to maples and oaks, even less it's applicable to free willed creatures gifted with intelligence. If you see a difference between two subgroups, it means your understanding of why these groups are the way they are is lacking.
      - djur 3y ago
        Maples and oaks are different species. Humans are all the same species.
        akomtu 3y ago
        Men and women are the same species, yet they are markedly different in many ways.
      - wizofaus 3y ago
        I literally have no idea what you mean. But if we see that, for instance, average life expectancy is markedly lower for the subset of population that identifies as "native American" vs that of those that identify as "white", that's clearly an inequality of outcome that there's reason to be concerned about. Which isn't to say it mightn't turn out to have a genetic basis that leaves us with limited options to compensate for, but it's surely worth ensuring better understanding the causes and doing what we can to ensure there aren't systemic barriers preventing particular subgroups from accessing the same degree of medical care etc. available to others.
- f154hfds 3y ago
  One issue is there's infinite metrics to measure outcome, and any measurement you choose will have certain groups excel in compared to others. Once we achieve equality in a certain metric we will always have new ones to work on essentially forever. This may be a good goal for people/institutions but it can't contribute to discrimination being indefinite in scope. Another issue is we're talking about group level outcomes here - which means we're already accepting that there will be biases in measurements, otherwise the group wouldn't be a 'group' (unless it's literally just skin color which is - a pretty arbitrary/racist way to group people all else being equal).
cdmcmahon 3y ago
Equality of opportunity after centuries of slavery and then legal discrimination in a society that allows (and even outright promotes) inherited wealth and opportunity is not possible. Imagine my ancestors stole all of your ancestors stuff and I still get to keep it all and anything I've built using it. We've stopped stealing your stuff now, though, so we have "equality of opportunity."
- akomtu 3y ago
  This example is about generosity. In this case you don't owe anything to your less fortunate peer, but not sharing it is greed and when greed is the driving force of our society, it's not surprising nobody wants to share his wealth. In a society of a far future that will run on generosity, being obsessed about possessions will be seen as a weakness. It seems that some proponents of the "affirmative action" sense that future society, and try to implement it here, but since they poorly understand human nature, and since their own nature is imperfect, they pervert the high ideal.
- ryandrake 3y ago
  That's a very good way of framing it: Opportunity is largely inherited, therefore there cannot be real equality of opportunity.
  - f154hfds 3y ago
    You're changing the definition of opportunity here to still mean outcome I think. > <Outcome> is somewhat inherited, therefore there cannot be real equality of <outcome>. The US used to be a land of 'opportunity' for poor immigrants. They came to the US and worked hard to overcome their circumstances and make a better life for themselves and their children. It would be insulting and demoralizing to them to say that opportunity is impossible because they're poor, because their uncle doesn't own the bank down the street. The point of opportunity is that it's _possible_ to succeed, the scales are not unfairly weighed against you by law or societal prejudice. Many things make achieving outcomes hard - poverty, mental health, bad luck - these are sometimes affected by the past too, but they don't necessarily take away opportunity in that the hope in success is still possible. This hope is important to the soul is it not? This is why opportunity is so important, it's essentially hope.
BobbyJo 3y ago
>The underlying important question is what do you define as equality? Equality of outcomes, or equality of opportunity? On an individual level, the obvious answer is opportunity, but how do you measure that? Generally via outcomes. If two groups are equally capable and have equal opportunity, you would expect similar outcomes.
- dcow 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - BobbyJo 3y ago
    > At a most naïve level, yes. But the post-modern left’s big assumption is that evolutionary, biological, and other factors can’t play a roll in those outcomes. Democracy's big assumption too btw. > At some level we have to be okay allowing for inequality of outcomes because we cant even identify let alone control all the social and biological variables of being human. We are. MIT isn't admitting people with IQs in 60s due to genetic defects are they? It's a matter of degree, and managing that requires measuring. We can't measure people's inborn abilities, so we have to make palatable assumptions measure what we can, and act accordingly. The "to discriminate or not to discriminate" choice is purely one of lesser evil. There is no good answer here.
    - dcow 3y ago
      I’m not sure I understand your MIT point. So what are the numbers today? Where’s the gap? In my example Native Americans are expected to thrive in a college environment that promotes binge drinking despite having equal distribution of IQs. That’s arguably unfair to them and isn't solved by tweaking the input distribution by identifiable racial characteristics. Rather, it’s an unfortunate adversity that needs to be overcome (ideally with awareness, empathy, and support of other people even those who do not have to face that adversity).
      - BobbyJo 3y ago
        > Rather, it’s an unfortunate adversity that needs to be overcome. Well yeah, but again > ideally with awareness, empathy, and support of other people even those who do not have to face that adversity the question here is how much support and what kinds. Any amount based on race is still a form of affirmative action, it's just not happening in a college admissions office.
dcow 3y ago
This is fundamentally the only thing that bothers me about the entire post-modern left narrative. If the goal posts were “equality of opportunity” (as they historically have been) then I’d have no problem continuing to fight until opportunity is provably equal. But if you move the goal posts to “equality of outcome” (what people mean when they say “racial equity”) and say “look we’re still a racist society” I just can’t get behind that definition and framework. The hard reality is that we have made a lot of progress and it’s almost impossible to argue that we’re missing equality of opportunity anymore. We’ve been legally equal for at least 3 generations. Yes, there are still some poor and intensely disparaged communities of predominately minority populations. I have no problems with people coming together to help those communities. But we can’t let racial equity seep into our legal framework or we’ll literally be discriminating based on race all over again and all the way down. No horrors of the past justify that level of wrongness. It’s hopeless and fruitless to try and design a “racially equitable” society, and you’re going to always just be an angry person if you set out on that path. All that said, as always with these situations, I ask “what is the end goal and how can I help get there”. 9 times out of 10, there is no end goal and that’s where I draw the line in lending my valuable time, my money, my vote, and/or any mental space for stress and concern to a proposed cause. If you came to me and said every white person has to pay e.g. $5000 this generation, 4k the next, then 3k, and so on to balance out slavery and then we’re done talking about race and we can move on I would pay up immediately even though I disagree with the idea of reparations and holding future generations accountable for the sins of their fathers. I would do it because there’s a clear goal (correct for the past) and path to achieve it (pay money). What I can’t get behind is being perpetually discriminated against as a white person under a framework of ever-evolving goalposts chasing racial equity of outcomes into the sunset.
- camgunz 3y ago
  LBJ gave the commencement speech at Howard more than 50 years ago and said: That beginning is freedom; and the barriers to that freedom are tumbling down. Freedom is the right to share, share fully and equally, in American society—to vote, to hold a job, to enter a public place, to go to school. It is the right to be treated in every part of our national life as a person equal in dignity and promise to all others. But freedom is not enough. You do not wipe away the scars of centuries by saying: Now you are free to go where you want, and do as you desire, and choose the leaders you please. You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, "you are free to compete with all the others," and still justly believe that you have been completely fair. Thus it is not enough just to open the gates of opportunity. All our citizens must have the ability to walk through those gates. --- It's gonna take a very long time. Reparations are valued in the trillions. Truly insane violence has been perpetuated on racial minorities in America. It's gonna take more than ~60 years of Jim Crow-free America to make things right.
TechBro8615 3y ago
In favor of affirmative action, one argument that doesn't even require comparing "equality of outcome/opportunity" between individuals, is that the university should have some say in the makeup of its incoming class, and should have a right to minimize its homogeneity. You might argue that race is not an attribute upon which homogeneity can legally be measured, but that won't change the fact that it's a proxy for life experience. All else being equal, two people of the same skin color will have more in common with each other than two people of differing skin colors, by definition of "all else being equal." So if you're an admissions office building a freshman class with the goal of optimizing the learning experience for each member of it - which includes the learning experience from interacting with classmates - then which would be the better outcome: (a) one where everybody looks the same and has a large degree of overlapping life experience simply due to shared skin color, or (b) one where each student has a chance to meet another student with a completely different upbringing from their own? Now, I'm personally against race-based affirmative action, but I also recognize that a freshman class composed entirely of students of the same skin color is not an ideal outcome. The fact of the matter is that everyone in that class would have some degree of similarity in their life experience, because their skin color is unavoidably something upon which people notice and discriminate (e.g. dating preferences, subconscious stereotyping, etc.). I think the ruling also understands this, and it emphasizes that university admissions offices are allowed to consider upbringing in their evaluations of applicants. So if they want a class with some poor kids and some rich kids, and some musical geniuses and some athletes, and some boys and some girls and some gay people and straight people, then they should be allowed to consider all those factors. And perhaps naturally this will result in a class with a heterogenous racial makeup. But what they can't do is work backwards from that, and assume the racial composition of their class must be a proxy for all the other axes along which they want to minimize its homogeneity. I'm not sure about the underlying logic, and I think it's possible it just shifts the problem - because there is always some human element in admissions, and I'm not sure it's possible to minimize group homogeneity along an axis without discriminating along that axis when evaluating an individual - but I do feel that explicitly discriminating evaluations of individual applicants based on race is clearly wrong. As a final point: It's also worth considering that even when discriminating on race, the universities were still discriminating along other axes arguably not "in the spirit" of affirmative action - for example, a black person from a boarding school would receive more "benefit of the doubt" than a black person from a public school. And isn't that institutionalizing whatever biases led one applicant to a boarding school but kept another at home? Maybe a positive outcome of this ruling is that it will force universities - who rightfully strive to minimize homogeneity of their incoming classes - to actively seek metrics for measuring diversity instead of lazily depending on skin color while ironically institutionalizing the same biases that affirmative action sought to eliminate.

djur 3y ago

How exactly has equality of outcome been "proven to be doomed"? At the aggregate level, at least?

kneebonian 3y ago
Equality of outcome is just a fancy way of saying tyranny. Freedom can only exist and only be freedom if you have the right to fail or succeed, if no one can fail or succeed because everyone is made the same there is no freedom, there is no choice. Those that advocate for equality of outcome desire to make again a slave state, where they as "superior educated white people" can ensure that black people are "taken care of" by ensuring they all have jobs, they all have housing, they all have healthcare, they all have food, and that they have no freedom.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
dcow 3y ago
Equality of outcome can only be enforced currently by a tyrannical government. It’s wholly doomed unless we can identify and correct for every hidden variable affecting outcomes.
akomtu 3y ago
If the outcome doesn't depend on your actions, there's no point in doing anything. Such a lethargic society cannot function, so to push it into motion the ruler has to use force and cruelty. The people will do the work, not because they hope to get something, for the outcome is always the same - cheap food and 4 hours of sleep - but because they want to avoid punishment.
- wizofaus 3y ago
  I don't think anyone seriously suggests "equality of outcome" should mean "regardless of any actions/decisions you take in life". I would treat it as meaning "given two different large subsets of society that differ markedly/measurably on key indicators, there shouldn't be a difference in average outcomes between those born into one subset vs the other". Depending on the indicators/subsets in question that may well be a worthwhile & achievable goal. Particularly if the "outcomes" being measured go beyond just material wealth (e.g. health/wellbeing outcomes).
  - akomtu 3y ago
    This premise about large subsets falls apart when you apply it to maples and oaks, even less it's applicable to free willed creatures gifted with intelligence. If you see a difference between two subgroups, it means your understanding of why these groups are the way they are is lacking.
    - djur 3y ago
      Maples and oaks are different species. Humans are all the same species.
      - akomtu 3y ago
        Men and women are the same species, yet they are markedly different in many ways.
    - wizofaus 3y ago
      I literally have no idea what you mean. But if we see that, for instance, average life expectancy is markedly lower for the subset of population that identifies as "native American" vs that of those that identify as "white", that's clearly an inequality of outcome that there's reason to be concerned about. Which isn't to say it mightn't turn out to have a genetic basis that leaves us with limited options to compensate for, but it's surely worth ensuring better understanding the causes and doing what we can to ensure there aren't systemic barriers preventing particular subgroups from accessing the same degree of medical care etc. available to others.
f154hfds 3y ago
One issue is there's infinite metrics to measure outcome, and any measurement you choose will have certain groups excel in compared to others. Once we achieve equality in a certain metric we will always have new ones to work on essentially forever. This may be a good goal for people/institutions but it can't contribute to discrimination being indefinite in scope. Another issue is we're talking about group level outcomes here - which means we're already accepting that there will be biases in measurements, otherwise the group wouldn't be a 'group' (unless it's literally just skin color which is - a pretty arbitrary/racist way to group people all else being equal).

cdmcmahon 3y ago

Equality of opportunity after centuries of slavery and then legal discrimination in a society that allows (and even outright promotes) inherited wealth and opportunity is not possible. Imagine my ancestors stole all of your ancestors stuff and I still get to keep it all and anything I've built using it. We've stopped stealing your stuff now, though, so we have "equality of opportunity."

akomtu 3y ago
This example is about generosity. In this case you don't owe anything to your less fortunate peer, but not sharing it is greed and when greed is the driving force of our society, it's not surprising nobody wants to share his wealth. In a society of a far future that will run on generosity, being obsessed about possessions will be seen as a weakness. It seems that some proponents of the "affirmative action" sense that future society, and try to implement it here, but since they poorly understand human nature, and since their own nature is imperfect, they pervert the high ideal.
ryandrake 3y ago
That's a very good way of framing it: Opportunity is largely inherited, therefore there cannot be real equality of opportunity.
- f154hfds 3y ago
  You're changing the definition of opportunity here to still mean outcome I think. > <Outcome> is somewhat inherited, therefore there cannot be real equality of <outcome>. The US used to be a land of 'opportunity' for poor immigrants. They came to the US and worked hard to overcome their circumstances and make a better life for themselves and their children. It would be insulting and demoralizing to them to say that opportunity is impossible because they're poor, because their uncle doesn't own the bank down the street. The point of opportunity is that it's _possible_ to succeed, the scales are not unfairly weighed against you by law or societal prejudice. Many things make achieving outcomes hard - poverty, mental health, bad luck - these are sometimes affected by the past too, but they don't necessarily take away opportunity in that the hope in success is still possible. This hope is important to the soul is it not? This is why opportunity is so important, it's essentially hope.

BobbyJo 3y ago

>The underlying important question is what do you define as equality? Equality of outcomes, or equality of opportunity? On an individual level, the obvious answer is opportunity, but how do you measure that? Generally via outcomes. If two groups are equally capable and have equal opportunity, you would expect similar outcomes.

dcow 3y ago
[flagged]
- BobbyJo 3y ago
  > At a most naïve level, yes. But the post-modern left’s big assumption is that evolutionary, biological, and other factors can’t play a roll in those outcomes. Democracy's big assumption too btw. > At some level we have to be okay allowing for inequality of outcomes because we cant even identify let alone control all the social and biological variables of being human. We are. MIT isn't admitting people with IQs in 60s due to genetic defects are they? It's a matter of degree, and managing that requires measuring. We can't measure people's inborn abilities, so we have to make palatable assumptions measure what we can, and act accordingly. The "to discriminate or not to discriminate" choice is purely one of lesser evil. There is no good answer here.
  - dcow 3y ago
    I’m not sure I understand your MIT point. So what are the numbers today? Where’s the gap? In my example Native Americans are expected to thrive in a college environment that promotes binge drinking despite having equal distribution of IQs. That’s arguably unfair to them and isn't solved by tweaking the input distribution by identifiable racial characteristics. Rather, it’s an unfortunate adversity that needs to be overcome (ideally with awareness, empathy, and support of other people even those who do not have to face that adversity).
    - BobbyJo 3y ago
      > Rather, it’s an unfortunate adversity that needs to be overcome. Well yeah, but again > ideally with awareness, empathy, and support of other people even those who do not have to face that adversity the question here is how much support and what kinds. Any amount based on race is still a form of affirmative action, it's just not happening in a college admissions office.

dcow 3y ago

This is fundamentally the only thing that bothers me about the entire post-modern left narrative. If the goal posts were “equality of opportunity” (as they historically have been) then I’d have no problem continuing to fight until opportunity is provably equal. But if you move the goal posts to “equality of outcome” (what people mean when they say “racial equity”) and say “look we’re still a racist society” I just can’t get behind that definition and framework. The hard reality is that we have made a lot of progress and it’s almost impossible to argue that we’re missing equality of opportunity anymore. We’ve been legally equal for at least 3 generations. Yes, there are still some poor and intensely disparaged communities of predominately minority populations. I have no problems with people coming together to help those communities. But we can’t let racial equity seep into our legal framework or we’ll literally be discriminating based on race all over again and all the way down. No horrors of the past justify that level of wrongness. It’s hopeless and fruitless to try and design a “racially equitable” society, and you’re going to always just be an angry person if you set out on that path. All that said, as always with these situations, I ask “what is the end goal and how can I help get there”. 9 times out of 10, there is no end goal and that’s where I draw the line in lending my valuable time, my money, my vote, and/or any mental space for stress and concern to a proposed cause. If you came to me and said every white person has to pay e.g. $5000 this generation, 4k the next, then 3k, and so on to balance out slavery and then we’re done talking about race and we can move on I would pay up immediately even though I disagree with the idea of reparations and holding future generations accountable for the sins of their fathers. I would do it because there’s a clear goal (correct for the past) and path to achieve it (pay money). What I can’t get behind is being perpetually discriminated against as a white person under a framework of ever-evolving goalposts chasing racial equity of outcomes into the sunset.

camgunz 3y ago
LBJ gave the commencement speech at Howard more than 50 years ago and said: That beginning is freedom; and the barriers to that freedom are tumbling down. Freedom is the right to share, share fully and equally, in American society—to vote, to hold a job, to enter a public place, to go to school. It is the right to be treated in every part of our national life as a person equal in dignity and promise to all others. But freedom is not enough. You do not wipe away the scars of centuries by saying: Now you are free to go where you want, and do as you desire, and choose the leaders you please. You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, "you are free to compete with all the others," and still justly believe that you have been completely fair. Thus it is not enough just to open the gates of opportunity. All our citizens must have the ability to walk through those gates. --- It's gonna take a very long time. Reparations are valued in the trillions. Truly insane violence has been perpetuated on racial minorities in America. It's gonna take more than ~60 years of Jim Crow-free America to make things right.

TechBro8615 3y ago

In favor of affirmative action, one argument that doesn't even require comparing "equality of outcome/opportunity" between individuals, is that the university should have some say in the makeup of its incoming class, and should have a right to minimize its homogeneity. You might argue that race is not an attribute upon which homogeneity can legally be measured, but that won't change the fact that it's a proxy for life experience. All else being equal, two people of the same skin color will have more in common with each other than two people of differing skin colors, by definition of "all else being equal." So if you're an admissions office building a freshman class with the goal of optimizing the learning experience for each member of it - which includes the learning experience from interacting with classmates - then which would be the better outcome: (a) one where everybody looks the same and has a large degree of overlapping life experience simply due to shared skin color, or (b) one where each student has a chance to meet another student with a completely different upbringing from their own? Now, I'm personally against race-based affirmative action, but I also recognize that a freshman class composed entirely of students of the same skin color is not an ideal outcome. The fact of the matter is that everyone in that class would have some degree of similarity in their life experience, because their skin color is unavoidably something upon which people notice and discriminate (e.g. dating preferences, subconscious stereotyping, etc.). I think the ruling also understands this, and it emphasizes that university admissions offices are allowed to consider upbringing in their evaluations of applicants. So if they want a class with some poor kids and some rich kids, and some musical geniuses and some athletes, and some boys and some girls and some gay people and straight people, then they should be allowed to consider all those factors. And perhaps naturally this will result in a class with a heterogenous racial makeup. But what they can't do is work backwards from that, and assume the racial composition of their class must be a proxy for all the other axes along which they want to minimize its homogeneity. I'm not sure about the underlying logic, and I think it's possible it just shifts the problem - because there is always some human element in admissions, and I'm not sure it's possible to minimize group homogeneity along an axis without discriminating along that axis when evaluating an individual - but I do feel that explicitly discriminating evaluations of individual applicants based on race is clearly wrong. As a final point: It's also worth considering that even when discriminating on race, the universities were still discriminating along other axes arguably not "in the spirit" of affirmative action - for example, a black person from a boarding school would receive more "benefit of the doubt" than a black person from a public school. And isn't that institutionalizing whatever biases led one applicant to a boarding school but kept another at home? Maybe a positive outcome of this ruling is that it will force universities - who rightfully strive to minimize homogeneity of their incoming classes - to actively seek metrics for measuring diversity instead of lazily depending on skin color while ironically institutionalizing the same biases that affirmative action sought to eliminate.