The shared hallucination is the one experienced by the people agreeing with the memo, and the ones who feel needlessly 'victimized' and 'persecuted' now that times are changing.
Of course, this is expected since the first ones to complain about growing equality are the ones who prospered disproportionately under inequality.
It has very little to do with feelings though. In my specific case I am not affected by these politics and policies whatsoever as I am thousands of miles away from the United States, and I am self employed.
To constantly read about cases where biology determines whether or not people are eligible for a particular opportunity, i.e. imposing inequality of opportunity in order to arrive at equality of outcome, is violating the very principles one claims to be opposed to. The excuse for this kind of implementation is that it is justified, in order to fix historical inequality. The people who are being discriminated against had no say in historical inequality. They were born into this kind of a society by accident of birth. If a young boy in Saudi Arabia goes to get a driving license and is told that he is no longer eligible because they have decided to randomly reject 4/5 male applicants to correct for historical injustice, he is being penalized for something he had nothing to do with. When a young boy is rejected for a job he is qualified for, citing the fact that he is the wrong sex, he is being penalized for something he had nothing to do with. Nobody should be at a disadvantage imposed on them by others using biology as a reason to do so. This is immoral, and no outcome is worth this kind of violation of principle.
In isolation, yes, you are very right. But history is anything but that, and there is always a context and reason for why things are the way they are.
I am from India, and I know bias when I see it. Classism and racism is systemic in India and whether you want to believe me or not, a person from a religion or upper caste will prefer a person from the same group. I am not going to claim that this exact same thing happens in the US, but I will not believe that it doesn't happen at all.
The thing is that the memo even mentions the problems with inherent bias, and then mentions that we need to have "open" dialogue.
The open dialogue is hard to happen when one group has been suppressed for generations.
What are you going to tell them? - Ok, we are sorry for what we have done, now we are going to be equal and you can compete for the same things? One group is dirt poor and disadvantaged, and the other has always enjoyed enough wealth to get proper education. How is that level playing field?
Minorities need to be given a hand up, at least for a generation to really make a level playing field.
As for your examples, yes, it's unfair, but that's what the under privileged group got told for generations. I guess life really is unfair.
Minorities don't need to be given a "hand up". People with demonstrable disadvantages can make a good case for the need to be given a "hand up".
The criteria for being institutionally favoured must not be rooted in biology, because it generalizes against people who do not have the requisite biological trait. This is the very same evil you are seeking to correct. You cannot use the same evil against a different group to "equalise" the wrongs committed before.
Two 15 year olds, one the son of a brahmin shopkeeper, the other, the son of a lower caste politician each score 89% in their class 10 examination. The politician's son has lived in the lap of luxury, elite coaching classes, servants, chauffer driven car, quiet studying environment. The shopkeeper's daughter shares a room with two siblings, spends 3 days a week doing a shift at the store, studies alone in an area with frequent power cuts.
By your system of favoring minorities, the politician's son is favoured over her, because he comes from a background of historical oppression. These cases are deemed "rare enough" to be considered acceptable sacrifices for the great cause of social justice.
Why must a biological standard be applied? Is this the best we can do ?
What are you going to tell the shopkeeper's daughter? Ok, we are sorry but after enough generations we will reverse this and your grandchildren will have justice?
You also cannot legislate away social ills and negative perceptions of one community by another. You certainly won't improve such divisions by favoring one community over another at an institutional level.
The shopkeeper's daughter tells her kids that she could have been an engineer at one of the city's best colleges, but she was not the correct caste for her grades to be deemed sufficient. Do you think this helps these divisions?
In a hypothetical engineering classroom, 25% of the class is at a different academic level to the rest of the class. How does this impact the relationships between students? How does this impact the way teachers teach these classes? Are these going to fix the divisions between castes?
These are poor solutions. These solutions must not go uncriticized. No solution should go uncriticized. We should always want to do better. Criticism of a solution does not imply a lack of empathy for the problem or those disaffected by it. Criticism of a solution to discrimination does not imply a favorable attitude to discrimination. These are cheap, ad hominem and intellectually dishonest ways of silencing people who do so, rather than engaging them, as was done with Mr. Damore.
How is it that you feel so correct that you don't need to cite anything in reply to such a thorough analysis of events?
"Prospered under inequality"? What was the name of this inequality law? Or was it "systemic" so I can't possibly understand it with my biased white male brain? The inequality we're under is the huge push to hire minorities and women. For example, as an Asian to get into Harvard, you need to have higher grades than a Black. How is this liberal policy not racist?
Yes, it's unfortunate that you can articulate the problem so well and still not see it for what it really is. But in the interest of carrying on, I am copy pasting one of my replies -
In isolation, yes, you are very right. But history is anything but that, and there is always a context and reason for why things are the way they are.
I am from India, and I know bias when I see it. Classism and racism is systemic in India and whether you want to believe me or not, a person from a religion or upper caste will prefer a person from the same group. I am not going to claim that this exact same thing happens in the US, but I will not believe that it doesn't happen at all.
The thing is that the memo even mentions the problems with inherent bias, and then mentions that we need to have "open" dialogue.
The open dialogue is hard to happen when one group has been supressed for generations.
What are you going to tell them? - Ok, we are sorry for what we have done, now we are going to be equal and you can compete for the same things? One group is dirt poor and disatvantaged, and the other has always enjoyed enough wealth to get proper education. How is that level playing field?
Minorities need to be given a hand up, at least for a generation to really make a level playing field.
>"What are you going to tell them? - Ok, we are sorry for what we have done, now we are going to be equal and you can compete for the same things? One group is dirt poor and disatvantaged, and the other has always enjoyed enough wealth to get proper education. How is that level playing field?"
Okay, setting aside the ethical and moral implications. The effects that you are trying to fix are impossible to unravel from everything else. No one is even attempting to unravel it, and are simply using race, wealth and gender. No one bothers to think something as simple as "oh - you're a poor white male whose family has been living in a trailer park for generations without education - let's try give you a leg-up" over any random black-female.
That is the fundamental problem and we're all beating around the bush. You can not fix cosmic injustice. It's done, and short of time-travel or planetary-sized super-computers, we can not untangle the mess of consequences it has caused. Anything less is just playing lip-service while neglecting the truly-needy.
In isolation? Where is any of this in isolation - is there an island with a politics laboratory somewhere? And yes, I've been to India and the truth is the same: the only way to stop being racist and sexist is to stop. Not to institute sexist and racist policies of "women aren't good enough so we must force more to be hired in professions they don't prefer" and "blacks aren't good enough so we need to let them in when their grades are lower than every one else's." Minorities need to be given a hand? You mean we need equal outcomes and minority opinions like Damore's are not welcome?
