Last fall I argued with a friend that we don’t have much systemic racism in this country. My friend said we do and defined “systemic racism” as policies that aren’t necessarily intended to hurt black people disproportionately but do hurt them disproportionately.
Once he said it that way, I agreed. I thought of black people being disproportionately arrested for drugs, stopped more often by police even when it doesn’t end in confrontation, etc.
And I found this definition in an article in USA Today last June:
[NAACP President Derrick] Johnson defined systemic racism, also called structural racism or institutional racism, as “systems and structures that have procedures or processes that disadvantages [sic] African Americans.”
Given more time to think, I’ve realized that there’s a lot of systemic racism. One of the big ones is minimum wage laws, which hurt black youth disproportionately.
Milton Friedman was aware of that point back in 1966. In his Newsweek column “Minimum-Wage Rates,” September 26, 1966, discussing Congress’s passage of a bill to raise the minimum wage from $1.25 an hour to $1.60 an hour in 1968, Friedman wrote:
Women, teenagers, Negroes, and particularly Negro teenagers will be especially hard hit. I am convinced that the minimum-wage law is the most anti-Negro law on our statute books–in its effect not its intent.
Actually, if you examine the history, you find that it was anti-black in intent also as recently as the previous decade. Massachusetts Senator John F. Kennedy, who favored the minimum wage, was explicit that he wanted to hamper competition from black workers in the South. But Friedman’s point remains. Intent aside, the minimum wage law is effectively anti-black.
Senator Bernie Sanders, in his all-out drive to get a $15 minimum wage, is pushing to have employers taxed extra if they don’t pay that minimum. If Bernie were to succeed, and it appears, fortunately, that he won’t, then black youths would be disproportionately hurt.
Bernie Sanders, therefore, advocates systemic racism.
HT2 Donald Boudreaux.
READER COMMENTS
Dylan
Mar 1 2021 at 9:48pm
David, can I ask what you thought people meant by systematic racism, if not this?
David Henderson
Mar 1 2021 at 11:04pm
You may, but I won’t answer because I don’t want to steer the discussion in that direction.
Dylan
Mar 2 2021 at 6:18am
Perhaps in a different post then, since it would be interesting to hear how you think about incentives, unintended consequences, and thinking on the margin to these issues. You may come to conclusions like in this post on minimum wage, which would likely be something that most progressives have not considered, but not so much for a libertarian. But, maybe you will also find some aspects that are surprising and lead in unexpected directions for you as well.
Dylan
Mar 2 2021 at 6:56am
One further thought in that direction; the area I currently work in is with early stage startups that are looking for outside investment.
A fairly standard criteria for VCs is to want to see a “friends and family” round before they invest. The idea is, as a founder, you’re likely to be kept up more nights worrying about losing your mom & dad’s nest egg, than you will be about some professional investor’s money. This seems like an entirely sensible investment thesis! Yet, it also has the outcome of making it a lot harder for people without a network of wealthy people to start businesses that need significant upfront capital before they can show traction.
VCs are a risky business, typically only 1 out of 10 investments will pay-off, even after careful selection. So VCs are pretty conservative about that selection process, that means 1) looking at data on what past success stories have looked like and trying to invest in founders like that, and 2) relying a lot on your own network to make introductions to companies.
All of these factors make it harder for black startup founders to succeed. And that means that would-be black founders have less role models available to think about starting their own tech business. It’s not just the absence of black founders, but also the scarcity of startups that are focusing on problems for their community. Rich, young, urban, white, and male founders, by and large have focused on problems that they have in their lives. We get lots of apps for doing your laundry, food delivery, and dating and less money going to problems that people with different demographics might have.
Over the last couple of years, there has been an explosion in D&I type investment funds focused on this problem and, I think you would be pleased to hear, they justify their existence in decidedly Beckerian terms, arguing that there are loads of $20 bills lying on the sidewalk waiting to be picked up. But, when I’ve spoken with investors at these funds, the biggest problem I hear is a lack of quality deal sourcing. You end up with too many funds chasing after a handful of startups with founders that went to elite schools and already have the network in place. Founders with good ideas, but who lack polish and good networks still find it really difficult to even get a meeting.
Mark Swanstrom
Mar 1 2021 at 11:28pm
Excellent post David! The way I think about the racist effect of minimum wage laws is to consider a scenario where the laws are only applied to one race. Which scenario would benefit African-Americans the most — one where the minimum wage for white workers was $15 and no minimum wage for African-Americans or vice versa.
If your goal is to benefit African-Americans and reduce inequality the answer is clear: put up prohibitions against low-skilled white workers in order to protect African-American workers. A new twist on the original minimum wage laws.
BC
Mar 2 2021 at 3:10am
Then, is “systemic racism” used synonymously with “unequal outcomes”? If not, then what would be an example of unequal outcomes that are unfavorable for African Americans that does not reflect systemic racism?
Thomas Hutcheson
Mar 2 2021 at 5:23am
Not unequal outcomes, but policies and attitudes that lead to unequal outcomes.
BC
Mar 2 2021 at 10:37am
The question is whether any policy that produces unequal outcomes is defined as systemically racist, i.e., is the unequal outcome the defining, determinative characteristic? If so, then “systemic racism” is indistinguishable from “unequal outcomes”. If not, then what would be an example of a policy that produces unequal outcomes but is not systemically racist?
Mark Z
Mar 2 2021 at 1:02pm
This means the illegality of most violent crimes is systemically racist. It also shows why intent (or at least subconscious intent) is a necessary ingredient to any coherent definition of racism or any subspecies of racism, imo.
John Hall
Mar 2 2021 at 7:15am
Yes, I was curious about this too. For instance, suppose a university has a policy of only accepting students with an SAT above 1350. As a result, the student population is disproportionately white and asian compared to the rest of the population. Is this unequal outcome systemic racism? What if the people who favor this policy have no racist intentions and only favor this policy for purely academic reasons? However, what if the people who favor this policy are also well aware that the racial makeup of the student population will be roughly about what it is?
I think David needs to think on this issue a little harder to distinguish between this case and the minimum wage case.
robc
Mar 2 2021 at 8:55am
I think the cases are different, due to intent. The minimum wage was specifically proposed originally to keep blacks (and other “undesirables”) out of the workforce.
Like I said below, same for zoning and drug laws.
I don’t think setting an SAT floor is the same at all, despite having racially different outcomes.
XVO
Mar 2 2021 at 9:04am
The whole point is that intent doesn’t matter in this definition. Setting the floor on the SAT is the exact same outcome, as it disadvantages blacks, as setting a floor on wages. You’re performing mental gymnastics to try to define a policy, you apparently favor, as not systematically racist.
robc
Mar 2 2021 at 10:05am
I am disagreeing with the definition that BC stated, unequal outcomes is not the definition. Intent matters.
John Hall
Mar 2 2021 at 2:51pm
If intent matters, then what would you say to the people who know about the impact of the minimum wage on minority unemployment but still favor the policy as a means to reduce poverty broadly, even if it increases poverty among a minority community? I.e., they understand that the policy will lead to unequal outcomes to a community, but favor it anyway for other reasons.
Yaakov
Mar 2 2021 at 10:16am
Are you referring to all universities? the only university? Is there a limit on opening universities for people with lower SAT grades? Is there a shortage of universities that accept students with lower SAT grades?
John Hall
Mar 2 2021 at 2:48pm
A hypothetical university.
Thomas Hutcheson
Mar 2 2021 at 5:38am
Minimum wages could be an example, but we would need to see data on possibly different elasticities of demand for labor of different racial groups and the numbers o of different racial groups that are affected by a minimum wages. My guess is that a higher minimum wage will lead to employers reducing hours a bit more for minorities (higher elasticity but still far less than 1) but that the MW will apply to proportionately more minority workers, so the net greater incomes of workers may be pretty much the same.
But since an EITC does not lead to decreased employment, I agree that the social justice angle does shift the balance for a higher EITC vs MW farther toward a higher EITC.
robc
Mar 2 2021 at 6:41am
I think minimum wage laws fails this test, as they were intended to hurt black people.
Same for zoning laws, which was the first to pop into my head. Ditto drug laws.
Dylan
Mar 2 2021 at 6:58am
Forget original intent though and think about the here and now. Do you really think that most current proponents of the increased minimum wage are intending to hurt black people?
robc
Mar 2 2021 at 8:45am
A friend of mine has a “law” that I don’t 100% agree with, but has a good argument in its favor:
He is [mostly] right without resorting to Orwellian doublethink.
robc
Mar 2 2021 at 8:47am
I will put it this way: any intelligent, thoughtful current proponent of the minimum wage is a racist.
There is no way they can’t be.
Andre
Mar 2 2021 at 9:00am
“I will put it this way: any intelligent, thoughtful current proponent of the minimum wage is a racist.”
The urge to agree is strong, but I think even here people should be given the benefit of the doubt. These people are intelligent and thoughtful, it’s just that their ideology and groupthink trump their epistemology. In all kinds of areas.
Most simply a) don’t realize the fact that the minimum wage will impact blacks more and/or b) they’re more focused on the alleviation of harm that paying some people more provide.
Even in cases where they have been presented with the argument, cognitive dissonance won’t allow them to accept it because it goes against what they feel they ought to believe, i.e., “A good liberal wants low wage workers to be better off, so that must mean being in favor of paying them more.”
robc
Mar 2 2021 at 9:12am
Maybe I am being too nice, but I am not grouping those people in with “thoughtful”.
I think the definition of thoughtful would exclude that.
Tom West
Mar 2 2021 at 9:24pm
That presupposes that any intelligent, thoughtful evaluation of the effects of minimum wage will be identical to your own. That seems just a wee bit… presumptuous?
Certainly most intelligent, thoughtful commentary will accept the existence of disemployment effects, and no doubt one’s that disproportionally affect racial minorities. But I think a good faith argument can be made that the benefits of the wage increases (also likely to be concentrated among minority workers) outweigh the costs of the disemployment effects.
Blanket assumptions of racism are rarely conducive to civil debate.
Vivian Darkbloom
Mar 2 2021 at 7:32am
I’m opposed to a minimum wage increase to $15 for all the reasons likely discussed here previously.
Nevertheless, I’m wondering how someone in favor of such a hike would respond to this definition (and the conclusion therefrom that the hike constitutes “systemic racism”):
“[NAACP President Derrick] Johnson defined systemic racism, also called structural racism or institutional racism, as ““systems and structures that have procedures or processes that disadvantages [sic] African Americans.””
It’s highly likely that a disproportionate number of African Americans would either lose their jobs or fail to get one (or work fewer hours) as a result of such a minimum wage hike. However, is it possible that a disproportionate number of African Americans (those that keep their jobs or manage to get one) would benefit from a wage raise and enjoy a slightly higher standard of living?
What I’m getting at here is whether, per the proposed definition, one should look solely at those disadvantaged, or should one weigh the *net* effect on those all those affected by the change? Could Bernie Sanders reply “I acknowledge that there will be some loss of employment and some reduced employment as a result of this hike. But, those negative effects are exceeded by the benefits of those who will get a pay raise”.
The same thought goes for those “disproportionately arrested” for whatever reason. Is it possible that African Americans “disproportionately benefit” from more policing in those communities?
I don’t have a ready answer, but on the side of those opposed, one tends to refer only to those who tend to lose, and those in favor only to those who tend to gain, with neither side seriously attempting a net benefit analysis. I think it is rare with respect to policy changes that there are only winners *or* losers rather than winners *and* losers.
J Mann
Mar 2 2021 at 11:26am
IMHO, you’re right that the first question is the effects of the policy. Sanders surely believes some combination of (1) a minimum wage increase produces more benefits than costs and (2) the jobs lost as a result of a minimum wage increase are net harmful, so people who lose their jobs will be better off (in Sanders’ hypothetical opinion) not working those jobs and either investing in their social capital or surviving off social services and consuming more leisure.
Criminal justice reform is similar. If African Americans are disproportionately charged with crimes and also disproportionately victims of crimes, then reducing policing or prison sentences will benefit those who are harmed by those practices but potentially harm the victims of increased crime. To decide whether criminal justice reform increases or decreases net structural racism, you need to predict the effects of the reform on crime rate, and that’s the point where I suspect people disagree.
Unfortunately, (1) it’s hard to predict the future, and (2) it looks to me like most people engage in motivated reasoning – once someone has a preferred policy, there’s a tendency to wave away arguments against it.
David Seltzer
Mar 2 2021 at 6:00pm
Vivian, government policies try to picks winners and losers. Levittown engaged in racial discrimination with the government’s approval. Clause 25 of the standard lease agreement signed by the first residents of Levittown stated that the house could not “be used or occupied by any person other than members of the “Caucasian race.” Those housing standards were consistent with government policies. The FHA offered mortgages to non-mixed developments which discouraged developers from creating integrated housing. By accepting the condition of Clause 25, William Leavitt got bank financing to build Levittown because the FHA guaranteed the loans. It seems governments often try picking winners and losers with their policies.
Vivian Darkbloom
Mar 4 2021 at 9:32am
David,
While I appreciate your response to my comment, I sincerely don’t understand it, at least as it relates (or not) to what I originally wrote.
First, a little nit: “government policies” don’t try to do anything—policymakers do.
Second, the initial post and my response to it was about a rather specific minimum wage proposal, its effect on African Americans and whether those advocating that $15 federally mandated minimum wage would create or engage in “systemic racism”. It had, as far as I can tell, no relation to Levittown. Specifically, the historic racism represented by the Levittown policies was an intentional effort to exclude African Americans (and other racial minorities) from the community. The defintion put forward originally by David excluded intent from the defintion of “systemic racism” and focused instead on actual results (whether intended or not). In my comment I tried my best to adhere to that suggested definition.
Finally, if we assume that Bernie Sanders is “trying” to do something (the verb clearly implying intent), it is to raise the minimum wage for everyone regardless of race.
Bottom line: I don’t think it is very responsive to my comment (or to the post, in general) to suggest that because one can cite an historical policy that clearly was racist, all government policies (and especially the one under discussion) must be trying to hurt someone or some specific class of persons (in this case African Americans) in the process. While I don’t generally have a very high regard for politicians these days, I do believe that most of them (even including Bernie Sanders) “try” to create policies that they believe are net improvements to welfare while also “trying” at the same time to reduce any inevitable collateral victims. In this specific case I disagree with Sanders on the extent of that collateral damage.
Don’t feel bad about this—someone made a comment to the follow-up post that “Vivian and others seem unaware that in the long run, all the factor owners’ loss from a capital income tax is a loss to labor”. Where *that* came from as a result of the comment is even more perplexing…
David Seltzer
Mar 4 2021 at 5:09pm
Vivian. Mea Culpa. I was specifically referring to .”I think it is rare with respect to policy changes that there are only winners *or* losers rather than winners *and* losers.” As for the nit; empirically, government policies do try something in terms of affect/effect, as the policy was clearly the policy makers intent. Otherwise, no policy in the first place. As for the question of “systemic racism,” the FHA policy makers openly suborned racism with intent. Whether or not Sanders intends to harm dispossessed African Americans, the outcome is the same. Thanks for your reply. As always, your comments force me to think a bit more critically.
zeke5123
Mar 2 2021 at 10:23am
I think this definition is dangerous. I am reminded of an example by Kendi that lowering capital gains tax is racist, because it disproportionately favors non-blacks since blacks are less likely to have wealth.
The counter to this is if lower capital gains rates lead to net efficiency, it is a sound policy regardless of the impact on certain cross sections of the populace. Indeed, if you implement enough net efficiency policies, it is very likely that you end up lifting up all cross sections. But this is basically just saying: implement policies that are Kaldor-Hicks improvements.
Once when, with a single policy, you bring into the discussion how it impacts certain cross-sections of the populace (i.e., in this case race), you are more likely not to implement Kaldor-Hicks efficiency polices because racism is bad. No — that way lies madness. Focus on Kaldor-Hicks efficiency generally* and the rest will follow.
I think in your examples you believe changing those policies is Kaldor-Hicks efficient — that is, you think on net minimum wage is bad. But if you argue we should eliminate minimum wage (or not raise it) to reduce structural racism, then why can’t Kendi argue we should raise capital gains to reduce structural racism? I get that people can walk and chew bubblegum at the same time, but ultimately I think your case against the minimum wage is that it is bad economics; not that it harms black people because that would be your argument against raising capital gains tax rate (assuming you agree doing so would be bad).
*I would worry about situations where a policy causes massive losses to Group A to benefit Group B by the losses plus epsilon. There are mismeasurement errors, political risks, etc. So, I would limit Kaldor-Hicks efficiency where there is not (i) massive losses to a particular group and (ii) the gains clearly outweigh the losses. For me, a good rule of thumb is a strong presumption of liberty.
Richard W Fulmer
Mar 2 2021 at 10:56am
I think that all Americans, whatever their color, suffer far more from systemic paternalism far more than they do from systemic racism.
We send poor kids to lousy public schools where many don’t learn to read or to do simple math. Teachers’ unions, concerned with their members’ jobs rather than children’s education, keep parents from sending their kids elsewhere.
We make it almost impossible for them to get that all-important first job by pricing them out of the market with:
– Minimum wage laws
– Employer mandates
– Job licensing
– Onerous business startup regulations
– Certificates of need that allow entrenched businesses to decide whether they’re willing to compete with newcomers
While we’ve locked them out of legal employment, the War on Drugs creates opportunities for them in the illegal job market. The drug trade, though, is a pathway to addiction, prison, and death.
We’ve also created a welfare system whose purpose seems to be less helping to lift people out of poverty than making them comfortable in and with their poverty. As a result, we have trapped generations of people into lives of misery.
But we haven’t stopped there. We’ve torn down vibrant neighborhoods that we’ve labeled “slums” and erected sterile blocks of apartment buildings in their place.
We could do a lot for the victims of our “compassion” by just getting the Hell out of their way.
TMC
Mar 4 2021 at 10:56am
Well said. For all the talk about winners and losers, no one questions why we’re picking any of them anyways. MYOB is usually the right policy.
Knut P. Heen
Mar 2 2021 at 11:02am
A definition of systemic racism which excludes all races but one. Great. I thought this was the definition of racism.
Andrew_FL
Mar 2 2021 at 11:26am
Minimum wage laws have disparate impacts on many groups, but no one would say the minimum wage is part of “systemic ageism” or “systemic credentialism” even in the rare case of someone who would both correctly understand the consequences of such laws and be inclined to agree with this definition of “systemic racism”
The whole notion is more about proving that we are all guilty collectively of a crime none of us can be said to be guilty of individually. Of course, if committing the category error of attributing racialist ideology and malice to non-human things like “systems” leads to a vast deregulatory push in housing and labor markets, that’s great. If it leads to a mass redistribution of wealth from the supposed perpetrators to their supposed victims, not so much.
Tom Nagle
Mar 2 2021 at 11:38am
While I concur with all your facts, your concluding logic seems flawed when you assert that “Bernie Sanders, therefore, advocates systemic racism”.
Think in terms of a Venn diagram. Circle A is defined to encompass all policies that embody systemic racism as defined in your post. Overlapping a small part of Circle A is another Circle, label it B, that encompasses all policies designed or intended to increase the share of national income earned by low wage workers. Bernie Sanders is a socialist who likely supports all the policies in Circle B. But is it fair to claim that Sanders “advocates systemic racism”–that is, the policies in circle A–even if the overlap is small, the consequences unintended, and he clearly does not support an overwhelming share of the policies that could be classified as systemically racist. Would it be fair to state that “David Henderson advocates the suppression of women’s rights in Afghanistan” because that is an unintended consequence of pulling the US military out of there, a policy that you support?
Jon Murphy
Mar 2 2021 at 11:46am
As a general comment to many people above:
I think y’all are missing the “systemic” aspect here. Systemic means a part of a system, not a single part.
So, for example, John Hall’s hypothetical about a university with certain grade requirements wouldn’t necessarily be systemic racism because it is just a single university. The university may be racist, but not the system as a whole. If other universities opt to discriminate along other margins (say, willingness to pay, religious affiliation, lottery, charity, etc), then there is no systemic issue.
So, it’s more than just differential outcomes. It’s about a system *enforcing* differential outcomes.
robc
Mar 2 2021 at 11:58am
That is perfect.
That allows Costco to have a $16 minimum wage for their employees without it being due to systemic racism while passing a law mandating a $15 minimum wage would be.
BW
Mar 2 2021 at 2:47pm
What does “as a whole” mean here? If some universities have systemic racism and others don’t, how many must before the university system can be said to have a systemic racism problem?
Surely, every minute aspect of American society doesn’t produce unequal outcomes for blacks. How many systems need to produce unequal outcomes before American society “as a whole” has a systemic racism problem?
Jon Murphy
Mar 2 2021 at 3:57pm
It’s a reference to the system, not to any given part.
John Hall
Mar 2 2021 at 3:32pm
Hi Jon,
My original intent was to focus on a single hypothetical university, but there’s no reason why it can’t be expanded to all universities. So for instance, suppose the US federal government passes a law saying it won’t give student loans to any university that admits students who achieve less than N on the SATs where N is high enough where it not only leads to unequal outcomes between races but it should be obvious to everyone that it does so.
Those in favor of the law might argue that this policy is adopted to ensure that people who take on student loans have a good chance of completing their degrees and those who have scores less than N are less likely to. In this sense, there is some positive benefit to the policy and it is not just some capricious dictum (in that the purpose of the minimum wage policy, coming from its defenders, is to reduce poverty).
So here is a case of a policy that leads to unequal outcomes across the country and has some purported benefit to society. Is it racist or would it contribute to systemic racism?
Jon Murphy
Mar 2 2021 at 3:56pm
Yes, because of a key phrase you used: “passes a law.” The law codified the unequal outcomes and effectively shut them out.
John Hall
Mar 3 2021 at 9:52am
So your definition of systemic racism would be something like: systemic racism is when a government passes a law that universally has an unequal outcome by race, even if the law has some positive effects along other dimensions. Correct?
What if we change the example so that the government isn’t passing a law, but all the best universities in the country on their own (again knowing the impact on race) for the same underlying reason (that requiring an SAT cutoff at a certain level increases the likelihood that a student graduates). Would that be systemic racism?
Philo
Mar 2 2021 at 12:33pm
Derrick Johnson’s definition of ‘systemic racism’ doesn’t work: Policies are supposed to be systemically racist just in case they disadvantage blacks—but disadvantage compared to what? On the other hand, we have here an appropriate definition for a relative (rather than absolute) notion: Policy A is more systemically racist than Policy B just in case blacks are worse off under A than under B*. Holding everything else as it is, a minimum wage of $15/hr. is more systemically racist than a minimum wage of $7.35/hr. The SAT case (raised by John Hall) is not so clear: if Harvard instituted an absolute minimum SAT of 1350 for admission, and as a result fewer blacks were admitted, it is unclear (to me) whether that would be worse for blacks.
*The notion itself is clear, though it would be a very misleading choice of terminology to call it ‘(relative) systemic racism’. Another worry about misleadingness: Johnson is departing from the standard assumption that “systemic racism” is a matter of (some sorts of) inequality–at least, he doesn’t mention inequality explicitly.
Josh S
Mar 2 2021 at 12:57pm
The key word in systemic racism is “system”. A system is all of the forces at work, overall combining to have an aggregate effect, in this case putting some races at a significant overall disadvantage. It’s tempting to pick on a single individual policy and reduce it to simple cause an effect, but that’s not how systems work in the real world. It’s entirely possible to have policy A in isolation have a negative effect, policy B have a slight positive, but the combination of A + B have a net positive greater than B alone. This is because the cause and effect are not isolated, and there are all sorts of feedback loops and interdependencies. Unfortunately this makes it hard to reason about, but if it was easy then we’d have a better slate of proposed solutions to systemic racism already.
It’s hard to say that, in aggregate, Black people are not significantly disadvantaged by the current system as a whole. However, picking individual policies in isolation and labeling proponents as for or against systemic racism doesn’t seem to have much value aside from winning internet points.
Jon Murphy
Mar 2 2021 at 1:08pm
I suppose it’s possible, but I don’t see it as particularly likely. Can you give any such examples?
Josh S
Mar 3 2021 at 11:34am
Perhaps my off the cuff description was too constraining. It doesn’t have to specifically be a government policy at work; any activity in the system can cause unintended effects when you introduce a new variable, turning a positive into a negative or vice versa.
For example, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were (supposedly) intended to reduce terrorism, and perhaps did in a very narrow and short-term sense, but the net result has been to increase terrorism (ISIS and the Taliban are among the most active terror groups). You may disagree and say the situation is more complex than than and there are many more factors involved (not to mention measurement issues), but that’s my point: I am far from confident that the net effect of raising the minimum wage increases systemic racism, and certainly wouldn’t attribute that intent to its supporters without other evidence.
BW
Mar 2 2021 at 3:22pm
Here is a relevant Slate Star Codex post.
Aaron
Mar 4 2021 at 5:21am
Doesn’t this definition have a major flaw that every policy disproportionately effects people? Ergo, this definition proves too much.
Since every policy will have a greater effect on one gender over another, even if it is by a minute fraction, every policy is sexist. Since every policy will have a greater effect over one race over another, every policy is racist. I can get out of policy and say that every action you make effects some people more than others, and since this will be represented disproportionally by races and genders, every action you make is racist.
im not trying to claim racism doesn’t exist. I merely mean to show that this definition isn’t a meaningful definition of racism unless you wish to make the term racism meaningless.
TMC
Mar 4 2021 at 11:26am
So, in the SAT example, if I were to score 1000 on the SAT and so did my back friend, I wouldn’t get in to the school because I’m dumb and he wouldn’t get in because of racism. Talk about a disparate impact. People are collages, black/white, short/tall, smart/dumb. Evaluating people as a group based on one value already makes you the rac/sex/whatever – ist.
William John Carney
Mar 4 2021 at 8:51pm
I have a black former colleague who teaches that the revenue code discriminates against blacks. Part of that I believe is a complaint that married parents do better than single parents. That’s not intentional discrimination – people get to choose their lifestyles.
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