I’m a little skeptical of the argument that the current achievement gap has a large contribution from the twin horrors of slavery and Jim Crow. Or, more precisely, if there is a connection, we don’t have instruments to detect it. If one controls for things like family income, education level of parents, high quality schools, indeed virtually everything imaginable, the achievement gap still shows up. So, if it’s a legacy, it’s one that’s impervious to all of that (and that’s a lot). Ogbu’s work on Shaker Heights demonstrates pretty clearly that just coming from uneducated, poor parents isn’t necessary for the gap. I think the problem is cultural, and the culture pervades certain communities at all levels of wealth and income. How does one explain that the gap shows up as early as 3? How has the legacy manifest itself that young? How does one explain that the average African American infant, even controlling for the educational level of the parents, is exposed to markedly fewer words as an infant? Easy answers to these questions (slavery, etc.) aren’t doing anyone any good.

Studies show that humans are quite good at forming accurate stereotypes about the world (which, from an evolutionary point of view, is kind of an obvious conclusion). I personally believe that the vast majority of racial stereotypes are not the result of pernicious self-reinforcing racism, but simply reflect an imperfect world as it actually is; this is why studies show that minorities hold many of the same stereotypes about themselves that outsiders do. And while I do believe it’s possible (and desirable) to legislate against clearly racist behavior, I also believe it’s impossible to stop people from forming reasonable, accurate generalizations about the world they live in. In other words, it’s impossible to legislate away ‘soft’ racism.

What, then is the solution? It’s tricky, because attitudes are like viruses – they evolve in the face of a changing environment. The standard liberal solution of affirmative action is like throwing weak antibiotic at TB: instead of resistant TB, you wind up with Clarence Thomas, someone who reinforces the notion that even successful minorities are inferior.

In the absence of affirmative action – or other attempts at social engineering – evolutionary mechanics work in exactly the opposite direction. Subtle discrimination acts to ensure that only the best, most talented, highly motivated minority candidates will survive the selection process to become doctors, lawyers, judges. After a generation or two of that, ‘soft’ racism would collapse under the weight of its own absurdity.

I guess this is just a long way of saying that respect is earned and not given, and that affirmative action deprives minority communities the opportunity to earn it. Is it ‘fair’ that minorities HAVE to earn respect after generations of racism, slavery, etc? No, probably not. But it seems to me to be the only way of actually fixing the problem.

At least both your replies are very reasonable, as I was trying to be (why do I come to expect just a bunch of yelling these days, anywhere? It’s a shame)

I will say that I don’t believe bending the rules for one set of people implies inferiority.

From a different perspective: is there a connection between current racial wealth gaps and the chain of events beginning with slavery, going through share-cropping and jim crow, and ending with segregation quite recently? If there is a connection (and I will say I think there is), could that that not account for a large percentage of the achievement gap between black and white folks?

Going further out on a limb (if it could…) how do you go about closing the gap? Is closing the gap even a “social good” worth pursuing?

Now, if that connection were proven, and redress were deemed worth it, would that redress imply that recipients were inferior? It doesn’t seem to me that it would. It seems like it would imply that the system used to be rigged, and there’s an attempt not just to unrig at present, but to re-balance based on what “could” have been. Similar to South African rules about corporate ownership. I’m not saying I agree or not with any of these policies, just saying that it shouldn’t have bearing on feelings of inferiority for the people involved at present.

Perhaps the heart of it is what you hit on though, is it even possible to attempt to close any of these gaps without corrupting the system of rewards for straight hard work? It’s clearly not easy.

The other one is more plausibly relevant, but this involves decision theoretic game situations, which, if one doesn’t know what they are, are too easily misunderstood. That the ‘dictator’ game scenario showed evidence of stereotype bias (against, I might add, ‘easterners’–not Africans or African Americans–in Isreal) is evidence that people can be biased. No great shock there. But that this kind of bias carries over into an incomparably more complicated environment like a workplace (where there are substantial laws in place to mitigate it) is again, something that stands in need of further evidence. Also, it wasn’t pointed out in the comment that the evidence of the ‘ultimatum game’ scenario was actually the reverse of the result in the other games.

There are other studies out there about resumes and names that are more clearly a propos of this issue, so if Mr. Hardy is looking for evidence, he can find it closer to home. Yet again, is that evidence of irrational bias and prejudice, or people making attributions to individuals on the basis of evidence gathered from group data? Are those two things different anyway? It’s not so obvious.

The issue I have with other “solutions” is that they undermine the ultimate goal of treating everybody in a reasonable fashion. So long as society bends the rules for a set of people, those same people will carry the burden of implied inferiority.

I have read numerous studies about racism and ethnic stereotyping in the workplace. While there is no doubt some amount of it exists, I believe it is a small factor which is overwhelmed by more salient factors such as work ethic, intelligence and experience.

Usually such studies amount to something like this: “Absent any other way to distinguish between candidate A and B, people sometimes resort to race.”

In the real world, there are always many other ways to distinguish, and those predominate.

You provide no data for your assertions, but I’ll give you a 1 + 1 with data:

It is quite generalize about a candidates identity based on the name
http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/003355301556338?cookieSet=1&journalCode=qjec

ethnic minorities, once identified, are statistically discriminated against with regard to salary and acceptance
http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/003355304772839524

It is easier to say that you can meet the burden of proof for a discrimination case, and hope it’s so, than for it to be so

Discrimination is part of human nature, we are tribal critters. Saying it doesn’t exist is silly.

White conservative rhetoric about how expecting more will solve everything isn’t a bad idea, and would help, but it isn’t the only solution required, and won’t solve anything without other solution components