Paint By Numbers
Walter Williams writes at Lew Rockwell on the ridiculous notion that America is racist if, for example, the racial makeup of lawyers doesn't match the rational make up of the population:
For example, if blacks are 13 percent of the population, they should be 13 percent of college students and professors, corporate managers and government employees. Law professors, courts and social scientists have long held that gross statistical disparities are evidence of a pattern and practice of discrimination. Behind this vision is the stupid notion that but for the fact of discrimination, we'd be distributed proportionately by race across incomes, education, occupations and other outcomes. There's no evidence from anywhere on earth or any time in human history that shows that but for discrimination, there would be proportional representation and an absence of gross statistical disparities, by race, sex, height or any other human characteristic. Nonetheless, much of our thinking, legislation and public policy is based upon proportionality being the norm. Let's run a few gross disparities by you, and you decide whether they represent what the courts call a pattern and practice of discrimination and, if so, what corrective action you would propose.Jews are not even 1 percent of the world's population and only 3 percent of the U.S. population, but they are 20 percent of the world's Nobel Prize winners and 39 percent of U.S. Nobel laureates. That's a gross statistical disparity, but are the Nobel committees discriminating against the rest of us? By the way, in the Weimar Republic, Jews were only 1 percent of the German population, but they were 10 percent of the country's doctors and dentists, 17 percent of its lawyers and a large percentage of its scientific community. Jews won 27 percent of Nobel Prizes won by Germans.
Nearly 80 percent of the players in the National Basketball Association in 2011 were black, and 17 percent were white, but if that disparity is disconcerting, Asians were only 1 percent. Compounding the racial disparity, the highest-paid NBA players are black.
...How does one explain these gross sports disparities? Might it be that the owners of these multibillion-dollar professional basketball, football and baseball teams are pro-black and that those of the NHL and major industries are racists?
How is this different than insisting that policy apply with spotless equity to all people no matter what?
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)Crid [CridComment at gmail] at July 23, 2012 10:56 PM
The percentage of Jewish Nobel Prize Winners, Irish boxers, Black NBA players is a mostly sui-generis phenomena and the product of mostly transient culture developed over the years.
Policy is a intentional, artificial, immediate phenomena.
It's also never been my read that Amy advocates for policy that applies with spotless equity to all people no matter what. For one thing, there is a measurement problem and definitional problem of agreeing what equity is. Equity of opportunity or equity of outcome.
jerry at July 23, 2012 11:21 PM
An all too common logical error: disparity does not necessarily equal discrimination.
lsomber at July 24, 2012 7:52 AM
Jerry and Crid: I do think there is a difference between what people choose to do of their own free will, and what the government requires them to do or prohibits them from doing. As we all know, the proportionality thing that Williams writes about doesn't apply to everyone: if white males are 0% of a certain group, that's just fine with everyone. It's even fine with the white males, as far as that goes.
But the unequal treatment under the law means that, while NBA teams are free to pursue the best talent available, most other organizations aren't. If you have a company with 75 employees, how many Koreans are you required to employ? Eskimos? Nigerians? What about lesbian Ukranian Jews? You've got to meet all your quotas, even though no one can tell you what they actually are, and no court ruling will ever say "this many is enough".
Heck, even proportionality doesn't keep you out of trouble. Baseball is catching flack because the number of black players has declined over the past two decades, even though blacks are still over-represented as a percentage of the population. This is largely because of an influx of Latino players. What's the solution? Get rid of white players! Joe Morgan has advocated that MLB should have a limit quota for how many white players each team can have. He hasn't yet said which white players should be banned from baseball in order for this quota to be achieved.
This is the sort of madness that occurs when the government policy is to deny the uniqueness of the individual, and treat people as interchangable parts. People are required to do, or probhibited from doing, things based on their surface characteristics. The way it ought to be is: "Okay, here are the rules of the game, and they are the same for everyone. Have at it." And however it comes out is how it comes out. Any other method denies individuals their freedom to choose.
Cousin Dave at July 24, 2012 9:21 AM
It's all the fans' fault. They keep wanting to see the best players, regardless of their skin color. Next step, quotas for sports fans, You have to be a Cubs fan, because the other teams have filled their quotas. We could incorporate it into the census, to make it more efficient.
MarkD at July 24, 2012 10:06 AM
That's nothing. A zillion percent of mass murderers are male. When will we realize the inherent wrongness of maleness?!
http://ideas.time.com/2012/07/24/the-overwhelming-maleness-of-mass-homicide/?hpt=hp_t1
Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers at July 24, 2012 2:13 PM
Interseting article Gog, I left a comment ultimately blamming women for refusing to have sex with weirdos
lujlp at July 25, 2012 9:22 AM
CD, you're nothing but a not-real-world, meany BIGOT!
(I know this from watching TV and reading "rigorous" "studies.")
!!
!
Crid [CridComment at gmail] at July 25, 2012 12:17 PM
Crid, it's a dirty job, but someone's gotta do it...
Cousin Dave at July 25, 2012 7:07 PM
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