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PaperclipPerfector  7d ago (text post)   26017 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 30, 2024

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This is evidence establishing motive;

This makes no sense. When they were told to stop discriminating, they changed their screening method into one that doesn't consider race at all, why should I assume that actually their motivation was to discriminate, just because the criteria are different than what they used to apply to white people?

Prior to the Civil Rights Act, Duke Power Co. did not use any screening method if the applicant was white;

So if I look them up now and it turns out they have some degree requirements, it must mean the goal of introducing them must have been racism, correct?

The fact that they felt no need to require any kind of test until they had to consider black people indicates that having any method of screening was a transparent attempt to weasel out of extending to Black Americans the same opportunities which had previously been reserved to the more melanin-lacking segments of the population.

That does not follow at all. If your usual pool of applicants overwhelmingly have an aptitude level that passes your minimal threshold, you might choose to forgo screening because it's just adding cost. If the government tells you that you must consider a broader pool, where some of the applicants do have the necessary aptitude and some do not, and you then decide to add screening, that does not mean the screening is meant to filter out the melanin content.

If you want to prove that their aim was to filter out people because of their race, you have to prove that the test itself doesn't measure aptitude, or that that it's distribution is the same between the smaller and broader applicant pools.

This is tangential, but your points on infering motives from qualification criteria brought to mind a video on a completely different context you might enjoy as something to listen to on the way to work / in a workout.

Perun, an Australian defense-economist youtuber, recently made a video of how you could use reasonable-sounding arguments to justify objectively terrible decisions. In his context, it was a 'if you were a spy for an enemy country, how would you sabotage defense procurement for a country wanting to build up forces for a possible invasion against your true-loyalty country,' the principles behind it are more broadly applicable.

It comes to mind as a parallel because the very direct contrast between stated and real motivations, and one where you have to persuade people to accept things against their interests, while hiding your own. It includes ways to shape / manipulate qualification and testing systems to build a more credible case.

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