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I agree it's dumb, but if every other group gets to force society to change when they're under represented my group should be able to do the same thing and my group appears to be under represented in a whole lot of areas.
My rules: blind meritocracy is an absolute defense against any bias accusation
Your rules fairly: every group must be within a certain range of it's population share
Your rules unfairly: every group but one must be within a certain range of it's population share.
The whole idea of there being groups is smuggling in so many assumptions, though.
Consider this toy example: The US population is 10% black descended from slaves captured from central Africa and 3% first-generation-immigrant black descended from the coastal warlords who enslaved the previous group (fake numbers I just made up). I, the official making the statistics, invent the concept of "black people" and decide that both the slave-descendents and the warlord-descendents are "black people." Since 13% of the population are "black people," I make sure that Harvard consists of 13% warlord-descended immigrant elites and 0% slave-descended locals. The slave-descended black people now have "representation," but the people representing them are the descendents of the people who enslaved their ancestors. This is supposed to help make up for the fact that their ancestors were enslaved.
Consider this other toy example: Atlantis contains many immigrants from countries around the Atlantic. 20% of the population of Atlantis are "British" Immigrants - 5% Irish, 5% Scottish, 5% Welsh, and 5% English. For the board of directors of my hedge fund, which has 10 members, I decide that 20% should be "British" so that there will be "representation." I choose the English son of the CEO of Lloyd's of London and the English daughter of famous football player David Beckham and famous musician Posh Spice. Are the Welsh, Scottish, and Irish "represented" by these "British" members of the board of directors? Are the English even represented by these two millionaires descended from other millionaires?
I say no. There is no such thing as British people. There is no such thing as black people. There is no such thing as white people. I would argue that there is such a thing as Jews, and in order to get that kind of reality into any of these other groups you need to slice them at least as finely as you slice the Jews. At this zoom level you'll find many groups that are just as overrepresented as Jews are. You'll discover that 1% of highly-connected families have almost all the power, and only some of those 1% of families are Jewish. The rest are "white" (or "Chinese") and smuggle their power in by unfairly grouping themselves with millions of random shmucks with whom they have nothing in common except skin colour.
You make a good case for that.
Are they atheist, reform, conservative, or orthodox? Mizrahi, Sephardi, or Ashkenazi? Beta Israel? (or should we go even finer? it was kinda weird that the Martians were all specifically Hungarian)
It's possible to come up with a definition (and if you don't like it, I have others!), but it's also possible to define "British" similarly well/poorly.
This thread brings to mind one very practical definition of Jewish people ("they're the ones who will get lumped together by anti-semites", which then ironically motivates an internalized identity in self-defense), but you could define "white" ("they're the ones who will get lumped together by modern 'anti'-racists") and at least historically you could have defined "black" (the 'one-drop rule' was meaningful because it was a rule to people who despised them) in a similar way.
Ah yes, hate. The one thing which brings us all together, allows us to ignore details and focus on what really matters.
Unironically yes. For all of evolutionary history, the most pressing matter for our ancestors was the other tribe from the other side on the river crossing the river to smash their skulls with big clubs.
See that "moral equivalents of war", struggles against inanimate threats always turns to struggle against other humans.
You cannot smash virus with your fist, but you can smash these bastards not wearing masks! It is their fault!
The famous poem was not about hating people of color as it is interpreted today, it was about hating the Huns.
(of course, "Saxons" and "Teutons" were at the time seen as two different races, as distinct as angels are distinct from devils, and world's history was seen as tale of their eternal struggle)
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Like I said my preference is pure blind meritocracy and let the chips fall out where ever they go.
But once you start making slices then yes, I want you to make all the slices and treat every subgroup equally.
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It doesn't matter. Those assumptions are made, they are widely agreed upon, and many of them are codified. Being happy with DEI programs but then when someone objects arguing "Well, what ARE races, really?" is just a distraction tactic.
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Do you think it’s important to tell the Jews that their nation and peoplehood is not real? This would reduce their in-group practices considerably. What do you think would be their response if you told them that Jews are not a culture or people or identity?
Do you think it is important to tell White Christian White House staffers that they belong to real and separate White Christian nation, that you are their fellow White Christian, that they should help you instead of calling cops to arrest you for racist hate speech?
As long as everyone follows the standard, I think we could go either way. We should either remind everyone of the sacrifices and oppressions of their forefathers and the unity of their ancestral spirit, of ensure no one believes such a creative fiction. Evil can almost be defined as the violation of a fair standard. An eye for an eye is the oldest law we know, and approximately the spirit of the law today.
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