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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   25783 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 26, 2024

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There is no rule of the universe that says we need to pay attention to race. No reason something like "the black professional class" when referenced needs to elicit anything but confusion the way that the "blonde working class" might. Why do people like Greene never have to answer the reverse question? When we enter our two hundredth year of affirmative action and the gap still doesn't close are the African Americans not going to ask the same question of why? If blank slatism is still the only option on merit then what possible conclusion could they reach besides a conspiracy among the other races? Why would this be a more acceptable answer?

What actual mechanism causes some poor black kid in a bad area of town to have any idea whatsoever how many black people are accepted into Harvard? If not told by people intentionally trying to stoke up racial animus would they ever notice if zero black people were in Harvard even after a hundred years? The solution is easy. Stop taking the statistics, make it illegal, or at least highly suspect, to ask for race on a survey not specifically for the purpose of determining health differences. This is the obvious and only stable way forward, we will find our way to it or suffer disasters.

I think what you describe is the current situation in France. While I do not see a realistic path to get this implemented in the USA anytime soon, France at least sets a precedent for a modern Western country to make it illegal to gather racial data.

I can assure you, the fact that France doesn't measure statistics based on race doesn't mean that it lacks urban dysfunction or racial grievance. In fact, I'm not sure if this policy makes any practical difference compared to other European countries that do measure this stuff.

And while police and other organs of the state may not officially measure race or ethnicity, they do measure 'where your grandparents were born' which is effectively the same thing.

Okay, this would be great.

How do you make it happen?

Probably needs to be sold as a kind of color blind absolutism without going too much into the goals beyond that. Claim that people are using race data to do nefarious things and ban it. Might need to make an example out of some of the racial hustlers. It is probably unrealistic but the other options aren't particular realistic either, what does maximal freedom of association look like and how could it be sold?

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