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What would you say to someone who answered “yes” to this question? Because it comes down to how you define “racial discrimination.” To discriminate is to make distinctions, to distinguish, “to separate from another by discerning differences.” The examples you give all discriminate by race at the individual level; they treat individuals differently according to their race. But what about discrimination at the group level? If a system produces statistically distinct outcomes between two racial groups, even if no individual is treated different on account of their race, does it not still distinguish, separate, and discern differences between the two groups as groups? Does it not then discriminate between the racial groups?
If you read academic race theory works, you end up finding working definitions, usually implicit, in line with exactly this — “racial discrimination” being defined as the presence of “disparate impact” — regardless of whatever causes it. If blacks do have lower average m scores, then anything that sorts on m will discern that difference between the racial groups (unless you deliberately compensate for that racial difference), and thus discriminate between the racial groups. Thus, lower m scores are not an excuse for hiring fewer blacks, they’re the reason using m scores at all is racist.
Are “having predictive power” and “racially discriminatory” mutually exclusive? They certainly aren’t so if you use the above definition. In fact, given your example, the more predictive power your test has with respect to m, the more racist it is.
Again, no. Even if “general intelligence” is real, if it statistically differs between races as groups, then an algebra test that measures it — or any other test that does so — will be racist for exactly that reason.
It doesn’t matter what sort of racism ordinary Americans hate, it only matters what sort of racism American elites hate. And looking at the people who are the credentialed “experts” in these matters, and how the people who interpret and enforce the relevant laws have been drawing upon their views for decades, they’re very much in line with the “disparate impact = racism” view, in which any system that produces statistical differences in outcomes is definitionally racist regardless of the reason why, no matter what real statistical differences it may be detecting. It doesn’t matter if “general intelligence is also closely correlated with job performance in pretty much every job”; that just means that a “colorblind* selection for job performance is racist.
I think you meant to respond to @non_radical_centrist directly
Yeah, sorry about that.
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Yes. If (1) races are different, (2) that difference results in one race performing better compared to another race on outcome X, and (3) outcome X is relevant to a company, then (4) you’ll see a different racial mix compared to overall population stats.
The race theorists call this racism and assume it is a bad thing. I don’t think it is is a bad thing and don’t really care whether we call it racism or not.
Except you're not in charge, the "race theorists" are, so what you think or care about doesn't matter, only what they think and care about.
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