@sandylocks' critique of Thomas Sowell, and color-blind policy more generally, is still a couple of my favorite paragraphs written:
"[T]o believe, as Sowell does, that color-blind policies represent the only legitimate and effective means of ensuring a racially equitable 1/
"[T]o believe, as Sowell does, that color-blind policies represent the only legitimate and effective means of ensuring a racially equitable 1/
2/ "society, one would have to assume … that such a racially equitable society already exists. In this world, once law had performed its “proper” function of assuring equality of process, differences in outcomes between groups would not reflect past discrimination but rather
3/ "real differences between groups competing for societal rewards. Unimpeded by irrational prejudices against identifiable groups and unfettered by government-imposed preferences, competition would ensure that any group stratification would reflect only the cumulative effects of
4/ "employers’ rational decisions to hire the best workers for the least cost. The deprivations and oppression of the past would somehow be expunged from the present. Only in such a society, where all other societal functions operate in a nondiscriminatory way, would equality of
5/ "process constitute equality of opportunity.
"This belief in color-blindness and equal process, however, would make no sense at all in a society in which identifiable groups had actually been treated differently historically and in which the effects of this difference in
"This belief in color-blindness and equal process, however, would make no sense at all in a society in which identifiable groups had actually been treated differently historically and in which the effects of this difference in
6/ "treatment continued into the present. If employers were thought to have been influenced by factors other than the actual performance of each job applicant, it would be absurd to rely on their decisions as evidence of true market valuations. Arguments that differences in
7/ "economic status cannot be redressed, or are legitimate because they reflect cultural rather than racial inferiority, would have to be rejected; cultural disadvantages themselves would be seen as the consequence of historical discrimination. One could not look at outcomes as a
8/ "fair measure of merit since one would recognize that everyone had not been given an equal start. Because it would be apparent that institutions had embraced discriminatory policies in order to produce disparate results, it would be necessary to rely on results to indicate
9/9 "whether these discriminatory policies have been successfully dismantled."
("Race, Reform, and Retrenchment," pp. 1344 -1345)
("Race, Reform, and Retrenchment," pp. 1344 -1345)
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
