Thread by @wanyeburkett

The deeper point revealed by this obvious truth is that we're all individuals, not avatars for our group identities. "You can't have that job, because people who look like you have dominated in that role for the last 100 years and it's time to give somebody else a chance" is basically incoherent, because I'm just a singular individual and either I get the job or I don't. Whether people like me did or didn't get the job in the past and whether people who look like you did or didn't get the job in the past collapses into a single point where one of us gets the job and one of us doesn't.

American individuality is fundamentally at odds with social justice. It's zero sum. They make opposing, incompatible claims about the world. Either you and I are individuals who should be treated as such or we're pawns in a bigger game. You can't have both.

In the individualist model you address past wrongs by eliminating unfair rules and practices and treating everybody as equals to the best of your ability going forward. This is maximally respectful of the individual, but obviously, since past wrongs can have lingering effects, it won't immediately generate equal outcomes.

In the social justice model you address past wrongs by adjusting the rules of the system to generate equal outcomes, even if that means treating individuals differently on the basis of their position in hierarchies created by those past wrongs.

These two models of the world are in opposition to one another.

I of course have opinions both about which of these two systems is fundamentally more American and which is already plainly written into the letter and spirit of our founding legal documents.