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Comment by lliamander | Hacker News Reader

Thomas Sowell has a great book on the subject called Discrimination and Disparities. There are interviews where he goes over the high-level ideas in the book if you don't have time to read it, but the basic punchline is that this: no two populations have ever been equal, and only sometimes is that because of some form of oppression or because of genetic differences. There are a multitude of cultural and environmental differences that cause disparate outcomes, and unless equality of outcome is your goal those differences shouldn't bother you.

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> unless equality of outcome is your goal those differences shouldn't bother you.

I’m sorry, but this simply doesn’t follow.

The premise: that there are a multitude of things that lead to to disparities (even just random chance). If disparities are random then yes, that’s not a problem I’m going to get tussled up about.

But it’s not a matter of “it could be anything”. We have strong evidence that it is oppression, and when that is the case, that I do have reason to care about, and it’s about opportunity not outcome.

If it is actually oppression, then yes that is a valid reason to be concerned.

But let's be clear, you just claimed that the mere existence of disparities is evidence of oppression. That only follows if group outcomes would be equal in the absence of oppression, but that is a completely invalid assumption that has no basis in historical fact.

I claimed that disparities are evidence, not that they are proof.

It’s not nor us it ever been about the disparities alone, but the disparities in conjunction with the long history of racial oppression in America. People are alive today who grew up under Jim Crow. People are alive today who were threatened with violence for attending elementary school.

I didn't say you claimed it was proof. I said "evidence" and I think that as a matter of evidence it is pretty weak.

Regardless, in practice people do treat it as proof. Before I move on to the other arguments supporting oppression as an explanation I want to drive home that point: there is hardly ever a serious attempt to rule out other possible explanations for disparities, and to suggest that anything other than racism/oppression might explain those differences opens one up to accusations of racism.

Merely referencing Jim Crow is not enough. It ignores both all the ways in which Jim Crow was ineffective at its aims at the time, as well as the seismic cultural and legal changes that have occurred within the intervening years.

It also fails to account for the success of various other minorities (Jews, Nigerians, descendants of Caribbean slaves, various Asian groups) - many of whom also have faced very serious oppression (including outright attempts at elimination) in the very recent past.

None of this is to say that racism does not occur, but I have yet to see a (non-circular) causal explanation for how that can account for a significant amount of present disparities.

I'm not clear why I shouldn't care that there are differences due to oppression?

Well, for the oppressor, sure, but why should the oppressed accept it?

I didn't say you shouldn't care about differences due to oppression.

I said that there are differences due to things other than oppression, and that those aren't a problem unless you think equality of outcome should be goal

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