This is the problem. You don't know this, and you can't tell this just from the color of someone's skin.
A white man can grow up in a trailer park with a drunk, abusive father. A black woman can grow up in a loving, upper middle class family in the suburbs.
Skin color is only a fractional indication of someone's experience.
You could have used the same arguments in 1860... Not all black people were enslaved, some were quite prosperous in fact! Therefore there was no benefit to being white.
Your essential argument seems to be that once an injustice is over one generation old, it is as if it never happened, no matter if the after effects continue to cascade into modern day.
You cannot just magically pretend an individual is not part of a society.
There actually is an equitable solution there: help all of the poor equally. To the extent any identifiable group has been historically disadvantaged, this solution will balance things out by disproportionately helping those groups.
I really don't know why it's not more popular as a way to make society more fair, or why group-based interventions are seen as necessary despite the existence of a simple and stable way of leveling the playing field and keeping it closer to level over time, instead of constantly debating how much we have to tip it in which direction(s) and for how long.
Of course, there's still the problem that things will probably never be perfectly fair no matter what we do and that grievance can always be used as a reason for people to push for rules that favor their groups over others.
I don't have a magical solution, but I also am not going to flip out everytime a private company chooses to give some type of minor preferential treatment to historically underprivileged groups to attempt to balance out systemic inequities.
I can't say with complete confidence one way or the other if Twilio's policy is right or wrong but I can say with confidence a lot of the critiques are both in bad faith and lack any real attempt in understanding the rationale behind the policies.
A major problem should be tackled in all of the areas where there is injustice. The beginning, the end and the middle.
such as being overtly and illegally dispreferred for college admissions, scholarships, hiring, promotion, and preferred for being fired
such privilege much wow
I'm so glad I live in a country in continental Europe where this shit is unconstitutional and any company that even tried to hint at doing this is going to get sued to oblivion.
1969 iirc for college admissions and federal government contracts (and maybe federal government hiring).
Interestingly, the 90s are when some states, like California in 1996 (prop 209), banned affirmative action in admissions.
So your belief is that affirmative action in college admissions is the defining factor in race inequality, even though the vast majority of the structural disadvantages happen much younger?
Remember that this is the American society that upon integration decided over and over again they'd rather fill public pools with cement than have them shared between white and black children.
You don't believe those same barriers carried over to housing and schools? You just ignore the data and massive, persistent wealth gaps?
What did the white child do to deserve this? How much better could they possibly be at drooling and crawling to have so much more wealth available to them?
So I guess your belief is that household wealth has no impact on children?
Ah, the fallacy that everything you receive from your ancestors is undeserved. Will we be doing race-based asset appropriation tomorrow, comrade?
I think I'm not interested in discussing this with someone holding such a position which I consider completely deluded.
Is there an intelligent argument that some infants are more deserving than others?
Does it still rightfully belong to you?
About half a century, in fact. There aren't many people still alive who can remember a time what it wasn't.