Imagine my ancestors stole all of your ancestors stuff and I still get to keep it all and anything I've built using it. We've stopped stealing your stuff now, though, so we have "equality of opportunity."
Yes, I agree!
But what if my ancestors did not steal your ancestors stuff? Am I still responsible, because I have the same skin color as the folks who harmed you?
This is fundamentally a race-based conception of the world, a conception that defines power along racial lines, which groups and analyzes people fundamentally based on race.
We have the benefit in the last 50 years to move past this way of looking at the world, many of us have come to the realization that race isn't a useful way to group people, period. Any disadvantage you see in society that appears 'race' based can be better explained via other means. If people aren't treated justly, it's not because of racism except in vanishingly small amounts, in obscure and backwards parts of the US.
'Structural racism' falls prey to correlation is not causation, a misguided explanation for group differences, an oversimplification, and it won't generate progress as long as the cause is incorrectly ascribed.
Here’s a misunderstood concept: race is a result of unfair policies. “Black” as a racial group does not meaningfully exist without the historical racism and oppressive policies enacted on black peoples. Without distinction between groups, there would be unity. But we know, for example, black people were treated unfairly and still are in many aspects today in the US, so the construction of the black race occurs because of these differences. Aka, the marker “black” for a person identifies someone who faces systemic racism in the US. It’s not just about the wavelength of light a person’s body reflects. Racial groups are the result of history, culture, policies, and present day attitudes.
Fundamental issues I have with aiming for basically equal outcome by artificially tipping the scale until some metric evens out:
- Which dimensions do we make adjustments based on? is it just race or do we consider wealth etc?
- How much do we adjust? Black Americans had it tougher, boost by 10, Hispanics by 7? Chinese by -5 because they somehow succeeded without tipping the scales?
- Where does it end? We tip the scale for 200 years and if things are still out balanced keep adjusting?
> <Outcome> is somewhat inherited, therefore there cannot be real equality of <outcome>.
The US used to be a land of 'opportunity' for poor immigrants. They came to the US and worked hard to overcome their circumstances and make a better life for themselves and their children.
It would be insulting and demoralizing to them to say that opportunity is impossible because they're poor, because their uncle doesn't own the bank down the street. The point of opportunity is that it's _possible_ to succeed, the scales are not unfairly weighed against you by law or societal prejudice.
Many things make achieving outcomes hard - poverty, mental health, bad luck - these are sometimes affected by the past too, but they don't necessarily take away opportunity in that the hope in success is still possible. This hope is important to the soul is it not? This is why opportunity is so important, it's essentially hope.
The son of an investment banking executive has much greater opportunity to also become an investment banker than some rando dude from the street, even if it is remotely possible. That opportunity delta is real, and it's largely, almost entirely, due to family ties.
I would not say that I have the opportunity to become a billionaire, even though it is technically possible, but astronomically unlikely.
Immigrants don't have the opportunity to become president of the US because of US law, but any natural-born citizen of the country does have that opportunity regardless of the likelihood. The US has always had immigrants achieve boundless success here which is why it was considered the land of opportunity, not because everyone did - or because it was 'fair', but because it was possible.
There are lots of factors that contribute to an ethnic group's relative success in playing the economic game, some of which are unique to that cohort and not the ethnicity itself. Past results do not guarantee future performance.
One example: the communist revolution expelled professors and academics from China, thus many Chinese and Taiwanese-american immigrants from that generation had scholarly backgrounds which obviously translates well. Compare to a history where your people were enslaved and your cultural background entirely erased.
Another example: getting an H1B as an Indian person today is super competitive / hard, but much easier if you're another ethnicity. What does that mean for future generations of Indian-Americans? There's going to be a selection bias.
There's some variation, but even so they still perform better than "white" people with the same socioeconomic status - even among Filipino and Southeast Asians: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4060715/