This may ring a bell:
There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one’s own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn’t, but if he was sane, he had to fly them. If he flew them, he was crazy and didn’t have to; but if he didn’t want to, he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle.
“That’s some catch, that Catch-22,” he observed.
“It’s the best there is,” Doc Daneeka agreed.
Here is an item that’s been going around over the past couple of days: an essay by Paul Sperry describing the Obama administration’s latest race-leveling operation.
The idea is to fish for “disparate impact” violations, wherever they can be found — in housing, lending, school discipline, academic performance, enrollment in gifted-student programs, etc. — and to use the coercive power of the State to flatten outcomes.
The Left has a secret weapon here, and in the current cultural climate, it’s a beaut. Here’s how it works:
1) If you go looking for disparate outcomes by racial groups (or by sex), you’ll certainly find them. They are real, and persistent. (See, for example, just how persistent they can be, here.)
2) When such disparate outcomes occur, there are only two possible causes: either they are due to an external obstacle, or something intrinsic to the group itself.
3) If all racial groups are assumed, as by current social convention they must be, to have exactly identical distributions of every cognitive and behavioral trait, then any variation in outcome that disparately affects a particular racial group must be evidence of some external obstacle. This can only be due to racism and injustice, and therefore it is just and proper for the State to detect and remove it, by whatever means necessary.
4) If however, you suggest that disparities under neutral policies may be due, even in part, to innate differences in the distribution of cognitive and behavioral characteristics in different racial groups, then you are a racist. (If you present actual evidence of such differences, you’re a “scientific” racist.) Moreover, the fact that you are even thinking such things is evidence of the persistence and prevalence of racism in general, which in turns confirms the assumption that disparate outcomes are the result of pervasive and intractable racism, and not innate differences. This is what justifies redoubled efforts on the part of the State to bring every aspect of our lives under racial scrutiny, and impose corrective measures wherever disparate outcomes are found.
So: notwithstanding that race, as we are told, is a “social construct” with no basis in reality, the government will spare no effort to group people by race, and to scour vast collections of intrusively gathered data to find inequalities in social and economic outcomes — not on any individual basis, but by race. But despite race being real enough, apparently, to justify making such racial categorizations, race can have no deeper reality as regards any shared characteristics that might contribute to such inequalities. Race is, in other words, real, but only real enough to serve, somehow, as a marker for defining groups, and thereby to serve as the basis of racism, without having any other actual properties. Moreover (and this is what makes the whole thing work so beautifully): if you disagree with any of this, you are yourself a racist — and you have thereby just demonstrated that persistent racism is indeed the problem.
Thanks to this secret weapon, we have moved beyond — far beyond — the idea that particular differences in outcomes may be due to specific and remediable instances of conscious and intentional racism. As we go Forward, we have a new paradigm: differences in outcomes simply ARE racism, now and forever.
That’s some catch!
15 Comments
Dear Lord Malcolm.
This post reads, pretty much, like some recent reading I’ve been exposed to coming from SCOTUS.
Brilliant analysis. Thanks for posting it.
Not at all. It needed pointing out.
I noted several months ago – or at least what I recall to be several months ago – that immigration in the era of disparate impact would lead to a paradoxically toxic outcome for society as a whole. A perverse logic has been born, based on a false axiom: immigrants do the jobs that Americans do not want to do. But the positions held by natives are desirable, and thus must be racially representative of the community that they serve. Consequently, immigrants must be guaranteed access to the jobs that Americans want to do, in numbers representative of their share of the population. Rinse and repeat.
“Consequently, immigrants must be guaranteed access to the jobs that Americans want to do”. And thus it is with a centrally planned-controlled economy. Too often the “jobs Americans just won’t do” excuse leaves off the other part…”at the wage offered”.
I think it is ok for Bill V. to be envious just this one time.
The “flattening outcomes” (FO) catch is interesting, but it’s no match for Heller’s Catch-22. FO ideology rests on self-flattening principles.
According to FO ideology, the State’s power is itself a “disparate outcome.” It doesn’t conform to the “identical distributions” principle. Thus, the State’s power must be flattened out to be “identical in distribution” to rest of U.S. society. On Catch-FO, the State must use its own power to level itself for the sake of the flattening of U.S. society.
FO ideology doesn’t merit Yossarian’s respectful whistle.
Elliott, you seem to think the State is just another person, on a par with every other person, and equally bound by the law.
No, it is as Tocqueville said it would be:
Thanks for your reply, Malcolm. Your comment is interesting, and I appreciate the link to Tocqueville’s Democracy in America.
I wasn’t taking the State to be a person. Rather, I was taking the State to be an American social institution which is part of American society (which is itself a large group of people). And I was interpreting FO ideology as assuming that each group of people is a “racial group” and thus has “exactly identical distributions of every cognitive and behavioral trait.”
But I was interpreting FO ideology as applying this “identical distribution” principle not just to individual persons, but also to institutions and other collections of persons within the larger group; and as applying the principle not just to “traits” taken as personal characteristics or abilities, but also to “traits” taken as institutional powers.
Perhaps this interpretation is incorrect, but it seems to me a plausible one because from the FO perspective, labels such as “racist” or “discriminator” are fairly directed to institutions as well to persons. Since such labels are used frequently in FO culture, it seems plausible to hold that FO ideology seeks to apply the “identical distribution” principle to institutions as well as to persons.
In short, I don’t take the State to be a person, but perhaps FO ideology takes institutions to be roughly equivalent to persons.
No, Elliott, still you miss the point. Human inequalities are like the bubble under the shelf-paper: you can move them around, but they are irreducible and ineliminable. Liberty and equality are, as Will and Ariel Durant observed, “sworn and everlasting enemies”.
To impose an unnatural equality in social outcomes requires, then, the creation and imposition of a new inequality of power. If inequality is the natural consequence of liberty, then to do all that flattening there must be some potent entity to enforce it. Such a power must operate from a level above and outside the system that is to be flattened — and to imagine that it would use its unique position, and sovereign puissance, to flatten itself would be to ignore every lesson of history and human nature.
Thanks, Malcolm. I see your point and I don’t disagree. I don’t support the “flattening outcomes” view, and I don’t believe the “identical distribution” principle is true.
I don’t believe or imagine a sovereign power would actually use its own resources to intentionally flatten itself. I’m simply suggesting that FO ideology is self-referentially inconsistent. On a plausible interpretation of FO ideology, the ideology rests on principles which, if consistently followed by the power, would require the flattening of the power. Unless, of course, FO ideology held that all inequalities must be flattened with the exception of one: the flattening power itself.
Now, this doesn’t mean that the power would, in actuality, intentionally flatten itself. Nevertheless, there are historical examples of sovereign powers unintentionally weakening themselves (e.g., ancient Athens, ancient Rome, the French Revolutionaries). State powers are susceptible to such unintentional weakening.
We hear this term “social justice” a lot and don’t seem to ever hear what it means. (Yeah, yeah, yeah I’ve read all Rawls stuff and it’s withered, abstract and inapplicable.) Several years ago the following definition dawned on me: “social justice” is the position that all differences in human outcomes can only be the product of oppression. While I applaud the insight of this post it is still only defensive in nature, pointing out the silliness and delusion that is being pursued.
Every time you meet someone anywhere to the right of Pat Buchanan ask them the following question: are all human differences the product of oppression. This conversation always ends with you getting to call them a liar. Great fun.
Attack, attack, attack. Put the onus on them to defend their positions, which is the strategy the left has used for well over a century.
@ Elliot
“According to FO ideology, the State’s power is itself a “disparate outcome.”
And why does the State’s power result in a disparate outcome? You have two options and two options only:
A) oppression
B) differences between the groups themselves that exist prior and independent of anything the state does
The current cultural context, not informed in any way by facts, is that B is taboo, therefore, disparate outcomes *must* be the product of *A*. Really, disparate outcomes as a result of oppression is an intellectual sleight of hand when what they are really saying is that all disparate outcomes are oppression per se. It’s all a rhetorical con job in the service of insisting that all differences in outcomes are the product of oppression without having to defend the position.
BTW, there is a very good case to be made that the inevitably logical result of Rawls’ difference principle is what we see labeled social justice, today. Rawls runs into problems with both psychology and epistemology that he was either unaware of or never considered, respectively.
In psychology there is very good evidence involving people acting out of spite to hurt successful people even if it hurts themselves. Rawls’ difference principle stipulates that we should work toward rules that help the least. However, in a democracy there is no good reason to think that those “least” won’t push for policies that hurt them just for the sake of sticking it to those above them. In epistemology, it is entirely plausible that we can only know what will help those least long after the fact.
Further, there is a real issue of exact how do we identify groups that are the least. Clearly, sex is important to human males. Which group, on average, has more sex partners in a life time? Black males or white males? Social justice advocates take a very narrow part of human experience and then exclaim “Disparate Impact!” Last I checked, the mode for white males is one lifetime sexual partner and the mode for black males is six lifetime partners.
In other words, Elliot, the very notion of “disparate impact” doesn’t just presuppose oppression but is a rhetorical sleight of hand designed to distract from the hidden premise that all differences in outcomes are the product of oppression.