I am suggesting that someone might reasonably think that "yeah, let's reduce racial discrimination in the US; we'll start by getting rid of affirmative action" is a bit like "yeah, let's reduce religious intolerance in Saudi Arabia; we'll start by getting rid of discrimination against Muslims".
Let me lay out my line of thinking.
I am assuming that since you... um, that's going to be confusing so let's invoke Alice instead -- so, I'm assuming that Alice believes that race is a social construct with no underlying biological reality and would like this construct to go away -- the ideal is an entirely colour-blind world.
Given that racial discrimination is bad, Alice would want to get rid of all forms of it, including affirmative action. What makes affirmative action special? The fact that the full force of the state is behind it. That's a rather important point: the government explicitly discriminates by race and if you get in its way, you're are likely to be steamrolled.
Wouldn't you want to start by eliminating the discrimination which the state imposes?
Another issue is values (= optimisation criteria). If Alice's goal is to end racial discrimination, Alice probably just want to eliminate it wherever you find it. But if Alice's goals are more diverse and she is predominantly concerned about other things like, say, electability, or social justice, or money, or cultural domination, etc. etc. then she'll be guided by these goals and ending racial discrimination becomes mostly instrumental. And in such a case it becomes just another social mechanism to tinker with and I start to suspect that Alice will tolerate racial discrimination if it furthers her other overarching goals.
the idea that if someone holds that "race" as generally understood is a biological unreality, then they should think there should be no discrimination on the basis of "race" as generally understood
I don't hold that position, for race can clearly be a proxy for culture and people love to discriminate on the basis of culture.
My position is that if race has no biological underpinnings and is an arbitrary label, then it's just one in a long line of such labels and I'm not sure what makes it special. Social labels are also amenable to change with the implication that proper social-engineering efforts can (and some people will say that they should) mold the race concept into whatever shape the engineers desire.
if it's meant as more than a tautology
Robert's specific meaning was, I think, that at this point in time you do not fix past racial discrimination (slavery and pre-Civil Rights era) by institutionalising a reverse form of racism. If you want to get to the point where race doesn't matter, you need to stop making the race matter because it literally prevents you from getting to your goal. I don't think he was making any claims about "the most effective way" or anything like that.
I'm assuming that Alice believes that race is a social construct with no underlying biological reality and would like this construct to go away -- the ideal is an entirely colour-blind world.
That seems to me to be assuming more than is actually called for here, but never mind.
Given that racial discrimination is bad, Alice would want to get rid of all forms of it, including affirmative action.
If that means that Alice's ideal world would have no racial discrimination anywhere ever (and, in particular, no affirmative action) then yes, I agree, she woul...
The most recent post in December's Stupid Questions article is from the 11th.
I suppose as the article's been pushed further down the list of new articles, it's had less exposure, so here's another one for the rest of December.
Plus I have a few questions, so I'll get it kicked off.
It was said in the last one, and it's good advice, I think:
This thread is for asking any questions that might seem obvious, tangential, silly or what-have-you. Don't be shy, everyone has holes in their knowledge, though the fewer and the smaller we can make them, the better.
Please be respectful of other people's admitting ignorance and don't mock them for it, as they're doing a noble thing.