I no you where not talking about friendships, dating, who you hang out with etc, and I didn't say that you where talking about it. I was expanding from one point on to the other. Obviously some forms of discrimination (again defined as racial discrimination, for the purposes of this conversation, even though the word applies in other ways that would be considered much less obnoxious), are legally acceptable (not that you have to like it, but the proper response ranges from "its none of my business" to "that guy's a jerk", not sending cops after the guy). So the question is where to draw the line. Some would draw it at only allowing purely social discrimination (some don't even go that far, if its a social organization rather than just individual social relationships), I'd go further and say that generally private discrimination should be allowed, but that any official discrimination (different treatment under the law because of race) should not be. The private discrimination doesn't have to be socially acceptable (in fact I'd prefer many forms of it to not be socially acceptable) and can even result in boycotts and other responses that don't involved regulation, law, or violence. But I think it should be allowed.
I'm just about certain that once you get past the individual social discrimination, you wouldn't allow it, finding it not just something that should be subject to non violent protests, but also subject to government intervention. I disagree, but I've already had that conversation multiple times, and I don't want to go down that path and lose the actual issue we were discussing. So temporarily for the sake of argument I am assuming - "That's its wrong for A not to sell to or buy from B, because of B's race, and that its a wrong that rightfully deserves some government intervention to punish, prevent, and/or compensate"
OK, so starting with that assumption why punish a third party for the evil actions of the 1st party?
So you want to ignore the psychic damage that's been done from years of slavery and discrimination and pretend nothing's really wrong.
How do you get that I want to ignore anything? I'm certainly not saying nothings wrong.
But "somethings wrong" doesn't justify intentionally treating innocent third parties unjustly. If one of your neighbors beats up your cousin, that doesn't mean its ok for you to hire some thug to smack me around. Pointing that out doesn't mean I think its ok for the neighbor to beat up your cousin.
Similarly, if Bob at ACME corp, refused to hire John, because of his race, that doesn't mean its required or even just for Sheila at ABC corp to hire John over a the more qualified Mary, solely because of his race. Mary didn't do anything to John, and neither did Sheila. Why should Mary be punished, or Sheila /ABC corp be pressured to hire John?
If you assume that some punishment should be meted out, than why not punish Bob and/or ACME?
Of course even then to justify the punishment you would have to prove that the "crime" has been committed. And discrimination isn't normally easy to prove except perhaps in the most extreme cases, or when dealing with the most careless bigots. And if the "punishment" is to enforce affirmative action at ACME, than you are also punishing future applicants who are innocent of ACME's discrimination, and also did not benefit from it. So your still punishing innocent third parties.
To put it simply the fact that something bad has happened, doesn't justify doing something bad to innocent people. Also the fact that something bad has happened does not mean there is necessarily a response that is just and effective. Affirmative action is neither.
Affirmative action can also backfire in the sense that it can harm its intended beneficiaries. If a beneficiary gets a loan he would not otherwise qualify for and than can't pay it back, or if the beneficiary gets in to a school that she finds to academically challenging and flunks out rather than passing at a less challenging school, then who benefits?
And affirmative action encourages other racism. It increases focus on race, instead of on people as people. It creates grievances, and if taken to an extreme can make viewpoints that would normally be considered racism, in to potentially rational thoughts.
If in occupation X, group Y gets not just an advantage, but an enormous advantage, in terms of who gets let to the field, than its reasonable to assume that on the average those in group Y are less capable. Now as I said that's taking things to an extreme. In the real world the advantages might be more moderate, but even when this is the case, you do get a smaller degree of the same thing. Its only one factor, and with only modest advantages, other factors may be larger, so you can hardly count on the average person in "group Y" being less capable, and you certainly can't count on any specific individual from that group being less capable, but one can certainly see how factors like this could increase real racism, and at least in the more extreme cases could cause people who where basically non-racists to subtly and somewhat rationally discriminate against the group favored by affirmative action.
I don't want to ignore damage, I want to prevent more damage from happening. The best way to reduce racism, is to fight against racism, not to racially discriminate in the other direction.
Look at India for an extreme example. "Untouchables" certainly where discriminated against. This was wrong. No denying that, but what happened? They where given special bonuses and set asides, then the groups nearest to the "untouchables" in the Hindu caste pecking order fought to be considered part of the same group, so they could get the government created advantages. All you create is a big mess. Now in the US, things haven't gotten as extreme but that isn't a direction that we want to head in.
Which is not to say that I think affirmative action exercised by private groups should be illegal. It is discrimination based on race, and such discrimination for one group is just as unfair as discrimination for another, but who someone wants to hire, or fire, or sell to, or rent to, or buy from, or work for, should normally be their own decision, not the subject of law (except perhaps for government hiring, firing, contracting etc.) |
