The most significant change produced by our anti-racist moment might just be a massive expansion of the diversity industrial complex, turning revolutionaries into Kafkaesque administrators
Excellent article. Really enjoyed it. Two thoughts:
1) All bureaucracies resist their own obsolescence. As the EID complex becomes a permanent fixture, it will be required to justify its own existence by finding issues requiring correction in a wider and wider range. The elimination or correction of one norm will simply be require the EID to find another. In this way, perpetuating 'racism' while rooting out racism will become a necessary cycle.
2) If we accept that the goals of EID are laudable, how can we be sure they will pursue it optimally. Right leaning thinkers (Sowell chief among them) bring up cultural/familial issues that may play a role in race outcomes. These ideas may or may not be correct, but they have already been deemed as racist by the EID. If there is any validity to those and similar claims then they will be overlooked or ignored by the EID, which could perpetuate racial disparity. (To be clear I'm not saying there is validity to those ideas, only that those issues shouldn't be ignored if their examination will help improve outcomes). As with (1) this would see the EID actually perpetuating racism or delaying racial equality as certain causes are too dangerous/'racist' to explore.
On (2): as long as we build a credentialing and meritocratic model around university credentials and acceptances, a huge advantage will exist for children who come from stable or supportive families who can do all sorts of things to improve the chances of their children getting into elite schools. There's no way of fiddling with the testing/evaluation system to change this because parents will always figure out how to get a competitive advantage. But as you say, to talk about the importance of family in the outcome of children is not something this crowd likes to do.
I wasn't thinking about universities in particular, but that's a good example. My concern is epistemological blind spots (ones that we know exist and ones we don't) because certain domains are deemed undiscussable.
Yes, this is a serious problem that we're up against now. In some sense, there is very little discussion you can have with someone who begins with the premise that families are somehow the product of evil and oppressive systems, and oppressive structures themselves. People that think like this are engaging in abstract (and incorrect) theorizing about imaginary worlds. But fortunately most people don't think like that, and one way to lessen the power of ideologues is to highlight the absurdities of positions like "the nuclear family has got to be dismantled."
Excellent article. Really enjoyed it. Two thoughts:
1) All bureaucracies resist their own obsolescence. As the EID complex becomes a permanent fixture, it will be required to justify its own existence by finding issues requiring correction in a wider and wider range. The elimination or correction of one norm will simply be require the EID to find another. In this way, perpetuating 'racism' while rooting out racism will become a necessary cycle.
2) If we accept that the goals of EID are laudable, how can we be sure they will pursue it optimally. Right leaning thinkers (Sowell chief among them) bring up cultural/familial issues that may play a role in race outcomes. These ideas may or may not be correct, but they have already been deemed as racist by the EID. If there is any validity to those and similar claims then they will be overlooked or ignored by the EID, which could perpetuate racial disparity. (To be clear I'm not saying there is validity to those ideas, only that those issues shouldn't be ignored if their examination will help improve outcomes). As with (1) this would see the EID actually perpetuating racism or delaying racial equality as certain causes are too dangerous/'racist' to explore.
On (2): as long as we build a credentialing and meritocratic model around university credentials and acceptances, a huge advantage will exist for children who come from stable or supportive families who can do all sorts of things to improve the chances of their children getting into elite schools. There's no way of fiddling with the testing/evaluation system to change this because parents will always figure out how to get a competitive advantage. But as you say, to talk about the importance of family in the outcome of children is not something this crowd likes to do.
I wasn't thinking about universities in particular, but that's a good example. My concern is epistemological blind spots (ones that we know exist and ones we don't) because certain domains are deemed undiscussable.
Yes, this is a serious problem that we're up against now. In some sense, there is very little discussion you can have with someone who begins with the premise that families are somehow the product of evil and oppressive systems, and oppressive structures themselves. People that think like this are engaging in abstract (and incorrect) theorizing about imaginary worlds. But fortunately most people don't think like that, and one way to lessen the power of ideologues is to highlight the absurdities of positions like "the nuclear family has got to be dismantled."