← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Faust
Thread ID: 14439 | Posts: 13 | Started: 2004-07-05
2004-07-05 15:20 | User Profile
Why Ward Connerly's Racial Privacy Initiative is nonsense!
I am very happy it failed to pass!
Steve Sailer and the RPI: Even Homer Nods
See also:Jared Taylorââ¬â¢s review of Hans-Herman Hoppeââ¬â¢s Democracy ââ¬âThe God That Failed
By Jared Taylor
I have long been an admirer of Steve Sailer, whose work I often find to be nothing short of brilliant. However, in his recent commentary on Ward Connerly's Racial Privacy Initiative (RPI), he takes a number of positions with which I must disagree.
Mr. Sailer writes that his opposition to affirmative action is increasingly based not on moral but on ââ¬Åprudential grounds.ââ¬Â
I take this to mean that he believes racial preferences should be abolished, not so much because they are wrong, but because whites will eventually rise up against them.
This is a very dangerous argument. If we operate on the basis of a fear of riots rather than on a judgment of right and wrong, policy loses all coherence, and the nation can be blackmailed.
"Prudential groundsââ¬Â would suggest that racial preferences be expandedââ¬ânot abolished. After all, the beneficiaries have an impressive record of riot and violence. Blacks, in particular, riot with little provocation. If policy becomes nothing more than pacification, blacks can demand ever-greater levels of preference based on the very real threat of violence.
At the same time, whites are extremely unlikely to riot over the continuation of racial preferences. It has been 50 years since they lost the capacity to riot for explicitly racial reasons. Despite constant demographic displacement by non-whites, official racial discrimination against them in hiring and college admissions, and widespread denigration of their history and culture, they show no signs of rekindling that ability. Of course, whites are to be congratulated on this ââ¬â but it is also true that their elected representatives show no sign of defending their interests in this debate.
Opposition to racial preferences should not be "prudential" but logical and moral.
The data on racial differences in intelligence are now overwhelming. Blacks and Hispanics simply cannot be expected to achieve at the same level as whites and Asians. To insist that current differences in achievement are proof of discrimination by wicked whites is to persist in what must be one of the most successful and damaging propaganda campaigns in history.
There cannot be racial equality in outcome because the races are not equal in ability. Any policy based on the assumption of equality will have perverse consequences.
Mr. Sailer supports the Racial Privacy Initiative because he believes that if the government stops collecting racial data, it will make it more difficult to enforce racial preference quotas. There are several things wrong with this argument.
First, as he himself points out, companies and universities now impose racial quotas upon themselves. Just because the state of California stops counting noses will not prevent others from doing so.
Second, Mr. Sailer suggests at the very end of his essay, that it is the market rather than the law that should punish irrational discrimination. That is certainly true. A company should be free to hire only left-handed, Korean duck-hunters if it wants, and if this peculiar hiring policy means it is not always able to hire the most productive employees, the market will punish it by reducing its profits.
Private discrimination is, in fact, the essence of choice. The Civil Rights Act of 1964, which stripped Americans of the right to make free decisions about whom to hire, serve, accommodate, or choose as neighbors and classmates, was a staggering expansion of government power and loss of individual freedom. The "refusal to deal," as private discrimination is technically called, cannot be considered a wrong because such a refusal does not leave anyone worse off than he was before. If you don't hire me or sell me your house, I may be disappointed, but I am not materially harmed.
Today, however, discrimination against whites goes largely unpunished in the market for two reasons: many discriminators are government bodies not subject to market forces; large private companies must discriminate against whites so as to have racially proportionate workforces, which are the only legally acceptable proof of non-discrimination. As all must do this, all are equally handicapped.
The solution, therefore, is not something like the Racial Privacy Initiative, which does nothing but reduce the quality of racial data. The solution is to abolish all anti-discrimination laws. They should be retained, if at all, in the monopoly public sector.
If Ford then decides to hire large numbers of underqualified blacks and Hispanics while GM insists on across-the-board standards, the market really will pass verdict on which is the better policy. Likewise, if Harvard lowers standards in order to promote "diversity," while Yale is free to discriminate in order to promote "homogeneity" (unlikely but theoretically possible), let high school seniors decide which sort of campus they like best.
An end to anti-discrimination law in the private sector would, of course, highlight race, sex, and ethnic differences in ability. This would pave the way to broad recognition of racial reality, and lead to realistic policies- rather than our current miasma of propaganda, injustice, and bad faith, all of which are based on the fantasy of racial equality.
The RPI is a strictly cosmetic measure that will have no effect on the abuses it is designed to cure.
Let there be more information about race rather than less.
And let us be free to consider this information when we hire employees, buy a house, or choose a school.
Jared Taylor(email him) is editor of American Renaissance and the author of Paved With Good Intentions: The Failure of Race Relations in Contemporary America. (For Peter Brimelowââ¬â¢s review, click here.)
[url]http://www.vdare.com/misc/taylor_sailer_and_rpi.htm[/url]
2004-07-05 17:08 | User Profile
RPI is fine, even if it is 'cosmetic.' Yes, we need something else, but baby steps might not hurt.
Nonetheless, I felt Taylor was really smoking here with most of his arguments. The focus on right and free market principles is admirable.
2004-07-05 17:40 | User Profile
darkstar,
I don't want to end discrimination; I want to bring it back!
2004-07-05 17:43 | User Profile
You can't 'bring back' what is already here, my friend.
But if you mean that we need more private discrimination against non-whites--you are certainly correct.
2004-07-05 18:34 | User Profile
RPI is really about Ward Connerly's feelings toward his own mixed-race heritage. He wants race de-emphasized, because he himself is the product of de-emphasis on race.
2004-07-05 22:52 | User Profile
Could be, but who cares? That's not centrally what RPI was about.
2004-07-06 17:42 | User Profile
[QUOTE=darkstar]Could be, but who cares? That's not centrally what RPI was about.[/QUOTE]
Sure it is. RPI is about the state not collecting racial data, because race does not matter. This is the ideology of "color blindness." Who cares what race someone is? Anyone can marry anyone, and its okay. We're all just Americans. All just individuals. Race is a social construct.
If Ward Connerly is a mutt, and there are people out here putting value on racial integrity, its not hard to see why he takes that as a rejection of himself. He wants to be legitimized.
2004-07-06 17:49 | User Profile
RPI is about no collecting racial data because the state has no business at playing 'social engineer.' It may also be 'about' Connerly (who also has white wife, btw), but this is completely immaterial to its political value. I can't understand why you think personal data bout the initiative writer matters to whether the iniative should be suported or not. Believe me, when the Courts interpret an initiative, they don't go ask its writer what he or she meant.
I see you are having some fun with your tangent about 'who cares what race someone is?,' but it is just preaching to the converted. My 'who cares?' was clearly and obviously a response to your interpretation of Connerly's role, not to some general point about race.
2004-07-07 00:41 | User Profile
[QUOTE=darkstar]RPI is about no collecting racial data because the state has no business at playing 'social engineer.' It may also be 'about' Connerly (who also has white wife, btw), but this is completely immaterial to its political value. I can't understand why you think personal data bout the initiative writer matters to whether the iniative should be suported or not. Believe me, when the Courts interpret an initiative, they don't go ask its writer what he or she meant.
I see you are having some fun with your tangent about 'who cares what race someone is?,' but it is just preaching to the converted. My 'who cares?' was clearly and obviously a response to your interpretation of Connerly's role, not to some general point about race.[/QUOTE] Darkstar, I don't disagree with the points you make. The state really does not have a legitimate right to play social engineer. But RPI doesn't outlaw social engineering; it doesn't prohibit the state from collecting information on individuals. Nor does the keeping of racial stats in and of itself cause social engineering. If the state wants to play social engineer, it will do so in spite of whether RPI ever passes.
I am not judging the value of RPI based on what I think of its main sponsor. I was commenting on the motivation behind this type of "color blind" campaign. You're certainly right that the courts interpret as they wish, despite an author's intent and sometimes toward ends an author publicly opposes. My speculation was not on the result of the passage of something like RPI, but on the race-nihilism that sets RPI's advocate apart from many conservatives who might be tempted to see Ward Connerly as something more than an ally in a very narrow, pragmatic, specific case.
2004-07-07 01:06 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Deus Vult]The state really does not have a legitimate right to play social engineer.[/QUOTE]
Whites have a right to survive...well, scratch that. A better way to put it is that there are no "rights" except those which a people seizes for itself. "Rights" are nothing without power, mere words on paper. That having been said, Whites with a healthy instinct for the biological survival of their kind would naturally want to use the State as an institution for "engineering" the kind of society most conducive to their interests. You bet I want the State to "socially engineer" all Third World immigrants back to their lands of origin, for example.
2004-07-07 01:10 | User Profile
'...on the race-nihilism that sets RPI's advocate apart from many conservatives who might be tempted to see Ward Connerly as something more than an ally in a very narrow, pragmatic, specific case.' Should this sentence end, '......on the race-nihilism that sets RPI's advocate apart FOR many conservatives...'?
In any case, I agree that there might be a reason RPI came to the fore, instead of a more sensible anti-affrimative action proposal. Yeah, it is that 'content of his character' nonsense, as if we were all blobs of flesh disfigured by our encasing organ (i.e., the skin). A lot of so-called conservatives are wacko this way--they forget that when their daddies talked this kind of talk, it was just a nest of lies of to mask the white will to power. Alas, it seems many Americans are just too dumb to figure out when vague ideological rumbling is just cover, and when it is something worth taking seriously. --Too much Hollyvood does rot the brain!
2004-07-12 02:44 | User Profile
I'm am so tired of hearing the rantings of mixed-raced mongrels.
2004-07-12 04:02 | User Profile
PaleoconAvatar , Great Post! You are most Right! [QUOTE] Whites have a right to survive...well, scratch that. A better way to put it is that there are no "rights" except those which a people seizes for itself. "Rights" are nothing without power, mere words on paper. That having been said, Whites with a healthy instinct for the biological survival of their kind would naturally want to use the State as an institution for "engineering" the kind of society most conducive to their interests. You bet I want the State to "socially engineer" all Third World immigrants back to their lands of origin, for example. [/QUOTE]