(05-09-2019 01:51 PM)Rice93 Wrote: (05-09-2019 01:33 PM)OptimisticOwl Wrote: I think the biggest difference between me and Lad/93 is that I remember 1955 - real discrimination. I see so much difference now.
I agree that things have gotten much better since 1955. There is still quite a ways to go before we can sit on our laurels and claim equality, though.
Quote:Sure, some people still will discriminate. Individually. Small businesses. So how are you going to enforce your views on them?
Proportionality is a false benchmark. I used to run a company with 100% hispanic employees. No blacks. No Asians. No whites. But I did not hire on the basis of race or ethnicity. I just needed bilingual people, and in those areas where my offices were, there were very few white/black/asian people who were bilingual. Sorry about that. I hired the best people available.
But then I see black-owned businesses bragging about how they hire only black employees. Is that OK?
That is an interesting question. Certainly, there would be massive public outcry if a white-owned business bragged about only hiring white people.
So why am I OK with a double standard? I guess you might look at this as as a reasonable "reparation". The rate of black unemployment is so much higher than white unemployment and systemic racism certainly accounts for a fair amount of this discrepancy. Systemic injustice over hundreds of years have also led to a giant gap in black wealth. If this plays a small part in closing the racial wealth gap then I am comfortable with it.
And your response points out the critical, stark, and unblemished difference between progressivism and libertarianism, or for that matter conservatism.
Progressivism is built and premised upon 'equality of outcome'. That is why it is so easy and prevalent for progressives to have the underlying and constant chant of 'things are still the same to Loving v. Virginia' days.
Furthermore this paradigm of government-directed and mandated 'equality of outcome' fits hand in glove with the predilection of progressive philosophy. That is, the idea that government *must* be used as the hammer to dictate, regulate, and ensure socially-acceptable (goodthink) outcomes.
I mean look at it -- this 'equality of outcome' outlook that serves as the basis or your definition of equality has you supporting 'reparations' vis a vis governmental decree or force of law.
But there is a huge and fundamental difference between 'equality of outcome' and 'equality of opportunity'. In your paradigm, you apparently support government interaction or intervention to your vision of redistributionist policies to enable such outcome based equality.
Thus, *anything* short of literal redistribution for outcome would be 'racist' under that 'outcome' viewpoint.
In distinction, the view held on the opposite side says that people should be provided with an 'equal opportunity' --- such equal opportunity will (in the longer term) come to the steady-state 'outcome'. To wit, there *are* shortcomings in this realm -- no doubt. The education system up through high school is one huge shortcoming where we as a society absolutely need to do better to further such 'equal opportunity', no doubt.
But under the viewpoint of where we stand on an 'equal opportunity', while things are not *completely* copacetic, they are *parsecs* beyond where we stood as a society even compared with 50 years ago.
In that viewpoint, the explicit restrictions on 'opportunity' to a huge extent have been buried under. And the challenges still on the table are within the realm of addressable. But, if one were to believe the progressive chorus, one would have to believe that today's society (where any school is open, and level of education is open, and therefor any position in society is open) is no better than the antebellum plantation society.