Over the past 50 years, we have reorganized American and Canadian societies to favor and benefit less successful racial and ethnic minorities, particularly African Americans and Canadians, Hispanics, and American Indians in the United States and First Nations in Canada. Females are included, not because they’re underperforming, but because of past constraints. This is called “social justice.” It’s implemented through the “social justice” trinity of “diversity, equity, and inclusion.”
Selected minorities, particularly certain people of color and LGBTQ+, are “diverse,” while others and the majority of the population are not deemed diverse. “Equity” means equal outcomes for all categories, so standards have been lowered, and tests of performance cancelled, in order to ensure the equal representation of underperforming populations. “Inclusion” is for the “diverse,” while those of non-preferred minorities, such as Asian and Jews, and members of the majority are excluded.
At the ideological level, whites are cast as “privileged” oppressors and exploiters, while people of color, females, and Indigenous Natives are cast as innocent victims unable to control their own lives. At the practical level, admission to educational institutions, funding, jobs, promotions, and awards are limited to “diverse” people of color and females, while whites and males are personae non gratae and excluded as much as possible.
The alleged justification for this double standard favoring minorities and the female half of the population, and disfavoring and excluding members of the “privileged” majority, is the claimed “marginalization” and “oppression” of members of these categories. The alleged proof of these claims are statistical disparities in academic performance and employment, and in economic and professional achievement among the categories, especially those in which people of color and females are “underrepresented” in relation to their percentage of the population.
The sole explanation allowed for explaining these disparities is racial, ethnic, and gender discrimination. No evidence is adduced to demonstrate that discrimination is the operative cause of statistical disparities. No consideration is given to alternative explanations, such as differences among the categories in personal preferences, family structure, and/or community culture. The official narrative is that disparities exist because minorities and females are victims of oppression.
“Overrepresented” successful minorities, such as Asian Americans and Jews, in spite of suffering centuries of prejudice and discrimination, not to mention attempted genocide, are today disfavored as, respectively, “white adjacent” and “hyper-white.” Others, such as successful Nigerians and Caribbean blacks, are not mentioned because they contradict the narrative.
There are three serious objections to the “social justice” narrative, as these policies are labelled by their advocates:
First, reifying census categories while ignoring the diversity within them is simplistic. The poorest and most marginalized whites are allegedly “privileged” oppressors, while successful blacks and Hispanics nonetheless helpless victims. Worse, reducing people to category membership is applying a collective principle in place of treating individuals in their own terms, which is deeply illiberal. People should be treated as individuals, not as members of census categories.
Second, treating people according to their race or sex (or sexuality, ethnicity, or ability/disability) is the very definition of racist, sexist, and bigoted. How exactly is “reverse” discrimination any fairer than the original discrimination? And what kind of justice is “social justice” when it ignores what individuals have earned and deserve, and treats people according to census category membership?
Third, it’s a violation of majority rule. In a democratic society, the will of the majority must be respected, even while the rights of minorities are guaranteed. Favoring minorities over the majority is a violation of equality before the law, enshrined in both the U.S. Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
In the United States in 2020, non-Hispanic whites made up a supermajority of 60 percent of the population, even leaving aside the additional 10 percent of the population who were white Hispanics. African Americans were a 13 percent minority; all Hispanics were 18 percent of the population; Asians 6 percent, and American Indians 1 percent of the population.
In Canada, as of 2016, a 73 percent supermajority of Canadians were white, 5 percent Indigenous Natives, 6 percent South Asian Canadians, 5 percent Chinese, and 4 percent black. But today all non-Indigenous Natives are condemned at “colonial settler” oppressors who have no right to be there and must turn everything over to the Indigenous population.
The supermajorities in both the United States and Canada are white. So “social justice” policies, such as “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” that vilify whites as privileged oppressors or colonial settlers and certain minorities as marginalized victims, and establish preferences for those minorities while sidelining and excluding whites, is putting the few above the many. Just as “equity” means inequality, and “inclusion” means exclusion, so “social justice” means injustice for members of the majority.
