All “anti-racism” and “social justice” writings and campaigns are predicated on the claim that certain races and sexes are being treated unfairly. The only evidence presented to support this assertion is statistical disparities between different census categories of races and sexes.
But statistical disparities don’t prove unfair treatment; they only prove unequal outcomes. Race advocates and feminists claim that statistical disparities reflect racist and sexist discrimination. This is a factual question, and so we must consider the evidence.
Is it Discrimination?
Race and sex activists claim that statistical disparities reflect racist and sexist discrimination. With no further proof of actual discrimination, activists claim that any membership or benefit that doesn’t see 13.4 percent representation of black Americans, 18.5 percent of Hispanics, and 50 percent of female Americans—their percentages of the general population—must have resulted from racial and sexist discrimination. For example, the fact that blacks make up 5 percent and Hispanics make up 5.8 percent of medical doctors means that blacks and Hispanics are statistically underrepresented, and that this result is the consequence of racist discrimination against blacks and Hispanics.Asian Americans, with 5.9 percent of the population, provide 17.1 percent of the medical doctors. This is a major statistical disparity. Does it result from racial discrimination against whites, blacks, and Hispanics? Who exactly is discriminating in favor of Asian Americans, people who themselves have long suffered discrimination? Is there any evidence of discrimination in favor of Asian Americans?
What Might Be the Reasons for Different Outcomes?
We know that two-parent families, in comparison with one-parent families, are associated with children’s higher educational achievement and with a lower level of criminal activity and incarceration. Members of different census race categories differ in their family structure: the percentage of single-parent families among African Americans, in 2019, was 64 percent; among American Indians, 52 percent; among Hispanics, 42 percent; among whites, 24 percent; and among Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, 15 percent.Educational achievement correlates with family structure. In all standardized tests, Asian Americans achieve the highest scores, then, well behind, are whites, and well behind are Hispanics, and finally blacks. This reflects not only family structure, but also family and community culture. Asian American families have a high level of discipline and respect for parental authority, and their families and communities are notoriously committed to education.
This means the per-capita offending rate for African-Americans was around six times higher than that of whites. As a result, African Americans are highly overrepresented in prisons by demography, although not overrepresented in terms of criminal activity.
All of these statistical disparities that indicate difficulties in the African American community have resulted after 50 years of legalized discrimination on behalf of African Americans. “Affirmative action” has made black Americans a preferred category of applicants, and has granted special conditions and benefits for black Americans. Now “diversity, equity, and inclusion” intensifies pro-black discrimination, and, incidentally, anti-white and anti-Asian discrimination. But the disparities remain, because even 50 years of racial discrimination in favor of black Americans has not addressed the social pathologies of their community.
Now, Ibram X. Kendi has warned us that “One either believes problems are rooted in groups of people, as a racist, or locates the roots of problems in power and policies, as an antiracist.” Thus, referring to different characteristics of family structure, community culture, and criminality in different race categories is, according to Kendi, racist. Kendi is advocating for black Americans, and rejects the evidence that blacks bear some responsibility for their levels of achievement and for social pathologies such as crime. The problem, according to Kendi, is “power and policies,” and in taking this stand, he’s robbing black Americans of their agency as human beings, of their capability to achieve and to seek their own ends. This is not “anti-racism,” it’s undermining the constituency Kendi claims to champion by no expectations of performance.
Kendi’s solution to “racism” and alleged discrimination is to increase the preferences and benefits for blacks, in perpetuity: “The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.” Kendi aims to disaggregate rewards from performance, so that his favored racial category gets the rewards irrespective of performance. This is not anti-racism; it’s reverse racism, as well as the negation of achievement and merit, and the advancement of mediocrity in all of our fields of knowledge and service.