“Wrestling With Racism – Are These Questions Racist?”
Authored by Mike Kimel
Here’s a story widely reported in England from earlier this year:
A black former soldier is suing the Ministry of Defence after he was injured when his hands were exposed to temperatures of -30C during training.
Abdoulie Bojang, 30, is suing for £200,000 after he suffered career-ending injuries when he was exposed to below-zero temperatures in Banff, Canada during training.
He says the army ‘failed to take into account his ethnicity’, and is suing over non-freezing cold injuries…
A spokesman for solicitors Bolt Burdon Kemp said: ‘Service personnel of African and Afro-Caribbean descent, including those of mixed race, are particularly vulnerable in low temperatures.’
‘The MoD has acknowledged research indicating that these groups are 30 times more likely to contract an NFCI (non-freezing cold injury) than Caucasian service personnel.
Here is a similar story reported in 2009. This is not a new issue. And here is another story a Ghanaian-born soldier with a similar lawsuit
I assume that if the MoD has acknowledged such differences are real, they probably are, but beyond that, I will not pretend that I am qualified to have an opinion on medical issues. However, I do have some questions:
1. Given this article, is it racism to treat one group of soldiers differently in cold weather based on that group’s ancestry?
2. Given this article, is it racism not to treat one group of soldiers differently in cold weather based on that group’s ancestry?
3. Do answers to 1 & 2 change if the notion that a person’s ancestry affects that person’s vulnerability to the cold is true?
4. Do answers to 1 & 2 change if the notion that a person’s ancestry affects that person’s vulnerability to the cold is not true?
5. If people of a particular ancestry are disproportionately likely to be affected by cold, what is the likelihood that groups of people with a different ancestry are disproportionately likely to be affected (positively or negatively) by other conditions?
6. Under what conditions would it be racist to account for issues described in question 5?
7. Under what conditions would it be racist not to account for issues described in question 5?
Please share your answers in comments.
(Note – this post is not a follow up to this one, but the two posts do reside in the same world.)
And what world would that be, Mike? The world in which it’s considered fine to casually segue from making racist claims thinly disguised as claims about ancestral cultural history, to using hereditary genetic physiological propensities common to one particular race as ostensible support for the earlier racist claims?
Jews have a considerably higher rate of diabetes, both Type 1 and Type 2, as well as breast cancer. Irish, spina bifida and (I believe) melanoma. Scandinavians, depression.
None of which has the slightest implication for anything you professed was your point in the earlier post.
Obviously, Mike, you think a claim of failure to accommodate a hereditary physiological trait that is significantly more common to one race than to others is per se a claim of racism—that is, that such a claim is necessarily a claim of racism absent evidence that the Canadian military does accommodate other ethnic physiological hereditary traits, or that it occurred to them that this was something they should consider, unlike, say, an ethnic hereditary propensity toward heat stroke among Scandinavians (if it exists), or the higher risk of melanoma among certain people of Celtic ancestry (which I believe does exist). Ergo, NOT acknowledging racial and ethnic hereditary propensities, such as those that in his earlier post he SAID was merely cultural but of course was transparently racial, is just ignoring reality.
We get it, Mike. What we (or at least I) DON’T get is why this stuff is being posted on Angry Bear. Rather than on, say, Breitbart.
God. This is embarrassing as hell.
Beverly,
“The world in which it’s considered fine to casually segue from making racist claims thinly disguised as claims about ancestral cultural history, to using hereditary genetic physiological propensities common to one particular race as ostensible support for the earlier racist claims?”
I don’t follow? What racist claims? Mine? Which statements did I make that are racist? Do you mean my comments in the other post where I noted that Japanese people tend to show up on time for meetings, but Brazilians, not so much? Perhaps you call that racist, but in general, those statements are also true, and considered true by just about anyone who regularly deals with Brazilians and Japanese people. I do happen to deal regularly with Japanese people and Brazilian people. I know damn well when the Japanese say a meeting starts at 3 PM, I better have my butt in the chair at 3 PM. I also know that if a Brazilian tells me a meeting is at 3 PM, and I actually show up at 3 PM, I will be probably be waiting a while.
Or do you mean claims made in the lawsuit or the statement by British MoD? Are those statements racist?
” you think a claim of failure to accommodate a hereditary physiological trait that is significantly more common to one race than to others is per se a claim of racism”
No. I personally think an organization like the military should deploy people in the way that makes most sense given their abilities and the needs of the military. If I read your comment correctly, that is your position too. But assuming this lawsuit and others like it and the statement by the MoD are correct, that means the British military might wind up with over-representation of some groups in some types of operations, and under-representation of other groups. To add to the examples you cited, myopia is more prevalent among some ethnic groups than others, both for genetic and for cultural reasons. That would affect the distribution of pilots, snipers, etc.
So accommodating individuals (which I believe one should do, and as I said, which I believe you also seem to agree with) will invariably lead to different average outcomes for different groups of people. I.e., the share of Aboriginal, Asian, Black, Hispanic, Middle Eastern & White people in a given unit can end up being very different from their share of the total population of service members. But different group outcomes is often cited as evidence of racism. (I would venture to guess that is usually your position, in fact.)
So… you cannot have it both ways. Either reasonable accommodations can be made at an individual basis, or there can be proportional representation in every instance. But you cannot have both. So which would you allow? That is precisely what this post is trying to get at.
Why bother with the concept of racism? What would be wrong with just taking notice of a possible vulnerability and working out a protocol to deal with it — if it exists?
Genes don’t blend — they shuffle.
Myself, I have five Irish grandparents counting my mother’s stepmother. But, I would guess that sometime in the past five hundred years or so, some Spanish sailor or slave left his thermostat in the Irish gene pool.
One day last summer I’m in a Walmart parking lot, hugging my vest tight around me in the wind — and a woman yells: “It’s 90 degrees!” Yea; but I don’t want to catch cold. 🙂 Black Irish.
Yeah. This has exactly nothing to do with the concept of racism and everything to do with simply accommodation of the sort required under the Americans With Disabilities Act. This is pure nonsense, a corruption of a legal concept about fear disparate racial impact. As if it’s adverse to blacks to accommodate them, at their request, on something of this sort.
This is just beyond the pale for a blog that is somewhat serious about posts and discussions about economics, laws, and government policy.
Ah, the ever so new and exciting world of Human Biodiversity, There are R*A*C*I*A*L Differences, and it can be proven!
Absolutely. The discussion of racial interiority and superiority is of colossal interest to many white-skinned people, and either angers or bores people with black, brown, or yellow skins. If that isn’t PROOF of innate racial differences, what is?
Please believe me, this discussion is not novel and leads to point of interest. Perhaps we can get back to discussing economic issues?
Drew,
I would suggest simply taking notice and making accommodation at the individual level. The problem is that doing so leads to disparate outcomes, and disparate impacts. (In the example in the post, fewer Black soldiers in units which fight in cold weather environments.) I’m no attorney, but I know that policies that lead to disparate impacts are legally problematic.
Ah! Disparate impact! That’s it!
Presumably you mean, disparate impact on non-blacks, cuz disparate impact in U.S. civil rights law concerns ADVERSE disparate impact to the class claiming the discriminatory disparate impact:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disparate_impact.
Guess I should have expected that your concern is some sort reverse discriminatory impact on people who come from cultures that value promptness, or something.
Seriously, Mike? Seriously? Discriminatory disparate impact if a military or some other government entity decides to accommodate in its training and assignments a hereditarily higher likelihood of health impairment?
The Americans with Disabilities Act must be unlawfully discriminatory inclusion of sickle cell anemia among the disabilities that that statute mandates be accommodated. Who knew?
What an utterly stupid claim.
I’ll ask again: What the hell is this nonsense doing on Angry Bear?
Bev:
Mike’s post is here because I (and Dan) like it the same as I like your non-Dear Abby ones, and Edward’s economic posts (even though we have some academic economists who disagree with his model). Your critique on what he writes has no merit. You can dispute what he says in a manner which is meaningful and without demeaning him or others. I know you can do this as I have been around you long enough. You and many others are missing the thrust of what he is saying.
What law was he citing in his original post, I seem to have missed it.
He said in several of his comments in the thread that the purpose of his post was to illustrate that an accommodation of this heredity propensity by the military would, in this country, be barred by the prohibition against “disparate impact”–disparate outcomes–under anti-discrimination law.
The claim is preposterous, for a few reasons, not least that what’s prohibited (to the extend that it still is; the Supreme Court has significantly reduced that extent) is ADVERSE disparate impact to THE CLASS OF PEOPLE CLAIMING THE DISCRIMINATION, something that would be an odd claim coming from the people who were requesting the accommodation. Another reason is that there is no racial-quota system for military units or anything else under U.S. anti-discrimination law.
He really, really, really needs to stop posting posts that say outright, or that are based quietly, on some legal point he thinks is accurate but is utter nonsense. He seems to conflate data–statistics–with statutes and legal agreements, or something. It’s downright bizarre.
Gee Bev:
How many moronic attorneys and district attorneys have I see and heard offer up a silly interpretation? Hmmmmm???? Half of the attorneys in court today and shortly after leaving law school have lost the ability to argue law or interpret it in a bizarre manner only to have a judge give them leeway. You forget the discussion on “mens rea” which I defended you on with Barry and Howard. You need to stop with demeaning comments.
Dennis Drew,
Please revisit this and this and where the data presented in those posts fits into today’s popular culture. Case by case decisions are problematic in more just a legal way these days.
Mike Shupp,
I have not used terms like superiority or inferiority for the precise reason that I don’t believe they apply. (If I did think they applied, I would use them. I am trying very hard to be precise, and being misinterpreted by Beveryly et. al. is getting tiring.)
I have, however, tied immigration to job creation, which I presume qualifies as an economic issue. I have also noted that punctuality, which is a cultural trait, is tied to GDP per capita, which I also presume qualifies as an economic issue. So I am tying differing cultural traits to economic growth. This post is a companion piece, but it should be obvious where I am going with the various posts I am writing – some cultural traits are more conducive to economic growth than other cultural traits.
Mike
your stated reason for attending to the issue of cold sensitivity in blacks is very close to what i might have said myself… first and most important, we need to attend to individual differences and not treat people according to racial categories, or as we are wont to do: those like us who can, and those not like us who can’t.
and i agree that given racial differences, it is more than likely there will not be numbers proportional to population represented in each profession or other “outcome.”
nevertheless, given the tenor of your recent related posts, i think i need to mention to you that in a country with a history of vicious racial stereotyping and racism of the ugly kind, it is not good manners (to say the least) to bring these things up in political or pseudo scientific speech. not for purposes of concealing inconvenient truths but for purposes of not feeding racism or its opposite face.
it’s a little like holocaust denial in Germany. and even more like shouting fire in a crowded theater than urging draft resistance ever came close to.
Told my cap’n
My hands were cold.
God damn your hands, boy,
Let the wheelin’ roll!
Told my cap’n
My feet were cold.
God damn your feet, boy,
Let the wheelin’ roll!
Cap’n, cap’n
You must be blin’
Look at your watch
It’s past quittin’ time.
Cap’n, cap’n
How can it be,
Whistle done blow
You still workin’ me?
Asked my cap’n
To give me my time
Dam’ old cap’n
Wouldn’t pay me no mind.
If I’d-a had my
Weight in lime [1]
Would’ve whupped that cap’n
Till he went stone blind.
Raised my hand
To wipe the sweat from my head
Damned old cap’n
Shot my buddy dead.
If you don’t believe
That my buddy’s dead
Just look at the hole
In my buddy’s head.
Cap’n walkin’ up and down
Buddy’s lyin’ on the burning ground.
Buzzards circling ’round the sky
Buzzards sure know
Cap’n’s gonna die.
To my attempt to be objective In answer to the several questions posed , the first question I must ask is how you’re defining “racism”?
In the colloquial form it’s a pejorative term, e.g. in the sense of emotionally based bias by one race for or against another..
If in the purely language form it’s a distinction among races of observable and scientifically measurable characteristics — e.g. sickle-cell anemia; or racially nominal physical features, etc.
If you mean the latter form, then will your rephrase and re-post the questions accordingly?.. deleting your present post.
If you mean the former form, please be explicit in defining racism as an emotionally based bias for or against one race by another.
Mike,
In your response to Mike Shupp you said:
“… have also noted that punctuality, which is a cultural trait, is tied to GDP per capita, which I also presume qualifies as an economic issue.”
As I pointed out to you already there is no cultural punctuality relation ship to GDP/capita … this is your own pure made-up out of thin air supposition and pure conjecture… belief. So it is not, NOT, an economic issue at all.
Longtooth:
You do not believe in different cultures business is conducted in different ways? You can do the same in Germnay as you can in China?
I was accused one time of being more direct that the Dutch who the Germans felt exceeded their manner of conducting business. This chart shows differently for the Dutch. If I am in Korea where I work now, I conduct business in a less direct manner (except with the owner of the company). http://www.businessinsider.com/here-are-the-most-and-least-punctual-countries-2015-2 There is a whole series on this punctuality, cultures, and conducting business which lends itself to GDP.
I think too what is happening in our society today is a premise of certain cultures being more productive than others. It may not be as transparent as needed to be; but, it is being defined by those who wish it to be to favor their economic outcome. We need to step back and challenge this declaration of who should and could be successful if all economic and educational inputs were to be equal rather than denied by certain groups. We are ignoring it except for the few who command economic power and political influence.
Mike premise is not racist as much as being direct.
http://www.businessinsider.com/how-different-cultures-understand-time-2014-5 “How Different Cultures Understand Time”
http://www.thisisinsider.com/how-different-cultures-see-punctuality-2016-7 “What being punctual means in different countries”
The look here to see which groups are highly successful and how easy it might be to rise up than ladder: https://www.americanprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/kf/hertz_mobility_analysis.pdf “Understanding Mobility in America”
So do we allow the privilege few determine ???
Run75441
You’re entitled to your beliefs… but don’t confuse them with reality or “evidence” of reality. Most of all though don’t propose your beliefs are somehow founded in objective analysis.
Longtooth:
Other than an opinion, supposition, and conjecture; please offer something up which may be more substantive. Otherwise, your quipping is just that . . .
Coberly,
If you read what I actually wrote in my recent posts, rather than how they’ve been interpreted, you’d find I am trying to quiet down the folks who are shouting fire in a crowded theater. In earlier posts, I was pointing out that individual people make choices, but that the sum of those individual people making choices (.e.g, the first post on this topic was on choice of majors in school) leads to disparate outcomes, and the trends, when you look at the individual choices being made aggregated up will inevitably lead to even more disparity. And in no place have I suggested that is a good thing.
Here’s the thing. If you have cancer of the esophagus, but your doctor insists its actually gangrene on the toes of your left foot, it isn’t just that your cancer will rampant – you also are going to lose your foot for no reason. I am trying very hard to point out where the data leads. Readers here don’t like it. Well, guess what. I don’t like it either. But its best to understand what is actually on as opposed to going along with the mob. That was true when the mob was made up of the anti-government militias in the 1990s, and it is true when the mob is made up of people who will blame anyone but the people doing the actual killings in Chicago today.
Longttooth (I just noticed – two ts directly after the g – what’s that about?),
1. I was the recipient of the term “racist” rather than the one calling other people that term, so it isn’t really on me to define me
2. I’ve presented an opinion, then supported it with my experience, then some data (a graph) showing punctuality along one axis and GDP per capita 15 years later). Now perhaps the relationship is spurious, as you suggest.
Let me try to give you one more example. My sister is in Northeastern Brazil right now, helping to build a hotel. She knows Brazil well, having spent somewhere between 20 and 25 years there when its all added up. I’m actually getting some What’s App texts from her on my phone as I type here. Here’s what her experience would suggest: the fact that members of a construction crew show up at all hours (except “early” and “on time”) makes it impossible to schedule properly. If you schedule a crew to come in at 8, and the cement to come in at 10, most of the crew arrives between one and three hours late, and the cement might not come in until the next day. Even ballpark scheduling, let alone precise scheduling is impossible, and there are always people waiting around because of resource mismatches. If you know the place, you plan around that because it will happen. But no matter how well you do plan around it, there’s a lot of time and resources wasted. That has an economic impact. The reason many companies use “just in time” inventory is precisely because it increases efficiency. The Brazilian “random, but late” approach to time decreases efficiency. That has an economic impact. And then there are the joys of the “despachante” system which grinds everything else to a halt.
Think of it another way – here the cable company or the electric company might give you a two or four window that they’re going to work on your home, and you have to leave work to deal with it. Now imagine if they give you a week window, and odds are reasonably good they won’t even show up during that window. Don’t like it? Well, welcome to South America. And if you think that’s anecdotal, you’re right – just about every South American will give you the same anecdote.
Of course, it isn’t the same everywhere. In Brazil, the closer you are to Sao Paulo or Curitiba, the more you approach some semblance of punctuality. (Somehow, the airport at Guarulhos manages to be quite punctual according to figures I’ve seen, though how much of that is gaming the system I don’t know.) In Argentina, good luck because you’re screwed no matter what. . In Chile, if you are lucky, things might happen more or less on time. Depending on what you’re doing, and if you had the foresight to schedule whatever it is in the middle of the afternoon, the same is true in Uruguay.
I confess I am confused as to what you are all arguing about. However, to add to the confusion or perhaps just derail it, one point:
“Racism” in the US (and perhaps most other places) is a construct based on easily observed physical differences. One reason, perhaps the chief reason that US racism persists so toxically is that the enslaved people were also dark-skinned people, unlike their British, French, or other European captors. This is not always the case in slavery cultures — as the Romans enslaved Greeks and others, those slaves could buy or otherwise earn their freedom and subsequently blend into the general population.
Not so in the USA. No blending of slave and freemen could be allowed, if only to preserve the relatively privileged status of poor whites and prevent white slippage into the servant/slave class, A couple centuries of brutal insistence that any degree of pigmentation was an insuperable barrier to civic parity was and still is based on the fear of the less secure whites that they might be forced over that barrier into a world where their rights, their respect, and their very lives would become expendable.
Well, the past forty years of economic slippage has pushed more and more poor whites into that very space. And not just the poor, but the previously secure middle class and many of the professional classes. They now know that the “deciders” have decided that most ordinary citizens are now surplus to needs. They’re seeing the raft of the nation settling lower and lower in the water, and in scrambling to keep a handhold on the slippery logs. They are understandably blaming the other scramblers, people who bear the physical marks of lower privilege (whether pigment, gender, or non-European appearance or culture.)
Today, those people are right at their shoulders, while the occupants of the dry, secure centre of the raft are distant and inaccessible and well protected by a shell of legal and military employees.
The panic and anger of previously secure Americans is understandable, and their proximity and physical differences make it easy for them to target each other. To no avail, of course.
Yes, there are genetic differences between different subgroups, but these pale in comparison to the division between the deciders and the rest of us.
Stories like this one, whether well founded or not, merely act as further fissure planes between people whose common enemy isn’t handy to be addressed.
Noni
Not even to mention that his entire premise–that it would violate U.S. anti-discrimination laws as having an adverse disparate impact on blacks for the government to accommodate them on this at their own request. Still trying to figure out what he thinks the adverse impact of the accommodation on blacks who request the accommodation IS, exactly.
What an imbecilic post.
mike
i did read what you read and thought my answer was very carefully worded.
yet i guess i ended up sounding like longtooth.
i thougt i sounded more like noni:
your posts on race related matters are also very carefully worded, yet given the context of racism in America they sound like they are giving comfort to the enemy… of all of us.
Yup, his posts on race related matters are certainly very carefully worded. Often with legal terms of art, or premised on legal terms of art, such as “disparate impact”, that he has no actual clue about. And always with carefully worded sentences strung together as non sequiturs.
Just corrected that first sentence to “Yup, his posts on race related matters …” The typo sentence had the word “your” instead of “post.”
In the army there are no groups of soldiers apart from organizationally…regiment, division, etc. Otherwise you are a troop of one. A court should reasonably reject the argument that this soldier was a member of some group and evaluate if the army abused him. But the army always needs orders obeyed, even when the best possible candidate to execute the duty is unavailable or there is no way to determine in advance who that might be. In my opinion racism is not involved here at all since the plaintiff is entitled to argue anything he’d like to. The man wants money is what this is about. Maybe he merits some.
Noni,
Bear in mind, as noted in the post, this issue (i.e., lawsuits relating to the susceptibility of individuals of sub-Saharan African ancestry to the cold) have been going on for a while. This issue is not a one-off story. It affects a lot of people.
Where I am going… keep reading. I have a destination in mind, I believe it fits with the available facts, and it isn’t where Beverly is convinced I am headed.
Eric377,
While I wouldn’t doubt that some lawsuits of any type are frivolous, the large number of cases of this type dating back years, coupled with the MoD’s admission that the condition in question is real makes it far more likely that it actually is real. My guess is that it is more than real, it is measurable. If you have information otherwise, please share it.
I do understand the point that in the military, you go where they send you. But the military operates more effectively if it doesn’t assign recruits with myopia to become snipers. Similarly, those with poor communication skills shouldn’t get assigned C3. One assumes if soldiers don’t tolerate the cold well, it is best to use them where the weather is hotter. No doubt there are other soldiers who don’t function well in the heat either.
coberly,
No harm, no foul.
Bev,
I agree with you. I do not know why this stuff is being posted here.
Indeed. Thank you.
I just asked that question again, in reply to Mike Kimel’s claim that accommodation of blacks on this would violate U.S. anti-discrimination law cuz of the adverse disparate impact it wold have on non-whites, or something.
Just guessing here, but I’d venture that he has no clue what disparate impact means in civil rights law. No reason for him not to find out before he posts an absurd post based, apparently, on his presumption that he does, though.
EMichael
oh, well, hell. it is posted here because Mike has a point of view which is worth considering. and so far from being an “economics” blog, if you will just read the banner at the top of the blog, it is also about politics and some other things i forget.
and while i have been trying to find a way to remind Mike that racism is still a problem, and the measures to overcome it, while often quite stupid especially in the way they are carried out, are necessary to try to avert something far worse than losing your job to an equal opportunity person you think is less qualified than yourself.
but the sheer arrogance of your (EMichael’s) posts makes me rally to Mikes support here. I may disagree with him to a point, but you, EMichael, in your insufferable way are as big an obstacle to sane race relations as the real bad racists are.
Mike
i can’t figure out what no harm no foul means here. But let me add that I agree, I think, with your last comment: the army (and other businesses and individuals) need to learn to think about individual differences and find ways to employ people that respects their skills as well as their non-skills.
but the army has never been interested in individuals. the only skill they care about is can you absorb bullets while shooting at the enemy. (obviously not entirely true if you have a skill like computers or something else they have learned the value of relative advantages, but the attitude remains the same: your value as a human being is nothing, despite the medals of honor and crocodile tears over flag draped coffins.)
for the record, i have suffered disadvantage in favor of equal opportunity persons, and even bad treatment by some of those so preferred. but all i have to do is remember the just as bad or worse white bosses, and well… a little equal opportunity is not such a bad thing. especially if it gives someone a leg up he really deserves. EO is not the only reason you ever didn’t get the job you wanted.
Beverly
well, it is obvious that fair skinned people of Anglo-saxon heritage tolerate heat less well than dark skinned people from Africa. So it is simple economics to give the Anglo-saxon’s jobs as overseers and the Africans jobs as cotton pickers.
And it can be shown that “overseer” is an economically more productive skill so it is obvious that it needs to be paid at a higher rate.
What’s so hard to understand here?
and that apostrophe in “Anglo-Saxon’s” is probably why I couldn’t get a job teaching eighth grade spelling.
on, the unfairness of it all!
Beverly,
You are still misunderstanding me. I am not particularly concerned about reverse discrimination. I mentioned disparate impact for a very different reason than that.
Lordy, Mike. I know perfectly well that you’re not interested in reverse discrimination. That was intended FACETIOUSLY to highlight THIS fact: that disparate impact (or as you now refer to it, disparate outcomes) is a concept in ANTI-DISCRIMINATION MATTERS, AND NOTHING ELSE, at least nothing else in American law. The impact must be an ADVERSE ONE FOR THE PROTECTED CLASS.
I repeat: The impact must be an ADVERSE ONE FOR THE PROTECTED CLASS. Suffice it to say that protecting blacks from physical harm that is more likely to occur to them than to members of other races IS NOT–IS NOT–AN ADVERSE IMPACT. My facetious reference to reverse discrimination was intended to make the point–and it IS a legal fact, Mike–that since blacks WOULD NOT BE ADVERSELY AFFECTED BY THIS POLICY, BLACKS COULD NOT BE THE RELEVANT RACIAL CLASS AS SUFFERING AN ADVERSE IMPACT FROM IT. THAT LEAVES, WELL, NO RACIAL CLASS THAT IS.
But my JOKE was that since blacks are adversely affected, and you nonetheless think adverse impact/adverse outcome in the number of blacks in the relevant military training unit (or whatever) causes a LEGAL PROBLEM UNDER ANTI-DISCRIMINATION LAW, the class you’re referring to that is suffering the disparate impact (suffering from the disparate outcome) are all the members of races OTHER THAN BLACK.
Lordy, Mike. You really, really, REALLY, REALLY should stop putting up posts here based on some legal term that you presume means something that IT DOES NOT MEAN. Before you posted your two latest comments in response, you should have READ THE WIKIPEDIA PAGE DEFINING “DISPARATE IMPACT” AS RELEVANT TO ANTI-DISCRIMINATION LAW. It makes clear at the very outset that what is prohibited (to the extent that it is; the Supreme Court has greatly decreased its breadth i the last two decades or so) is ADVERSE IMPACT–AN IMPACT, AND OUTCOME THAT IS ADVERSE TO THE PROTECTED CLASS.
Actually, Mike, you should have researched that term BEFORE you posted. Also actually: The requirement that it be an ADVERSE IMPACT FOR THE PROTECTED CLASS is something that simple common sense should have told you. It is, after all, ANTI-DISCRIMINATION LAW that you yourself said is at issue.
This is a constant with you, in two respects–not just the failure to research the actual meaning of the legal term or statute before you post based on what you think it means, but also your inability to understand or recognize the obvious or well-understood meaning of legal terms. Do you really think most people don’t understand that anti-discrimination law protects only against ADVERSE impact to the PROTECTED class?
So, yes, given your claim, you absolutely WERE claiming reverse discrimination. Since that’s the only way that there could be an adverse impact from the adverse outcome. No U.S. law requires racial quotas and therefore would prevent action by the government or a private employer that protects hereditarily-predisposed groups from exposure to something that could trigger a serious health problem.
In other words, your claim is not just wrong, and not just absurd, but wrong and absurd in a way that would be obvious to anyone who has a sense of logic. I’m not kidding.
OK. I had a few minutes, so let me try to put it as clearly as I can.
As the lawsuit referenced in the post makes clear, there are real differences between cultural and other traits between groups of people. That doesn’t make one better or worse. We can deal with people on an individual level, and do what is best to the extent possible for each individual and for all of us as a whole. But if we do that, we will end up with different average outcomes by group. In the case mentioned in the post, that means we end up with disproportionately fewer soldiers of African descent in certain units, and presumably disproportionately more soldiers of African descent in other units. The same is probably true of people of other ancestral groups vis a vis other conditions. For instance, soldiers of non-African descent will be more susceptible to malaria.
So our options are these:
1. treat everyone the individuals… and end up with disparate outcomes
2. treat everyone the same… and end up putting people in situations where they are worse off… and probably end up with disparate outcomes to boot
The problem is the notion of disparate outcomes. I can understand where the concept comes from, from a historical perspective. But they are making matters worse.
Wow. As I just said in reply to your second-last response, since any disparate outcome adversely affects NOT BLACKS BUT INSTEAD NON-BLACKS–and since disparate outcomes or impact are barred by U.S. anti-discrimination law only if the ADVERSELY IMPACT THE PROTECTED CLASS–your entire post is ridiculous.
Truly, Mike. That’s why I provided the link to the Wikipedia page on anti-discrimination law prohibiting disparate impact. It has nothing to do with anything you’re claiming it does, cuz blacks aren’t adversely impacted by the lack of accommodation, and would not be adversely impacted by the very accommodation that they are suing to force.
This is breathtakingly dumb. I mean … like … really, really weird and dumb.
An additional thought on disparate impact. Go back to the two posts I wrote on police shootings (links in the responses to Dennis Drew upthread).
The implication of the math was that reducing the number of police shootings of a given group by X will increase the number of people killed by criminals by Y, and Y > X. (There were three tables in the first post. Feel free to focus on the first of the tables if it makes you feel less icky to accept the math.)
Beverly,
Your model of the world either involves a single time period or no path dependence. Either way it is a very poor model of the world.
Say what the lawsuit says is true and President Hilary gets us into a shooting match with Russia in the arctic circle. Promotions will go to those on the front lines, not those manning an outpost in Guam. Once you accept one disproportionate outcome, other more disproportionate outcomes follow. This isn’t due to some legal theory. It’s due to oath dependence. And that is how the world works.
Oh. Please. Granting an accommodation to someone who requests it based upon a hereditary significant increase of propensity toward a serious illness under certain circumstances constitutes a violation of U.S. anti-discrimination law? Really?
Odd, Mike, that you’ve switched your claim from one based on the disparate outcome in the composition of the military unit to a claim of disparate impact on the career of black military personnel whose request for an accommodation was granted.
Well, not really odd, since that’s your pattern. Just sort of funny.
No, Beverly. I have not switched. About half my posts involve data. They always end up involving looking at effects at a group level. You and others keep disputing what the data shows because it doesn’t fit with your preconceptions. (I don’t like it either, but I accept reality when I see it.). So I try to approach the same issue without using data and get chewed out for not properly using legalese. Well, fine. You may be a lawyer and I am not, so of course I am not going to get the legalese right. But I suspect I am doing a better job with the legalese than you are at accepting what the data shows. As I noted in another thread, I have no choice but to try to comport with what attorneys have come up with. But I am learning from these discussions that accepting reality is, apparently, quite optional.
Ok, look, Mike. Here’s a tip: You should stop making legal claims, because you unremittingly don’t know what you’re talking about. And you should stop conflating data with law; data cannot alter legal requirements, the lack of a legal requirement, alter the definition of a legal term of art, or change statutory-construction legal norms. You keeping claiming that data means that one or another law means this or that. It’s preposterous.
If you’re concerned that you have no choice but to try to comport with what attorneys have come up–by which you mean statutes and legal terminology, I guess–than you should accept that wherever your talents lie, they are not in an ability to understand statutes or legal concepts, and that you should find a good lawyer in whatever areas of law you need to comply with that are not, say, criminal statutes proscribing murder, or other things that everybody knows, and accept the lawyer’s advice. But stop posting on things you have no actual clue about.
I’m not kidding.
Raise your hand if you have warm ancestry . We don’t want you getting frostbite snowflake so you are going to Fallujah . Problem solved.
You and I actually agree, strangely enough. Accommodation would have nothing at all to do with discrimination against non-blacks, or whatever the argument was supposed to be. Nothing. But I’ll note that Canada’s military is not in Fallujah.
The entire post is ridiculous.
Beverly,
I never said illegal. Society is concerned about disproportionately small numbers of Black coders in Silicon Valley. We have protests when someone is shot by a cop for the same reason, sometimes when the shooting is completely justified. Much if the public cares about proportions. Apologies if my wording implied this was a legal issue. As I keep stating, I am trying to explain the math and you keep telling me the words I am using have a legal connotation but that is not where I am going.
Wow, Mike, you’re channeling Trump in more than just one way. You said repeatedly in this thread that the very purpose of your post was to question whether the requested accommodation would, in this country, run afoul of anti-discrimination laws because it would have a disparate impact on the percentage of blacks in the military units at issue, and, y’know, the law that prohibits disparate impact and requires racial quotas must be complied with, and you have to comply with the law so you need to know what the law is, and you know enough about the law to know that disparate impact is a big deal in the law and therefore an requested accommodation by members of a racial group based on their hereditary propensity toward physical harm under particular conditions would upset the racial equilibrium in those military units IN VIOLATION OF ANTI-DISCRIMINATION LAW, WHICH IS THE ONLY TYPE OF LAW IN WHICH DISPARATE IMPACT PLAYS A ROLE, although it’s actually only ADVERSE disparate impact that plays a role.
So, please. Really.
I get that you don’t understand the difference between, on the one hand, adverse disparate impact AND—you’re now indicating—adverse disparate TREATMENT, including regarding police shootings of unarmed blacks who have their hands raised or are walking away from the cop who shoots him, and regarding the orders-of-magnitude higher rate of traffic stops of blacks than of whites, and, on the other hand, accommodating a hereditary possible propensity for serious physical harm under certain circumstances.
Apples, oranges, elephants—they’re all the same, since, after all, they’re all, y’know, THINGS.
At this point I think it’s sort of funny that you don’t understand what everyone else understands: that the issue of racial proportionalities doesn’t exist in a vacuum. When proportionalities matter, it’s because there is a particular reason why they matter. And those reasons ALWAYS concern an adverse effect on the racial group that is underrepresented whether by dint of overt racism or instead as the effect of what appears to be a racially neutral practice but in practice is not.
Mortgage redlining is an example of that; the stated purpose is the higher risk of lending for a mortgage on a home in a high-crime neighborhood, for example.
The idea that the REASON for the disparity, and the EFFECT of the disparity on the dis-privileged group, is what matters is just not rocket science, Mike. That you don’t understand it is absolutely stupefying, since everyone—and I mean everyone—else does.
Beverly
actually, “everybody” does not understand these things. and if you could explain them without the insults you’d do your cause more good.
Yes, Dale, everybody understands that the reason why there is anger about the inordinate number of traffic stops of blacks–seven, eight, 10, 12 times a year for a single driver–and the reason why there is anger that unarmed blacks are shot in the back or with their arms raised (or both) by cops during a traffic stop, is that neither blacks nor anyone else likes to be stopped by cops when driving, much less stopped repeatedly, and that neither blacks not anyone else likes to be shot or have a family member shot by a cop when unarmed and walking with hands raised and/or walking away from the cop.
And everybody also knows that most people who request a particular accommodation from their employer are doing so because they WANT the accommodation–and that that includes people who also don’t like being stopped repeatedly by cops while driving, and who don’t want to be shot by a cop while unarmed and walking away or holding their arms raised.
This is the absolute dumbest claim ever.
keep it up beverly
when i said “not everybody understands” i was referring to the “law” which seems to be what you think everyone not imbecile thinks everyone understands and understands exactly the way you do.
i have… if you had been paying attention… agreed with you regarding cops shooting, or even stopping, i can agree about this because i have had real world experiences that helps me “understand.” i would bet that not “everyone” has.
i have also agreed … to a point… that Mike’s essays tend to give aid and comfort to The Bell Curve crowd. but i haven’t seen in Mike’s essays the kind of bad faith and stupidity that cause me to insult a commenter.
whereas i have been on the receiving end of your total war response to someone who disagrees with you even mildly over a point in the grammar necessary to be understood, but not in substance or morality.
so if you really enjoy turning your friends off, keep it up. or get advice from someone you CAN talk to , not to say, you know, “hear.”