"The problem with affirmative action is that you can define an almost unlimited number of intersectional categories."
To me, the problem with affirmative action is that it negates meritocracy.
"Think about what an odd statement this is. Biden didn’t name the individual or individuals he was considering for his nominee, nor what legal tradition he wanted them to represent. Rather, he specified the race and gender of his preferred candidate, thereby foreclosing the possibility of selecting anyone who didn’t have those characteristics."
I am not surprised by this at all. Biden was born a goddamn idiot, and now he is brain-dead. But this is one of many Acts of Societal Disruption designed to cause dissension in our populace. Biden is a titular president, and he did not decide on this or anything else. This is the Deep State in action.
Noah, thanks for a great article outlining the stupidity of affirmative action.
What's fascinating is that these absurd dynamics cannot last forever; They're just too derisive, divisive, and demeaning. Then the question becomes one of "When will we rise up, and what will that look like?". The French Revolution didn't happen in a vacuum.
It will probably look like serious levels of unemployment for white men. That in my view would be a significant strategic error by the woke in positions of authority. Their whole circus is kept in place by our decency and sense of fairness, neither of which are on display from our replacements.
Alas most people need personal experience before they act. Once enough lose out I suspect attitudes will rapidly shift.
In all honesty, I think that this capacity for being buggered is linked to generational sensibilities. Those born after a certain time are far more tolerant, passive, docile, yes, and submissive, than previous eras.
While I'm far from certain, the possibility that young white urban males in large numbers will *never* be maltreated to the point of push-back--their capacity for insult and abuse is near limitless--must be entertained as a distinct possibility. You can see this in what passes for courting behavior in this stratum of white males. Very, very passive and approval seeking.
They actually have a capacity for well meaning projection. They project niceness onto their replacements. History, and anthropology, tells us different.
Most are doubting Thomases. They need to watch the underprivileged take their house before they can act in their own interests.
Weak people do not enforce boundaries. The people we are bringing in can be relied upon to ineptly exploit that then boast about it. That alone will convert many.
They can and, to some extent, they will. Remember that first world nations are the exception, not the norm. It is by no means a given that every highly-developed nation will stay that way in the face of transformative demographic change.
Even South African Anglos seem not to have learned to hate. The idea that there is some fixed natural point at which the avg human looks at the misery around him, and reconsiders his instincts without being explicitly told to do so by a high status authority is entirely fictional.
And the time is fast running out for one to emerge who is willing to not only lay out the facts diplomatically, but also to scream: "They are crushing you, HATE THEM!" Stop feeling even 'a little sorry' for the affirmative action hire who now rules over you, and hate her instead.
Right now the arc of history bends towards the NW European accepting and embracing his own enslavement. Whether this will cease to be true, well, that's up to you.
"There are, of course, many objections to affirmative action: first and foremost, that it’s blatant discrimination; but also that it hurts those it intends to help through the mismatch effect..."
For me, as a non-economist civilian, the greatest drawback and unintended consequence here is that in the future it will be almost impossible to tell if a member of an Official Protected Class has their position because of merit or because of politics.
I have a great doctor who is a black man, around 70 years old or so, but going forward I will be hesitant to use any professional younger than around age 40 from a Protected Class. How would I be able to trust that they know what they're doing?
The DEI social crusade provides various benefits today to its political backers and immediate beneficiaries, but somewhere down the road this will lead to more racial distrust and even segregation.
Often the biggest victims of the Social Justice movement are the supposed victim classes that it imagines it's helping.
Interesting article but it makes an incorrect assumption. Affirmative Action is not meant to ensure proportional representation. It is a means of enacting "Racial Justice" by disrupting predominantly white, male organizations, creating sinecures for non-whites, queers, foreigners and females. Spaces in which whites and males are the minority are never subject to Affirmative Action remediation.
"More territories need to be liberated: for some reason plumbing and sewage treatment remain DEI underserviced areas."
You are behind the times. The situation described below is commonplace in Illinois black majority municipalities, I am sure it is the case across the country.
And would you posit that the poor state of Centreville's Sewage facilities can be blamed on a larger than typical presence of female plumbers? (Qualifying for 'larger than typical' may begin at zero).
The number of intersectional categories is only one of the problems, the other problem is that the "transversal public policies" for "redressing" and "restituting" the "oppressed minorities" do not have any limit, neither qualitative, nor quantitative. So, restitution by giving positions to women does not preclude given them all the power positions and does not determine a time lapse for that. Restituting women for "historical and systemic oppression" can mean they must have all power position from now on to the end of the times. The same for any other "minority". Besides there is no way to define one amount for compensation for "historical oppression" of blacks, woman, LGBT, and whatever. Affirmative action is nothing else than patronage to pay off votes for progressive parties, in the American case, for the Democratic Party.
"Affirmative action is nothing else than patronage to pay off votes for progressive parties"
What had at one time been an altruistic impulse to lend a helping hand to those who were obviously disadvantage thru no fault of their own, has been hijacked into a Trojan horse for just the purpose you mention: a patronage system.
"No good deed goes unpunished." ;^)
To be objective, a similar system is in force by the traditionalist/conservative wing, but instead of jobs, it pays off on public validation of this group's moral/ethical belief system.
Let's not overlook that schadenfreude is a side benefit for both groups.
The problem with affirmative action is that it was a sustainable grift when you have 10+ white people carrying water for one incompetent black who was given pointless make work. That was "the cost of doing business."
But you add more receiving groups, shrink the carrying group, and actually put these people in some kind of authority where they can screw things up, that's unsustainable.
It's inevitable though. Who doesn't want to be that one black with the sweet sinecure. Others are going to want to pile in.
"There’s never been a better time to be a black woman."
You mean in the United States.
The URL below shows the plight of women in Sub-Saharan Africa.
This article demonstrates one other crucial thing: the cognitive ability of Sub-Saharan Africans is meager compared to that of Western civilization. This should drive the point home better than all the comparative IQ testing that has been done.
Similarly, if we made everyone 100% equal in wealth, then other inequalities would matter more anyway, e.g. genetic inequality, sexual inequality, moral inequality, etc.
It is pointless to pursue equality for its own sake, rather than as a means to an end.
I realize that you doubtless know this already, but for sake of emphasis, I posit that if such a leveling were to take place, and the leveling agent stepped back, God-like, and observed His works, within 5 years the levels of inequality would be easily detectable by all, and with 30 years things would be back the way they had been before the Divine Experiment.
This would of course require constant and timely re-leveling by God.
This is all well and good if you assume that affirmative action is a consistent ideology being implemented in good faith by people with genuine moral convictions.
This is a fundamental misunderstanding.
Affirmative action is a spoils system, plain and simple. It is a way for people to obtain things they want through a complex series of deceptions (with the deceived parties being the masses of gullible liberal whites who believe in all the woke narratives about this that and the other thing). In purpose and effect, it is not much different from extortion or theft, it simply uses fraud at a societal scale rather than force to achieve its desired ends.
It is thus true that affirmative action, taken to its logical conclusion, is unworkable. But viewing the issue through this lens is a total mismatch with the actual incentives and behaviors in play. It is like being mugged and refusing to hand over your wallet while trying to explain to the mugger that he will likely go to jail for his actions, then acting surprised and offended when he simply shoots you and takes the wallet anyways.
We all know that jobs do not always go to the most "deserving" candidate. Children of the rich and well connected fall into jobs that most of us would love. Chelsea Clinton's ability to land a job at McKinsey had nothing to do with her intelligence (I'm sure she's very smart) and everything to do with her father being an ex-president. The same easy career progression awaits Malia and Sasha Obama. That's just life and I barely give it a second thought but for some reason what Biden did just riles me up.
“…he specified the race and gender of his preferred candidate….”
No, “black woman” specifies race and sex. Masculine and feminine (i.e., gender) are not mentioned. Please write in plain English rather than nonsensical wokespeak.
Affirmative action is a giant grift demonstrating the white European obsession with fairness or notions of equality are shared by literally no other ethnic group.
It is viewed by other groups not as openness or decency but as weakness. We are perceived as a wounded animal, easy to hurt further.
Some would say it is Christianity without Christ. I would argue it is the feminization of society. Women nurture, men don't. Specifically, it is the erosion of assertiveness in Western nations that is causing it. We are not asserting our right to exist and to maintain our own culture.
The anti-assertiveness element of society, the egalitarianism, says all cultures are equally valid. And because it only happens in white countries it is whites who will become dispossessed while everyone else maintains something close to a homogenous homeland. Naturally it is the non-assertive egalitarian types who will be abused first by the barbarians they were keen to let in. Such is life.
As I've aged, I've relied more and more on life experience to provide me with an initial position to test out and refine, or even reject if it proves ill-informed.
I agree with your observation that the current US social sensibility, and likely that of western Europe, has been feminized noticeably withing my lifetime, and perhaps increasingly so, snowballing, until society's main reflexive response to any public question seems to be aligned with the underdog in almost every conceivable instance.
But long ago I came to the conclusion that in current times, more often than not, there's a very good reason why an underdog is in a disadvantaged position, and it's usually a result of their own personal shortcomings.
Yet according to current sensibilities society, of which I'm a member, like it or not, owes our first consideration to this group of self-destructive at worst, incompetent at best, individuals.
It is dysfunction. It elevates victims to high status because that fits with environmental arguments. It was your bad upbringing that made you rob banks.
The erosion of responsibility usually points to infantilism. People not growing up.
"The problem with affirmative action is that you can define an almost unlimited number of intersectional categories."
To me, the problem with affirmative action is that it negates meritocracy.
"Think about what an odd statement this is. Biden didn’t name the individual or individuals he was considering for his nominee, nor what legal tradition he wanted them to represent. Rather, he specified the race and gender of his preferred candidate, thereby foreclosing the possibility of selecting anyone who didn’t have those characteristics."
I am not surprised by this at all. Biden was born a goddamn idiot, and now he is brain-dead. But this is one of many Acts of Societal Disruption designed to cause dissension in our populace. Biden is a titular president, and he did not decide on this or anything else. This is the Deep State in action.
Noah, thanks for a great article outlining the stupidity of affirmative action.
What's fascinating is that these absurd dynamics cannot last forever; They're just too derisive, divisive, and demeaning. Then the question becomes one of "When will we rise up, and what will that look like?". The French Revolution didn't happen in a vacuum.
It will probably look like serious levels of unemployment for white men. That in my view would be a significant strategic error by the woke in positions of authority. Their whole circus is kept in place by our decency and sense of fairness, neither of which are on display from our replacements.
Alas most people need personal experience before they act. Once enough lose out I suspect attitudes will rapidly shift.
"Alas most people need personal experience before they act. Once enough lose out I suspect attitudes will rapidly shift."
I sure as hell hope so. But so far, I have seen no action by whites. They seem to have an unlimited tolerance for buggering.
In all honesty, I think that this capacity for being buggered is linked to generational sensibilities. Those born after a certain time are far more tolerant, passive, docile, yes, and submissive, than previous eras.
While I'm far from certain, the possibility that young white urban males in large numbers will *never* be maltreated to the point of push-back--their capacity for insult and abuse is near limitless--must be entertained as a distinct possibility. You can see this in what passes for courting behavior in this stratum of white males. Very, very passive and approval seeking.
But really: who knows?
They actually have a capacity for well meaning projection. They project niceness onto their replacements. History, and anthropology, tells us different.
Most are doubting Thomases. They need to watch the underprivileged take their house before they can act in their own interests.
Weak people do not enforce boundaries. The people we are bringing in can be relied upon to ineptly exploit that then boast about it. That alone will convert many.
They can and, to some extent, they will. Remember that first world nations are the exception, not the norm. It is by no means a given that every highly-developed nation will stay that way in the face of transformative demographic change.
Even South African Anglos seem not to have learned to hate. The idea that there is some fixed natural point at which the avg human looks at the misery around him, and reconsiders his instincts without being explicitly told to do so by a high status authority is entirely fictional.
And the time is fast running out for one to emerge who is willing to not only lay out the facts diplomatically, but also to scream: "They are crushing you, HATE THEM!" Stop feeling even 'a little sorry' for the affirmative action hire who now rules over you, and hate her instead.
Right now the arc of history bends towards the NW European accepting and embracing his own enslavement. Whether this will cease to be true, well, that's up to you.
"There are, of course, many objections to affirmative action: first and foremost, that it’s blatant discrimination; but also that it hurts those it intends to help through the mismatch effect..."
For me, as a non-economist civilian, the greatest drawback and unintended consequence here is that in the future it will be almost impossible to tell if a member of an Official Protected Class has their position because of merit or because of politics.
I have a great doctor who is a black man, around 70 years old or so, but going forward I will be hesitant to use any professional younger than around age 40 from a Protected Class. How would I be able to trust that they know what they're doing?
The DEI social crusade provides various benefits today to its political backers and immediate beneficiaries, but somewhere down the road this will lead to more racial distrust and even segregation.
Often the biggest victims of the Social Justice movement are the supposed victim classes that it imagines it's helping.
I suspect it will lead to much more than segregation.
Interesting article but it makes an incorrect assumption. Affirmative Action is not meant to ensure proportional representation. It is a means of enacting "Racial Justice" by disrupting predominantly white, male organizations, creating sinecures for non-whites, queers, foreigners and females. Spaces in which whites and males are the minority are never subject to Affirmative Action remediation.
I think all these quota supporters should have to marry an ugly person, at least.
Or an abnormally tall or short one. Why not? Then there are the differently-sized.
More territories need to be liberated: for some reason plumbing and sewage treatment remain DEI underserviced areas.
"More territories need to be liberated: for some reason plumbing and sewage treatment remain DEI underserviced areas."
You are behind the times. The situation described below is commonplace in Illinois black majority municipalities, I am sure it is the case across the country.
https://www.floodedandforgotten.com/summary-of-the-centreville-sewage-crisis
And would you posit that the poor state of Centreville's Sewage facilities can be blamed on a larger than typical presence of female plumbers? (Qualifying for 'larger than typical' may begin at zero).
"And would you posit that the poor state of Centreville's Sewage facilities can be blamed on a larger than typical presence of female plumbers?"
Probably not. I would posit that competent white plumbers moved away along with all the other competent whites.
You have beaten me to the post! I entered the comments specifically to ask where I might find a disabled female plumber.
Perhaps in Centreville...
The number of intersectional categories is only one of the problems, the other problem is that the "transversal public policies" for "redressing" and "restituting" the "oppressed minorities" do not have any limit, neither qualitative, nor quantitative. So, restitution by giving positions to women does not preclude given them all the power positions and does not determine a time lapse for that. Restituting women for "historical and systemic oppression" can mean they must have all power position from now on to the end of the times. The same for any other "minority". Besides there is no way to define one amount for compensation for "historical oppression" of blacks, woman, LGBT, and whatever. Affirmative action is nothing else than patronage to pay off votes for progressive parties, in the American case, for the Democratic Party.
"Affirmative action is nothing else than patronage to pay off votes for progressive parties"
What had at one time been an altruistic impulse to lend a helping hand to those who were obviously disadvantage thru no fault of their own, has been hijacked into a Trojan horse for just the purpose you mention: a patronage system.
"No good deed goes unpunished." ;^)
To be objective, a similar system is in force by the traditionalist/conservative wing, but instead of jobs, it pays off on public validation of this group's moral/ethical belief system.
Let's not overlook that schadenfreude is a side benefit for both groups.
Affirmative action is a medium, an arrangement, and its affordances is: “vote for them who give you money or any kind of financial support!”
There have already been suggestions, and demands, that "equity" be introduced into personal relationships.
The problem with affirmative action is that it was a sustainable grift when you have 10+ white people carrying water for one incompetent black who was given pointless make work. That was "the cost of doing business."
But you add more receiving groups, shrink the carrying group, and actually put these people in some kind of authority where they can screw things up, that's unsustainable.
It's inevitable though. Who doesn't want to be that one black with the sweet sinecure. Others are going to want to pile in.
There’s never been a better time to be a black woman.
"There’s never been a better time to be a black woman."
You mean in the United States.
The URL below shows the plight of women in Sub-Saharan Africa.
This article demonstrates one other crucial thing: the cognitive ability of Sub-Saharan Africans is meager compared to that of Western civilization. This should drive the point home better than all the comparative IQ testing that has been done.
https://greeneconomy.media/african-women-breaking-backs-get-water-families/
Definitely I meant the US—the article is about affirmative action.
"Definitely I meant the US—the article is about affirmative action."
I realize that hence the URL showing the native intelligence of sub-Saharan Africans...the largest beneficiaries of affirmative action.
Select people "at random".... The ultimate in "Equity"... The logical conclusion, indeed. But then again, who expects logical thought from the Left.
All that hate is very distorting.
Similarly, if we made everyone 100% equal in wealth, then other inequalities would matter more anyway, e.g. genetic inequality, sexual inequality, moral inequality, etc.
It is pointless to pursue equality for its own sake, rather than as a means to an end.
"...if we made everyone 100% equal in wealth..."
I realize that you doubtless know this already, but for sake of emphasis, I posit that if such a leveling were to take place, and the leveling agent stepped back, God-like, and observed His works, within 5 years the levels of inequality would be easily detectable by all, and with 30 years things would be back the way they had been before the Divine Experiment.
This would of course require constant and timely re-leveling by God.
This is all well and good if you assume that affirmative action is a consistent ideology being implemented in good faith by people with genuine moral convictions.
This is a fundamental misunderstanding.
Affirmative action is a spoils system, plain and simple. It is a way for people to obtain things they want through a complex series of deceptions (with the deceived parties being the masses of gullible liberal whites who believe in all the woke narratives about this that and the other thing). In purpose and effect, it is not much different from extortion or theft, it simply uses fraud at a societal scale rather than force to achieve its desired ends.
It is thus true that affirmative action, taken to its logical conclusion, is unworkable. But viewing the issue through this lens is a total mismatch with the actual incentives and behaviors in play. It is like being mugged and refusing to hand over your wallet while trying to explain to the mugger that he will likely go to jail for his actions, then acting surprised and offended when he simply shoots you and takes the wallet anyways.
We all know that jobs do not always go to the most "deserving" candidate. Children of the rich and well connected fall into jobs that most of us would love. Chelsea Clinton's ability to land a job at McKinsey had nothing to do with her intelligence (I'm sure she's very smart) and everything to do with her father being an ex-president. The same easy career progression awaits Malia and Sasha Obama. That's just life and I barely give it a second thought but for some reason what Biden did just riles me up.
“…he specified the race and gender of his preferred candidate….”
No, “black woman” specifies race and sex. Masculine and feminine (i.e., gender) are not mentioned. Please write in plain English rather than nonsensical wokespeak.
Pedantic, I?
Affirmative action is a giant grift demonstrating the white European obsession with fairness or notions of equality are shared by literally no other ethnic group.
It is viewed by other groups not as openness or decency but as weakness. We are perceived as a wounded animal, easy to hurt further.
The rest is noise.
"...the white European obsession with fairness or notions of equality..."
To what degree do these pervasive impulses stem from so form of cultural guilt complex, do you suppose?
Why is it that western European-derived culture is gripped by this self-destructive reflex, while most of the remain to one degree or another, immune?
Surely, everyone here has their ideas as to why...
Some would say it is Christianity without Christ. I would argue it is the feminization of society. Women nurture, men don't. Specifically, it is the erosion of assertiveness in Western nations that is causing it. We are not asserting our right to exist and to maintain our own culture.
The anti-assertiveness element of society, the egalitarianism, says all cultures are equally valid. And because it only happens in white countries it is whites who will become dispossessed while everyone else maintains something close to a homogenous homeland. Naturally it is the non-assertive egalitarian types who will be abused first by the barbarians they were keen to let in. Such is life.
As I've aged, I've relied more and more on life experience to provide me with an initial position to test out and refine, or even reject if it proves ill-informed.
I agree with your observation that the current US social sensibility, and likely that of western Europe, has been feminized noticeably withing my lifetime, and perhaps increasingly so, snowballing, until society's main reflexive response to any public question seems to be aligned with the underdog in almost every conceivable instance.
But long ago I came to the conclusion that in current times, more often than not, there's a very good reason why an underdog is in a disadvantaged position, and it's usually a result of their own personal shortcomings.
Yet according to current sensibilities society, of which I'm a member, like it or not, owes our first consideration to this group of self-destructive at worst, incompetent at best, individuals.
Sounds like a dysfunctional family, doesn't it?
It is dysfunction. It elevates victims to high status because that fits with environmental arguments. It was your bad upbringing that made you rob banks.
The erosion of responsibility usually points to infantilism. People not growing up.