Thinking Points Discussion of Chapter 6 - Part 1: Our American Values

There is a theme I have been mulling over during these Thinking Points discussions. That theme has to do with the views you portray for conservatives for contested meanings. It may be instructive to portray the conservative view of contested meanings in the harshest possible way. However, it is also not helpful in the real world struggle over these meanings.

Conservatives rarely project the harshest meanings in the ideological and political struggles of the everyday world. Affirmative Action is a good case in point. While everything you say about conservatives views on affirmative action are true, they also have some more powerful arguments that you have left out of the equation. A good example is in the UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA REGENTS v. BAKKE case. In this case the conservative position was that Mr. Bakke, a white male, was being discriminated against in admission to a medical school because there was a separate special admissions program for minorities. Since there was an overall finite number of spaces in each medical class, the Supreme Court held that the particular program at UC Davis violated Mr. Bakke's right to equal protection under the law.

It is a powerful argument that in the goal of achieving the correction of same past wrong, some otherwise innocent person must be presently punished. If we are going to win the battle of these contested meanings, we must prepare ourselves to argue our positions not against the weakest case of the conservatives, but the strongest case.

Hi Joe,

The idea of contested concepts is much older than your essay implies. Lawyers have recognized it for centuries, perhaps because law is philosophy-in-action rather than philosophy-in-abstract. In jurisprudence, we often talk about contested concepts in terms of four "classes" of meaning:

CORE MEANING - These are well-settled applications and rarely subject to argument. For example, a car is clearly a "vehicle" for purposes of a DUI statute.

INTERSTITIAL MEANING - These are applications which, at least arguably, "fall in the cracks." For example, a bicycle might or might not be a "vehicle" for purposes of a DUI statute.

STATUS MEANING - These are cases where the meaning of a concept changes according to the status of the person using it or to whom it applies. For example, many states have a felony offense "battery on a law enforcement officer," which is more serious than simple battery otherwise. If Dave shoves Carl, an off-duty cop, should that be charged as (misdemeanor) simple battery or (felony) battery-LEO?

PENUMBRAL MEANING - These are the most challenging, referring to cases where the law we can see, like the penumbra surrounding a solar eclipse, suggests the existence of a central but invisible (unwritten) legal concept. The best-known case is Griswold v. Connecticut, a Supreme Court decision involving contraception. In considering a Connecticut statute banning the sale of contraceptive devices, the Court saw in the First and Fourth Amendments - freedoms of expression and from unreasonable search and seizure - a penumbra which suggested the existence of a central but invisible (unwritten) legal concept: the "right of privacy," which the Court then defined as freedom from regulation of one's most intimate, personal decisions.

Chapter 6 of THINKING POINTS essentially views conservative and progressive meanings for words like "freedom," "fairness," and "equality" as penumbra, where differences in application suggest the existence of two distinct central but invisible political concepts ("Strict Father" vs. "Nurturant Parent" models). And to some extent, that is a sound thesis.

But looking solely to conflicting penumbral meanings to explain contested concepts may lead us to overlook more pragmatic explanations: conflicting interstitial and/or status meanings arising from CONFLICTING INTERESTS.

Lakoff's argument in Chapter 6 - and yours in this essay, Joe - assumes that people act on principles: conservatives act on conservative principles, while progressives act on progressive principles. And while that's true to some extent, I don't think it's true on the whole. More often, we act on perceived interests, then rationalize principles to fit our actions. The rationalizations we choose attempt to conform our actions to social ideals like "fairness," "freedom," or "equality," when in fact we've acted against those ideals in pursuit of our own interests. Basically, we try to change the words' meanings to something consistent with what we wanted to do FOR OTHER REASONS.

When William White Male argues against affirmative action, his argument is grounded not so much in a "Strict Father" shading of "fairness" or "equality," but in simple selfishness. Affirmative action makes it less likely that William and other white males will have a smooth road to economic success. William, like many white males, takes it as a given that he's entitled to that smoother road - not so much because of racism, sexism, or any grand political vision - but simply because WE ALL WANT A SMOOTHER ROAD IN LIFE.

So William will quibble over whether affirmative action is "fair," or whether it advances "equality," not so much because he has different visions of "fairness" and "equality," but simply because he's looking for a way to conform his selfish motives with social ideals ... to prove his selfish motives are "right."

In all honesty, I started to question THINKING POINTS in Chapter Six, because it seemed Lakoff was trying to gild the lily, to find "Strict Father" vs. "Nurturant Parent" explanations for political conflicts which seem more simply attributed to conflicts of interest.

Crissie

Crissie,

Thanks for your insight. I confess this was the same reaction I was having, though I'm no legal scholar: positing the NM and SF at the root of these conflicts ignores something even more basic.

As the mother of many (I won't say how many), I've learned that one of the first concepts a child learns is fairness. "That's not fair!" seems to tumble from the lips of toddlers as if the concept is hardwired into the genes. It's one of the first conscious value judgments kidss make.

But as a mother I can tell you for certain: there is a hidden premise in those words. If fully stated, the child would say, "That's not fair TO ME."

Fairness is relevant from our earliest childhood as a relative concept. Seldom will a young child say, "That's not fair to her." That's a concept that comes much later, even though young children tend to be surprisingly empathetic in general.

Getting someone who is still locked in the "That's not fair to me" way of thinking with a broader acceptance of fairness to all, even to one's own apparent detriment, is clearly not an easy thing to do, else we wouldn't be having this discussion at all.

Thanks, Joe, for your comments.

I understand that Lakoff would have found discussion of moral development outside the range of his thesis and for the sake of clarity, if nothing else, it had to be put aside.

But in discussing frames and how to change them, or reach beyond the frames of others to shift their points of view, I feel we do need to consider moral development.

The stages you list are familiar to me. Kant, Piaget, Kohlberg and others studied these in considerable depth. The progression is certainly the one to be desired.

Unfortunately, as studies have shown, a single individual can display as many as three "adjacent" levels of moral reasoning at the same time, resulting in "situational ethics". Hence, we have to conclude that moral development continues throughout life, and many never reach the empathetic level of considering the feelings of others. In short, the Golden Rule is the ideal, but rarely attained by most of us.

You may be correct that the SF mode of parenting, strictness and punishment, may delay or even halt moral development. I do know for certain that many persons never get past the stage of making choices according to fear of punishment. Thus it would perhaps be wise to consider levels of moral development as something which can be taught, and which should be nurtured as carefully as a seedling.

But even given that, it remains that when we are discussing progressive frames with persons who have adopted conservative frames, it is wise to consider the hidden premises, or the stage of moral development, of the persons with whom we are speaking.

If their positions sprang solely from principle, then we would be arguing principles, not frames. Hidden in the conservative frames are a strong dose of self-interest along with control through fear of punishment.

If we keep that in mind while speaking with them, we can use that knowledge to help us make our argument. It is also something we progressives should be self-checking when we consider our positions and frames, especially since our actions speak louder than our words.

Hi Joe,

I'd cut off my previous essay because it was already long and its focus was more on the different kinds of contested concepts we find in law. If you're making a study of the notion of contested concepts, I'd recommend John Rawls' A THEORY OF JUSTICE along with some other books on jurisprudence. Lawyers have been working with these ideas for centuries, and law being philosophy-in-action, most of the theory has been extensively tested in the clinical data we call "case law."

That having been said, one of the things we find in law is a fundamental conflict within human beings. On the one hand, we like all animals seek self-preservation; we act in what we perceive as our own interests. On the other hand, homo sapiens is a herd species, and like all herd species that implies a moral code; we also act in the preservation of the herd. You can see the same kinds of self-sacrifing, herd-preserving behaviors in cape buffalo or elephants: we recognize a duty to the herd that, at times, transcends our individual impulse for self-preservation.

Because homo sapiens is also an abstraction-using species, we discuss and formalize that herd-preservation instinct in terms like "morality," "virtue," and "law." The impulse for moral (herd-preserving) behavior is as deeply coded into our DNA as the impulse for self-preservation. At a fundamental level, we NEED both to survive as individuals and to do so "morally" (in ways that preserve the herd as a whole).

One excellent way to frame this is the conflict between what is "necessary" (for our individual survival) and what is "right" (for the survival of the herd). When we experience a conflict between the "necessary" and the "right," we're forced to make hard choices between self-preservation and herd-preservation. The starker the conflict, the more uncomfortable that choice becomes. We then seek to lessen that discomfort by rationalization: finding some way to harmonize the "necessary" and the "right." We also want that rationalization to be validated, accepted by and thus acceptable within the herd.

For example, while we recognize at a fundamental level that it is "wrong" to kill another human being (violates preservation of the herd), we also recognize that sometimes it is "necessary" to kill (self-preservation or preservation of individual families/clans). We then try to harmonize the "necessary" and the "right," to codify specific cases in which the herd will validate doing the "necessary thing" rather than the "right thing."

The real problems develop when we harmonize those two conflicting impulses TOO WELL, when we merge the "necessary" with the "right." This merging blurs the distinction between them, and allows us to frame any "necessary thing" as a "right thing," to a point where we can actually celebrate doing evil because it is (or can be presented as) "necessary."

This fundamental conflict is what generates morally compromised definitions of words like "freedom," "fairness," "equality," "duty," etc. Those concepts speak to what is "right" (preservation and enhancement of the herd), but we even knowing them, we are no less subject to our perceptions of the "necessary" (self-preservation). So we compromise those definitions, dilute the concepts, seeking to convince ourselves AND OUR HERD that the "necessary thing" is ALSO AND ALWAYS the "right thing."

Returning to my previous example (killing another human being), we recognize that our family/clan has a duty of self-preservation. If we are attacked by another family/clan - if it is a case of kill-or-be-killed - we recognize that killing the other family/clan may be "necessary."

We've codified that situation into a complex body of rules called "the laws of war," which at their root seek to preserve our awareness of the "right" (protecting the human herd as a whole) by limiting the legitimate causes for "declaring war," and by limiting the legitimate evil acts to those which are strictly "necessary." The laws of war forbid the intentional or reckless killing of civilians, for example, as well as looting the property of the other family/clan. Provided a family/clan conforms to these rules - has a legitimate cause for declaring war, and limits its evil acts to those which are strictly "necessary" - we forgive those evil acts as "necessary."

So far ... so good.

The problem comes when we stop "forgiving those evil acts as necessary," and start celebrating those evil acts as "right." Rather than forgiving those among us who've done evil but "necessary" acts on our behalf, we idealize them. We tell them - and even more, we tell ourselves - that our soldiers were doing "right" when they killed other human beings. We give them medals. We put bumper stickers on our cars. We silently (or not so silently) cheer when a movie or documentary shows them killing the "bad guys."

In our need to harmonize our fundamental impulses - to harmonize what is "necessary" with what is "right" - we've gone from recognizing and forgiving "necessary" evil to celebrating it as virtuous and "right." This makes it more difficult for us to talk or even think about "right" and "wrong." Rather than accepting that the evil of war is still evil - even if it's "necessary" and thus worthy of forgiveness - we've come to see it as "right," without need of forgiveness, indeed worthy of celebration.

And if it is worthy of celebration, then it is worthy of repetition, so that each new generation can "fight for the right," leading us to seek out opportunities to wage war ...

... leaving both "necessary" and "right" so compromised that we accept the flimsiest excuses as "necessary," and the most horrific acts as "right."

This process is not limited to Conservatism, and has little to do with a "Strict Father" version of morality (although it tends to birth both). It has to do with the two fundamental impulses of homo-sapiens-as-herd-species: self-preservation and herd-preservation - what is "necessary" and what is "right" - and how we attempt to harmonoze those impulses when they come into conflict.

We must harmonize them, lest we live in constant discomfort and guilt for the evil we have done. But if we harmonize them too much, we cease to recognize evil for what it is. It's simply "doing what you have to do to survive."

And that puts the entire herd in jeopardy....

Crissie

I'm going to go out on a limb here and offer a contrary view on fairness and affirmative action. I think the term "affirmative action" needs to be defined for our discussion, as the term itself is very nebulous. An action could be anything. I'm guessing that in this discussion it means the use of racial preferences for some purpose, so I'll refer to it that way until corrected. The use of racial preferences presents us with a very interesting clash of values. The opponents of prop 209 were outraged that it was called a civil rights initiative, yet ironically the wording of the proposition was taken almost literally from the 1964 Civil Rights act, one of the landmark pieces of American civil rights legislation.

We say that fairness is "unbiased distribution". My point of view is that you have to start from the state that you want to end up in. In other words, if you want to get to a situation where there is no discrimination then you have to start by practicing non-discrimination. I just don't see any other way. The point of view of those who advocate racial preferences seems to be that to get rid of racial discrimination you must practice more racial discrimination. I think that's a mistake, and I think it's a case of sacrificing a strategic objective, in this case an end to racial discrimination, for short term gains.

I think the idea of equality, that all people should be treated equally, is one that all Americans can rally around, even if grudgingly in some cases. We're fifty years into the civil rights era, and everyone except for a few diehards accepts that idea. If you now start saying that it's OK to discriminate for one reason or another, that undermines that idea. For starters, who determines what groups are favored and which disfavored, and how do they get to do that? And who determines when it's time to stop? Al Sharpton? George Bush? Human nature being what it is, people who are in a favored group are going to fight to maintain their favored status because it's good to have an edge. And what makes up a group? There are very few purebreds in this country.

It's good to consider these larger issues, but I think that where the rubber meets the road so to speak is with the individual. If you see that some groups are underrepresented, can you really say without further research that it must be caused by discrimination? I don't think so. Even if you assume that ranges of abilities are equally distributed, we all know that it's how one applies those abilities that counts. There are many factors that influence success--besides race one's economic status, family situation, physical and mental health, place of birth, environment etc all enter into the mix.

To sum up,in order to be completely fair you'd have to have the mind of God to know what everyone has had to overcome. I think the emphasis should be on helping people of whatever race or class to better prepare themselves for the real world rather than trying to meet some arbitrary statistic. For me neither of the extremes of NP or SF in the introduction works. I tried to write something that would satisfy both poles of the debate but kept ending up with mush, so I hope this point of view will stir up some discussion. There is much much more to say about this topic.

Interesting points, and I appreciated the fodder for conversation....
I'll pull from two of your quotes, and while I see where you're coming from here, I think you are flipping outcome with access. I think we all benefit from affirmative action because it enables a richer, more diverse culture and society.

I think we must work to enable the access opportunity so that people can acquire the tools to enable a successful outcome.


You said...
My point of view is that you have to start from the state that you want to end up in. In other words, if you want to get to a situation where there is no discrimination then you have to start by practicing non-discrimination. I just don't see any other way. The point of view of those who advocate racial preferences seems to be that to get rid of racial discrimination you must practice more racial discrimination.

Why is affirmative action necessarily discrimination? A.A. deals with gender and class as well not just race. When specific minorities, genders, and classes do not have the same incomes as other people, are not well represented in the government (despite their size), and do not have access to the same opportunities as the dominant groups I think we must take a corrective measures to balance out the access. Affirmative action is not the hindering of one group's rights, but the enabling of another's rights. Access to these opportunities are most potent in the forms of education and jobs.

You said....
If you now start saying that it's OK to discriminate for one reason or another, that undermines that idea. For starters, who determines what groups are favored and which disfavored, and how do they get to do that? And who determines when it's time to stop....... people who are in a favored group are going to fight to maintain their favored status because it's good to have an edge.

Who is favored in your equation? Is the favored group minorities, the poor, women who are not paid the same as men? Or is the favored the dominant group--white straight (for the most part Chritian) men? When you say favored I think you are narrowing your focus too tightly and not considering the large forces at work in a society-- cycles of poverty for one. Who has the edge in your equation? The dominant group, or these other groups? I think when we can statistically show that certain sectors of the population are underpaid, under-represented and do not have access that other sectors do-- we can say this group is being treated unfairly.

I think when we narrow our focus to only the policy, it is very easy to flip these terms-- who has the edge, who is favored-- and forget the larger issues at work.
Thoughts?

Hi Dave,

You wrote:

> We say that fairness is "unbiased distribution". My point of view is that you
> have to start from the state that you want to end up in. In other words, if you
> want to get to a situation where there is no discrimination then you have to
> start by practicing non-discrimination. I just don't see any other way. The
> point of view of those who advocate racial preferences seems to be that to get
> rid of racial discrimination you must practice more racial discrimination.
> I think that's a mistake, and I think it's a case of sacrificing a strategic
> objective, in this case an end to racial discrimination, for short term gains.

First, as another respondent already said, affirmative action is not limited to race. Most affirmative action programs also consider gender, and some consider socio-economic class as well.

Second, my favorite frame for affirmative action is that of trying to populate a track team based on the results of a tryout footrace. You're standing at the finish line as the finishers come in: Aaron, then Bill, Cindy, Dave, Evelyn, and Farrah. Each runner finishes 1 second after the runner before. You have room for only four runners. Which four do you choose?

Your obvious answer would be Aaron, Bill, Cindy, and Dave - the first four runners to finish. After all, you want the fastest runners on your track team, and those four finished before Evelyn and Farrah. It just stands to reason that you'd take those four.

Now ... what if I tell you that Aaron and Bill started at the halfway point of a 100-meter course, while Cindy, Dave, Evelyn, and Farrah began at the starting line, and Aaron's finishing time was 11 seconds (thus Bill's was 12, and so on, to Farrah's 16 seconds). Do you still want the first four finishers?

If so, you're making a mistake. Aaron and Bill ran only 50 meters; the other four runners ran 100 meters. Yes, Aaron and Bill had the best scores, but if you scale their scores for the difficulty (length) of the course the others ran, they'd both have finished far behind (6 and 7 seconds behind Farrah). Aaron and Bill finished first, but not because they're more capable runners. They finished first because they had an easier (shorter) course to run.

That, in a nutshell, is affirmative action. In considering admissions (hiring, etc.), it asks us to look at the difficulty of the course each applicant has run. There's a wealth of evidence to suggest that white males (in general) run an easier course in society than do white females, black females, and black males (and in that order). Similar data show that the children of wealthy, educated parents run an easier course than the children of poor, uneducated parents.

Thus, if you're a college admissions official and you rely solely on unweighted SAT scores, GPAs, etc., you're like the track coach counting off the first four runners to cross the finish line ... without regard for how far each runner has run. You're not necessarily choosing the most motivated, best-performing applicants, because it is every possible that a poor, black male applicant may have worked harder and more diligently to get the somewhat lower SATs and GPA than a rich, white male applicant.

Who is more likely to succeed in college? The applicant with the higher "objective" scores, or the applicant who has studied more, overcome more, and perservered more, all to achieve slightly inferior "objective" scores?

I would suggest that the latter applicant is more likely to succeed, and has earned preference over the former. That's not "discriminating" in favor of the latter. It is trying to offset the systemic discrimination in favor of the former. It's simply choosing the faster runner (who ran a longer course) over the earlier finisher.

Crissie

I wanted to provoke a good discussion here, and I'm gratified that I got my wish. You both make excellent points. I thought that the SF position was too extreme of a caricature. The attitude expressed there was totally unsympathetic--let them sink or swim. After I read the above posts and thought about them while I was taking a walk, I started thinking that the question I'm posing is, How can we make sure everyone in society has opportunities while not creating an additional injustice?

Daniel asked why AA is necessarily discrimination. The way it's often framed by supporters is to say that it's neccessary to discriminate in order to compensate for past discrimination. I think it's kind of weird to treat it as something that can be reduced to a mathematical formula, i.e. you go this far for this long in one direction to overcome a bias of some degree in the other direction. The worst is when someone says that we need this type of AA because there is still discrimination. There will always be discrimination in one form or another until we're all enlightened, and in any case I don't know how you would measure it, so in effect the program is eternal. I think it would be difficult to get the majority of the population to go along with laws that mandated preferences where the condition for ending it were so subjective.

I wish we'd started off with a clear definition of AA (hint to Joe), because that is one of many interpretations possible, and what you think of affirmative action will depend on the details of the policy. I tend to favor AA when it means making an extra effort to prepare people from disadvantaged groups for school or the marketplace and for making sure they are fairly considered. I don't favor it when it means meeting certain quotas or "goals", when someone's compensation depends on meeting those goals. I realized that I am going to have to do like our friends at the Rockridge Institute and set up a model that is a caricature, because whenever I start considering all the variations and whatifs and this and that I feel like I'm trying to swim in a bowl of mush. So with all these equivocations, I'm talking about a system where some entity is required to give preference to someone because of race, sex, etc.

People expect to be treated the same under the law. We like to think of ourselves as a society where everyone is judged by their merit. So, if we say everyone should be treated equally but then we say you must hire someone because of race, sex, or whatever, then you're violating the principle of equality. The operative word here is required. If I'm a hiring manager, I should take all these other conditions into account, i.e. what they've had to overcome and I may hire them even if I don't think their objective qualifications (such as education, experience, etc) are the best. But what if the government says I have to have x percentage of people identified as belonging to such and such groups, otherwise I'll be sued? And say that in my immediate situation this means I have to hire someone I don't want to so that I won't be sued by the government?

The thing is that these groups we talk about are more conceptual terms than anything else. In other words, say a WM is denied a job and told that his group has had its turn and it's some other group's turn. It's not like being part of a football team, where if the whole team does well then the individual benefits. The fact that many WM's before him did well doesn't mean that our guy got any benefits from it, so he would ask why should he be penalized for something he had nothing to do with? The point is that it is involuntary on his part. If our guy said he understood the issue and would voluntarily step aside, then there wouldn't be an issue. But what society says is that in order to get to a certain outcome someone else will lose out, and it won't be the people who wrote the laws.

I think that higher education is a scene where one can make a good case for preferences, as long as they are one of many factors, and as was pointed out racial ones are not the only ones. I feel that way because getting an education is a lot more than getting good test scores, something that seems to have been forgotten lately. There is something to be said for the value of diversity in fostering a sound education. Also, a diploma is just a means to an end; you can't eat it or pay rent with it. It is different in the workplace, and here I have to point out that it's the employer's perception of the applicant's qualifications that is most important. Someone could have the best qualifications but not market themselves well and thus get passed over.

So, bringing it all back home, how would you frame these issue so that your progressive values were consistent? I don't know what current attitudes are on affirmative action and equality, but I'm sure a lot of people would raise the same concerns, even if not in the same way.

Hi Dave,

Thank you for the fascinating response. You wrote:

> I think it's kind of weird to treat it as something that can be reduced
> to a mathematical formula, i.e. you go this far for this long in one
> direction to overcome a bias of some degree in the other direction. The
> worst is when someone says that we need this type of AA because there is
> still discrimination. There will always be discrimination in one form or
> another until we're all enlightened, and in any case I don't know how you
> would measure it, so in effect the program is eternal.

Both discrimination and its effects can be measured and with increasing precision. The problem is that while we can identify and measure discriminatory attitudes and acts individually, the effects are so subtle that they can only be measured in the aggregate.

Claude Steele and Joshua Aronson performed a series of studies in 1995 which showed that blacks' lower scores on the Graduate Record Examination (GRE) - the standard test for students applying to graduate school, and a test on which blacks on average score 200 points below whites - could be attributed almost entirely to internalized racial stereotyping.

The students were given 30 minutes to complete some difficult questions from the GRE. When students were "primed" to think of race before taking the test - by the researchers explaining that the test measured "intelligence" (rather than "problem solving ability") OR SIMPLY BY BEING ASKED TO INDICATE THEIR RACE ON A PRE-TEST QUESTIONNAIRE - black students consistently scored far worse than white students. When students were not "primed" to think of race before taking the test, black and white students scored equally well.

(Abstract: http://faculty.babson.edu/krollag/org_site/soc_psych/steele_stereo.html )

The Steele-Aronson study shows that we internalize negative stereotypes from society and apply them against ourselves, at a pre-cognitive level (framing). The students were not aware of being "primed." They didn't think they were thinking about race, or that "intelligence" is associated with whites and not with blacks. But the test results showed that "priming" these students dramatically changed their performance.

As for measuring individuals' racial attitudes, the best material I've seen is the Implicit Association Test (IAT), developed by Anthony Greenwald, Mahzarin Banaji, and Brian Nosek. (You can take the test at: http://www.implicit.harvard.edu ) They use a very sophisticated measure of the delay in response times when we're forced to associate characteristics that run against our deep frames (in this case our social stereotypes), as opposed to when the associations conform to deep frames.

The pre-cognitive effects of deep framing are not subtle. When presented with stimuli that conform to deep frames, our response times are typically in the range of 0.4-0.6 seconds. When presented with stimuli that run against deep frames, our response times INCREASE BY HALF (to 0.7-0.9 seconds). When you consider how fast we transmit and receive information via facial expressions - microexpressions flash across our faces in less than a tenth of a second - we're transmitting deep frame-based reactions, and responding to others' deep frame-based reactions BEFORE WE'RE AWARE OF THINKING ABOUT IT.

Think about how that plays out in a job interview. Assume that you're a reasonably well-educated white male, that you don't think of yourself as "racist," that SO FAR AS YOUR VISIBLE THINKING IS CONCERNED, you think race is irrelevant. The IAT study suggests that you will still have deep framed associations about race, and that you will take almost 50% longer - 0.2-0.3 seconds - to associate certain positive traits (such as intelligence) with a black face. That's two or three microexpressions of disbelief or non-acknowledgement that you've transmitted to a black applicant each time he tries to associate himself with intelligence ... even if your conscious thinking tells you that "race doesn't matter." In the extra two- to three-tenths of a second it takes you to think past the deep frame race association, the message has already been sent ... and received.

Now imagine what it's like for that black male, watching whites (and other blacks!) react differently to whites than they do to him, differences that flash past before conscious awareness kicks in. Even if he's not aware of it - and we're usually not aware of individual microexpressions as they happen - it all adds up to a day-by-day, moment-by-moment drumbeat of inferiority.

More importantly, these effects build up over our lifetimes. The disparity in academic scores between whites and blacks - and between men and women - increases as we move from primary to secondary to college to graduate education. It's as if the residue of race- and sex-framed interactions accumulates in our minds like barnacles on the hull of a ship. Steele and Aronson showed that women and minorities slowly get "primed for failure," and the effects of that priming can be demonstrated even in "objective" tests like the SAT or GRE.

How can we overcome that, individually? Banaji found that students who spend time reading about people like Nelson Mandela or Martin Luther King, Jr. before taking the IAT have much smaller delays in associating positive traits with black faces, if they take the IAT immediately after doing so. We have to discipline what we take in - consciously force ourselves to notice stories of successful and intelligent women and minorities, and to avoid negative stories about them - in order to change our deepest frames of sex- and race-based association.

But as a society, we can't just sit around and wait for that to happen, allowing the deep framed "priming for failure" to play itself out. Our institutions must take - and here is where the phrase came from - "affirmative action" to offset the effects of the constant, almost silent drumbeat of inferiority heard by women and minorities. That means recognizing the extent to which that silent drumbeat shows up in our so-called "objective" evaluations, and compensating for the effects of that drumbeat.

If we don't do that, if we don't take affirmative action, women and minorities will continue to lag behind - hamstrung by having been "primed for failure" - and white males will continue point to that AS PROOF THAT WOMEN AND MINORITIES ARE OBJECTIVELY INFERIOR.

That's what affirmative action is all about.

Crissie

I agree with Dave's comments. The solution to discrimination is and never will be quotas or laws requiring employers or college admissions boards to admit a certain number of people from a particular group (e.g. blacks, gays, females, handicapped etc.) Laws will not affect discrimination, which is part of nature, not just humans, and always has been.

Discrimination is not a bad thing, it is the process of detecting fine distinctions or differences between stimuli or people. This is a necessary process that every single organism uses on a daily basis. The unfortunate reality is that this discrimination may be inaccurate, harmful, and just flat out wrong in many cases. The government's responsibility, however, should not be to prevent the negative consequences of discrimination, whether these consequences may be a lower percentage of blacks and hispanics in higher education institutions or a lack of diversity with respect to ethnic backgrounds.

The reality is that the finish line in Chrissie's case is often times just that, the finish line. In other words, people are often judged based on their performance at the moment. It is the employer's responsibility to select those attributes such as GPA, SAT, motivation, personal obstacles in life, that are most important to him and his company. Our government should not impose rules helping these employers to hire employees in which they may not have seen potential. If these discriminated groups or people are truly more motivated and have worked harder to overcome obstacles in their life then their true talents will shine and be recognized. These individuals will have many skillsets and abilities that those priviliged people may have not acquired. In the long-term, companies and colleges who rely solely on SAT scores, GPA's and which college you went to in their admission or hiring considerations will be at a disadvantage. They will be overlooking those highly qualified candidates that simply don't appear as competent or competitive on paper. These companies will fail to be as successful with other companies whose employers had the foresight to recognize these abilities and the insightful companies will be rewarded for their decisions. Over time the best person for the job will be chosen regardless of simply GPA or their college name, and instead be chosen for their likelihood of performing their job well.

I think instead of using the 100M race analogy, we instead look at the "runt" analogy. I work with mice. Often, there is a "runt" in the litter. Usually the mother kills this runt because she knows that it will be less competitive as it matures and that it is simply taking resources away from the other mice that are already on their way to becoming strong, healthy mice. I'm assuming this is primarily instinctual and doesn't require much cognitive processing. Yet if we applied affirmative action to this situation, we would probably have to coddle this "runt" mouse, giving the mouse time on its own to suckle from the mother because if left to suckle with the other mice it would get pushed out of the way and soon starve. In the process of isolating the "runt" with the mother we are punishing the other healthy mice who are not guilty of anything but being healthy. Now I'm not advocating that we don't coddle those that need some coddling at a young age, but sacrificing other's health and or potential for success due to a "runt" would truly be unfair.

This is what I propose. Nature is not fair. It is highly discriminatory and selective. It DOES breed a "survival of the fittest" environment where the strong and intelligent and attractive people rise to the top. We can't change nature with laws. What we can do is make the resources at the bottom of the food chain as accessible to everyone as possible. Yes, this means having the wealthy pay higher taxes to subsidize poorer public schools that may have lower property taxes and therefore much less funding per pupil compared to wealthy districts. Yes, this means paying teachers in urban areas a higher salary to compensate them for the difficulty of working with a "difficult" classroom. Yes, this does mean making some sacrifices from the "priviliged" elite to help those less fortunate. But it's the way we do this and the timing that is essential.

We are not telling employers how to hire. We are not telling people not to discriminate. We are not pushing out qualified applicants for those that may have lower test scores and GPA. But we ARE working with nature. We are trying to make the resources as available to as many people as possible. Taxing a wealthy person is not limiting his potential to be hired. Once in the top income bracket she has already made it through the hoops and climbed up the ladder. We are not truly hindering her in the same way that we would hinder the healthy mice by not allowing them to suckle at the same time as the "runt".

To summarize: Discrimination is part of reality, and reality is not "fair". Nature does not dictate fairness and neither can we establish policies to make everyone as capable and competent as everyone else. What we can do is emphasis equal access to resources at the bottom of the ladder and use taxes from the people who have already been successful to fund this. This way we are not setting quotas, we are not telling employers how to do their job, and we are not punishing qualified candidates for being priviliged.

To finaly address Daves' question. I am a progressive, extremely progressive. But I don't feel that my position is in any way at odds with progressive values. Ignoring the reality of discrimination is just as irresponsible as our president ignoring the realities of the situation in the middle east. Our progressive values claim that those that have benefited the most from our government (the wealthy) should support the largest percentage of the taxes. By putting our weight behind access to resources and not behind quotas we can truly get to the "root" of the problem instead of trying to spray chemicals on the flowers, which we know doesn't work with dandelions.

Hi JT,

Thank you for your comments. You wrote:

> Now I'm not advocating that we don't coddle those that need some coddling at
> a young age, but sacrificing other's health and or potential for success due
> to a "runt" would truly be unfair.

> This is what I propose. Nature is not fair. It is highly discriminatory and
> selective. It DOES breed a "survival of the fittest" environment where the
> strong and intelligent and attractive people rise to the top. We can't change
> nature with laws.

This is a fundamentally flawed view of "Nature." Humans are not mice. We're not even wolves. Homo sapiens is a HERD species, like elephants or cape buffalo. And like every herd species, that means we survive AS A HERD OR NOT AT ALL. Humans survived NOT because individual humans bred to be "the fittest," but because we adapted social rules which made OUR HERD "the fittest."

Those rules - the ones we humans call "morality," "ethics," and "law" - are every bit as "natural" as the instinct for self-preservation. In fact, in order for a herd (elephants, cape buffalo, or humans) to survive, its members must abide by a moral code which places herd-preservation equal to if not above self-preservation. Sometimes individuals must be willing to sacrifice themselves for the good of the herd, or the entire herd perishes.

That means elephants, cape buffalo, and humans DON'T kill their "runts." In fact, they DO "coddle" them. The herd slows down so as not to leave the young or the injured behind. The stronger members of the herd will turn and challenge predators who threaten the young or the wounded, who are shepherded into the middle of the herd for maximum protection. We see this MORAL behavior often in nature.

To be a moral actor - to value herd-preservation as highly as we value self-preservation - is NOT "unnatural." It is the reason homo sapiens didn't join the list of also-rans in our evolutionary tree. It's the reason we survived. It is fundamental to our herd species.

Crissie

Ahh, it appears that you uncovered a problem with my statements. You are correct that humans display different behavioral and social dynamics from mice, so the mice analogy is probably a bad one to use in this discussion. Labeling humans as herd species, however, is actually quite controversial. Let me quote wikipedia for this point:

The term herd is also applied metaphorically to human beings in social psychology, with the concept of herd behaviour. However both the term and concepts that underlie its use are controversial. The term is often used carelessly and applied to a range of situations that have little in common either with each other or with the behaviour of animals in herds.

To truly determine whether humans behave like a herd species and further still whether our herd behavior would definitely lead to a global population helping each other would take significant time and resources. If we were truly acted like a herd then why do we constantly have wars and try to kill each other? I don't think we should discuss this issue in this forum, although I find the topic fascinating. Perhaps helping each other and basing our behavior on moral values is in line with nature. I will accept that premise to move on to the real issue.

Whether what we do is natural or not may not be the most important point. What is reality and what is the government's role is really what we should be concerned with, not idealistic evolution. Labels' given to a group of animals are just that, labels, and what truly matters is the observable behavior.

So what do we observe then? We observe discrimination, and performance based evaluation, and racism, and prejudice, and several other harmful actions performed on each other. These exist and we must acknowledge that they will always exist. With that said, the real question is how we best deal with these ills and what our talking points should be. I think we all agree that we would like to see similar wages between females and males, between blacks and whites, between handicapped persons and non-handicapped persons. But to make laws that select for one group over another is a truly bad policy that we must avoid.

Hi dave,

If you haven't, please read my earlier essay in this thread, "Fundamental Human Impulses." We live in the constant tension between the "necessary" (self-preservation) and the "right" (herd-preservation). That's inherent in human experience.

Recognizing that tension - staying aware of the difference between what is "necessary" and what is "right," always seeking to do what is "right," forgiving ourselves when we're compelled to do what is "necessary," and not celebrating that but then returning to our quest to do what is "right" - is the essential central struggle of the human experience.

When we stop experiencing that tension, we've probably given up on the "right" or, worse, begun to celebrate the "necessary" as "right." We've lost our moral way.

Crissie

Wow, these have all been great comments. I find that each time I post I think of something that hopefully allows me to expresss my ideas more clearly. After my last post I started to think that there needs to be a distinction made between personal morality and public policy. In other words, I act according to some mix of self-interest and principles, some of which are unconscious, e.g. the things our parents taught us and which we internalize so that we're not consciously aware of them. Hopefully I'm acting in a high-minded way. Suppose I get a law passed that says everyone has to act in the same high-minded matter. So far so good. The problem comes with enforcement. What we're trying to judge is someone's motivation. Did they turn down someone because of their race, a reason which we've outlawed, or for some other reason we deem legitimate? Some cases are obvious, of course, such as when a restaurant refuses to serve black people. Sometimes it's only clear when someone sets up an experiment, e.g. where a group sends out people of various races to answer a housing ad, and the people present themselves as having equal income, credit, or whatever to make it a controlled experiment. So the law can only go so far to eliminate at least the most blatant examples of discrimination.

The other variable relates to supply, i.e. supply of places in a class or supply of jobs, or whatever. If there are enough jobs to go around, then it's not a zero sum game where someone has to lose for someone else to win. If there is an adequate supply then someone can bias in favor of someone who is disadvantaged without neccessarily harming the one who is rejected.

It's an irony of life that the issue became most controversial in a situation that was set up to eliminate favoritism, i.e. civil service tests. In that situation people take a written test with right or wrong answers (no essays) and whoever has the highest score(s) gets promoted. But when judges say for example that the agencies have to pass over certain white candidates with higher scores so that some number of non-whitemale people can be promoted it feels very discriminatory, at least to me, because the person being passed over hasn't done anything wrong and everybody has agreed to the rules. What to do? Well, if there is a legitimate reason to apply reasons besides merit, then maybe that should be made part of the job description. For instance, it seems clear to me that you would want a police force that reflected the makeup of the population so that people don't view the police as hostile army, and also to prevent the police themselves from adopting that attitude about themselves. When I say "reasons besides merit" that doesn't imply that the people are unqualified but only that they don't rate the highest on whatever system is designed to measure merit, realizing that that system is probably less than perfect.

I just want to comment now on the comments to my comments. When I said it was weird to reduce this stuff to a math formula, what I had in mind was some visual symbol like the "doomsday clock" that some atomic scientists use to represent how close we humans are to annihilating ourselvs. I'm sure you're all familiar with it, where they say for example that it's now five minutes before midnight, where midnight is when things go boom. I conceptualize things with visual images, so I had an image of a discrimination scale and someone saying we have to tilt it so much this way to compensate for it having been so much the other. The examples that Crissie brought up didn't address that but they were very interesting and profound in their own right and deserve more discussion.

My variation on the finish line metaphor would be to find out that one person pulled a muscle a couple of days before and so wasn't in top shape, and someone else couldn't afford to eat breakfast and that affected his or her time, so if you made sure they had breakfast they'd perform much better, etc. In my variation everyone runs the same race, but the times don't always reflect ability.

Last but not least, I don't like the idea of humans as a herd. I get really suspicious of people who refer to people as "the masses", because it always conjures up an image of a herd of cattle and it is dehumanizing. The herd can be sacrificed for the good of all, and we've seen this happen in China and Russia among others.