The Weaponization of Diversity

I rarely hear opponents of affirmative action deny institutional racism as much as its proponents. It's proponents would rather eat their own hat than admit that systemic efforts to favor specific racism groups for employment (for the noble ends of countervailing other forms of systemic discrimination) are in themselves a form of institutional racism. This denialism has run so deep hacks in sociology have gone to the extreme of outright redefining the word racism to allow for the concept of "non-racist" racial biases in hiring. This is what I would characterize as "extreme defensiveness".

I don't actually think proponents of affirmative action are without a point I'm just tired of seeing a group of people in such deep denial of their own systemic racism seeing everybody else as the deniers and acting above it all when they're not even as non-racist as the average moderate.

In US, fed vs local state split -- is also making reforms more difficult, but on the other hand -- it probably prevents monopolization of political opinion + economic will. So over all the separation is good.

I would like, however, federal laws to be updated to protect people from discrimination due to criminal past.

I think a federal law that prevents employers of asking/using criminal past in hiring decisions -- would go a long way of re-integrating previous offenders back into society.

Probably there are specific federal charges that should be hidden -- but majority must not be used for employers, and must not be asked during job application.

I am a sure if such a law would be in effect, a number of people who resource to additional criminal activity, after previous conviction -- would drop at least 10 fold.

These kinds of changes is a must on a road to a more just society.

The author acknowledges every culture has its own upper strata There are selection mechanisms which can amplify or inhibit the effect of this upper strata - compare Cubans and Mexicans. For black Americans, that selection mechanism is racism. In 1921, whatever the black upper class had achieved in Tulsa Oklahoma was burned to the ground by white supremacists - businesspeople were ruined by racism. Whatever opportunities the black upper class could have made of home ownership were dashed by redlining, the creation of suburbs excluded them from the foundational middle-class wealth building exercise of the 20th century. Policy created the ghettos at large, with economic pressure for exploitative landlords which incentivized short term earnings to pay the rent, including crime. For black Americans, the upper strata have never gotten a fair break by design of policy (until very very recently). Despite this, a lot of black Americans carry the exact same ethos that the author acknowledges - go read Malcolm X. The idea of 'let's lift ourselves up first' is very old in the black community - the reason it doesn't work is because racist policy always puts the boot on it.

The author comes close to describing the problem, but fails at the solution. "Let's do better guys!" doesn't work - even when a man as charismatic as Malcolm X proposes it. Nowadays, the failure of the black family is used to argue against government intervention to assist African Americans. But the man who pioneered the idea that a failure of the black family would lead to chaos, Daniel Moynihan, actually had genuine policy based ideas on how to rebuild the black family after years of racist destruction of it: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/10/the-bla... He would agree 100% with the author and Malcolm X and others who recognize the role of family, but he would put the blame directly at the feet of white supremacy.

I agree that diversification is being weaponized. The author acknowledged he was speaking from his limited perspective, and again just as a Latino. One thing I wish would happen is that we would go back to the language of redress for past injustice, not diversity. That was the original point of affirmative action. Every social justice movement has scope creep. We go from "Here are these African Americans, descendents of enslaved people who have been plundered and abused for centuries - we owe them redress and opportunities" to "Diversity is good". From "Black People" (and their very very specific struggle) to "People of Colour" (and feel-good-ism about diversity). Happens in the LGBTI movement too. It's gone from people with very specific, very innate differences which have made them targets of brutal violence... ... to the LGBTQ+ movement which is about every other teenager feeling quirky for 'experimenting with their sexuality' and 'not using labels' to be 'progressive'. We even replaced the most observably biological group in the acronym (I - intersex; literally born with mixed chromosomes, genitalia and/or hormone levels) to the most ideological/political letter we could (Q - queer; which is literally defined as something subversive and simply 'different' in a very political sense).

At least as far as black people are concerned, systemic racism is the problem - it has killed the black upper strata for centuries. It killed the black family and created the conditions which the author properly describes in his essay. And, like Moynihan said, it needs to be resolved with policy, but instead it's being 'resolved' with policing and mass incarceration, which has exacerbated the problem.

I agree with your point but must take issue with your phrasing. Your conflation of racial bias with racism trivializes racism.

What I don’t understand about the whole cultural piece is the selection bias. My understanding is that the Cubans that came here had different circumstances, different opportunity and different resources (they came because they were successful).

Otherwise are we just saying that Mexicans are lazy compared to Cubans and that is just culture? Or African Americans aren’t as hardworking as Ghanaians and that stereotype is what it is and we should just operate around it?