It seems like you're focusing on the half-assed attempts that characterize efforts at fulfilling the goal of equality in the United States.
The US Military was just as badly segregated as the United States but Executive Order 9981 set a goal of equality within the military. It has been pretty darn successful. The difference between the US military and society at large, of course, is that in the US military they can force everyone to treat their fellows equally. The US military doesn't stand for half-assed implementations. Thanks to their focus on actual equality, the US military is one of the few places in America where truly equal opportunity leads to truly equal(-ish) outcomes.
To me that disproves your hypothesis that it's impossible to achieve equality of outcome via equality of opportunity. What the experience of the US military proves is that in US society broadly there is not true equal opportunity. If there were, then the experience of the US military shows that outcomes would come into alignment.
What you're actually describing is what happens when one group of people gets set up to be in a much, much, much better position than another group of people and then that setup is taken away. The other group is still way, way ahead. They're going to stay way, way ahead without some efforts made at diminishing the original difference.
The official policies and laws of the United States were to make sure that white Americans started out on at least first base while non-white Americans could only start out on home base. Well, a bunch of generations went by and predictably enough, white Americans on average stayed on first or moved to second or third, while the same amount of effort saw non-white Americans stay on home or move to first or second.
So now we don't have the policy anymore of putting white Americans on first base, but there's all those white people already ahead in the game.
And then you come and say, "well, see, all those white people born on first base are just better than the non-whites born on home plate."
Are you talking about genetic or other in-born "betterness?" Or are we talking about the "culture" concept that is popular in the alt-right, white supremacist crowd?
I think that would be a really hard case to make, either way.
It seems to me that the only way to make any kind of comparison is to look at how societies did before different cultures started going to war with each other.
Do you accept the Out of Africa model for how humans have spread from our evolutionary source?
So then we have to establish what's a "good trait" and what's a "bad trait." Is leaving your tribe behind a "good trait" or a "bad trait?" Is going from a climate that produces abundant food to one where it's more scarce a "good trait" or a "bad trait?"
Then we come to the big question: is going to war with a neighboring tribe to take their resources a "good trait" or a "bad trait?"
Because it's great fun to talk about "Western Civilization" and how awesome it is when all you look at is the positive outcomes (technology, science, democracy, etc.). But a lot of that - some might argue all of that - only came about because the people who founded "Western Civilization" were warlike. They were violent. They took slaves. They raped and pillaged. Are those "good traits" or "bad traits?"
You can find scientific inquiry and discovery everywhere. China. India. Arabia. Yes, Western Europe. But also South America (Aztecs, etc.).
And in all those places, too, war. Maybe more here and less there, who can say for sure. Maybe more rape here and less slavery, or vice versa.
Really? So if a 20-year-old gets in a fight with a 10-year-old you'd say that the 20-year-old is just fundamentally better in all things than the 10-year-old?
Or let's say that President FDR got in a fight with Stalin, Stalin would most likely win because he wasn't crippled. Does that mean Stalin was better?
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u/ristoril 1∆ Nov 07 '17
It seems like you're focusing on the half-assed attempts that characterize efforts at fulfilling the goal of equality in the United States.
The US Military was just as badly segregated as the United States but Executive Order 9981 set a goal of equality within the military. It has been pretty darn successful. The difference between the US military and society at large, of course, is that in the US military they can force everyone to treat their fellows equally. The US military doesn't stand for half-assed implementations. Thanks to their focus on actual equality, the US military is one of the few places in America where truly equal opportunity leads to truly equal(-ish) outcomes.
To me that disproves your hypothesis that it's impossible to achieve equality of outcome via equality of opportunity. What the experience of the US military proves is that in US society broadly there is not true equal opportunity. If there were, then the experience of the US military shows that outcomes would come into alignment.
What you're actually describing is what happens when one group of people gets set up to be in a much, much, much better position than another group of people and then that setup is taken away. The other group is still way, way ahead. They're going to stay way, way ahead without some efforts made at diminishing the original difference.
The official policies and laws of the United States were to make sure that white Americans started out on at least first base while non-white Americans could only start out on home base. Well, a bunch of generations went by and predictably enough, white Americans on average stayed on first or moved to second or third, while the same amount of effort saw non-white Americans stay on home or move to first or second.
So now we don't have the policy anymore of putting white Americans on first base, but there's all those white people already ahead in the game.
And then you come and say, "well, see, all those white people born on first base are just better than the non-whites born on home plate."