[rayiner]

Lots of problems in society that are hard to fix. But there's nowhere else in society where our solution to a problem is to subject people who had nothing to do with the problem to unfair treatment. "Two wrongs don't make a right" is a good general principle.

[webnrrd2k]

Re: two wrongs/people who had nothing to do with the problem

Obvious counter examples: plenty of people have been drafted and died in wars they did not cause or start. Also, people pay taxes to educate others, which (hopefully) fixes a problem they didn't cause or start. The list just goes on and on. In fact, I think it's a fair argument to say that modern society is fundamentally based on the opposite your claim, that people who had nothing to do with all sorts of problems willing submit to unfair treatment because they believe that they,or people they care about, will be better of in the long run for having done the right thing, even if it's difficult and somewhat unfair. In general it's called being an adult. Yeah, sometimed it sucks, sometimes it's unfair, but generally it's better for everyone in the long run.

[BrenBarn]

It depends how you conceptualize fairness. If you believe that some people have a pre-existing unfair bias in their favor, then applying a countermeasure is indeed fair.

[rayiner]

No, because two wrongs don’t make a right. Where else in our society do we justify imposing a moral wrong on a specific individual on the premise that moral wrongs may have been committed against other individuals?

[dahart]

The death penalty is an example of two wrongs making a right in the minds of many people. It’s also at the same time an example of two wrongs not making a right. Imprisoning people is wrong, unless the government does it? All so-called lawful punishments of individuals are a form of hope that two wrongs do make a right.

Whether affirmative action is a wrong is your presumption, and it’s hotly contested, absolutely not universally agreed upon, which makes your use of ‘two wrongs don’t make a right’ a straw man.

There are plenty of things wrong with preferential affirmative action, but I reject the framing that it’s evil, this is essentially an ad hominem attempting to quash any debate of the actual relative merits or the outcomes.

I feel like we can’t make forward progress if you refuse to acknowledge the reasons that history has happened the way it did. See Chesterton’s Fence.

[rayiner]

> Imprisoning people is wrong, unless the government does it? All so-called lawful punishments of individuals are a form of hope that two wrongs do make a right.

In that case, the punishment is not a “wrong” because the person being punished has moral culpability due to their bad act.

That’s different from imposing a punishment on someone because of someone else’s bad act. That’s a principle that some societies hold that ours does not. In clan based societies, a wrong committed by one member of clan A to a member of clan B can justify retaliation against a different member of clan A.

[dahart]

I reject your presumptive framing that affirmative action is a “punishment”. If you help someone, you are punishing the entire world?

[tanseydavid]

> Where else in our society do we justify imposing a moral wrong on a specific individual

> If you help someone, you are punishing the entire world?

You are missing (or maybe even ignoring) the huge difference between these two viewpoints.

[cucumber3732842]

>That’s different from imposing a punishment on someone because of someone else’s bad act.

I shell out thousands for engineered plans for a petty AF retaining wall because the boomers and their parents were cheap fucks and kept building shit that mushed over too fast (all retaining walls fall over, it's just a question of time).

Damn near every area of society has tons of stuff like this.

It's just blood guilt/debt with extra steps IMO.

[webnrrd2k]

I disagree with your charaterization of the problem as exclusively a moral wrong... Was it only a moral wrong? Was the only effect a moral one? Or were there physical or tangible effects, too? For example, were there economic affects?

I'm not claiming to know the solution to the problem of ~200 years or slavery and ~100 years of Jim Crow laws, lynching, and further discrimination. I am saying that doing nothing about it seems pretty fucked. I am saying that claiming that it's immoral to do something about it, which you seem to be doing, makes you look like the worst kind of offensive and racist asdhole, too.

[rayiner]

> I am saying that claiming that it's immoral to do something about it

I'm saying it's immoral to try to correct one injustice by doing a further injustice to an individual who had nothing to do with it. And it's not even me saying that, Plato said that 2,400 years ago.

That doesn't mean you can't do anything. You can have race-neutral policies that directly target individuals who have economic need. Cory Booker's baby bonds proposal, for example, would go a long way towards erasing racial wealth gaps: https://www.acluok.org/news/baby-bonds-path-toward-prosperit.... And it would do so without creating a new racial class system.

[webnrrd2k]

Plato said a lot of shit. To be honest, I don't really care. The Bible said a lot of shit, too. I don't need Plato to tell me that in America, black people, native Americans, and all sorts of other immigrants got well and truly fucked for a long, long time. I don't need Plato to tell me that I find this, and other forms of racism, personally offensive.

Also, it's seems suspicious to insist that all Affirmative Action be halted before these race-neutral policies are implemented. It's almost as if it's some sort of cheap justification for more shitty racism. How about we get rid of affirmative action after we get a this baby bonds proposal? And also a bunch of other stuff that creates a more equatable playing field? Again, minorities were fucked over for decades-to-centuries before Afirmative Action, why not just let it ride for a little while before knocking out the ladder from under them?

Again, I object to your characterization of Affirmative Action as wrong or immoral. It was designed to counter centuries of institutionalized racism. I'll grant that the implementation has been imperfect, but what in this world is perfect? It's just better than doing nothing, it's better than wasting further lives, it's better than creating a permanent underclass. Could it be improved? Yes. Should there be an open discussion about it's effects? Yes. But I think the results should be more like "tweaks to the system" rather than an outright ban, or crying and gnashing of teeth about how Affirmative Action immoral.

One other thing, you keep asserting that "correct one injustice by doing a further injustice to an individual who had nothing to do with it." A few comments ago I pointed out some obvious counter examples, which you neglected to address. The important point was that people who had nothing to do with all sorts of problems willing submit to unfair treatment because they believe that they,or people they care about, will be better of in the long run for having done the right thing, even if it's difficult and somewhat unfair. That doesn't make it immoral. It may be a difficult choice, but it's the kind of choice adults make all the time, and that's just part of living in a civilized society.

[EDIT: I made a mistake when I said "A few comments ago" - it was a separate thread in this discussion]

[esafak]

If you take something from me and the government takes it back that's two wrongs in your book??

[rayiner]

If I steal something from you and then you retaliate by stealing something from my cousin, then that’s the definition of two wrongs.

[freejazz]

In what way did your cousin ever have anything in this context? His admission wasn't rescinded, he never had it in the first place.

[lupusyndrby9]

we all work for a company that steals from gamma employees for hundreds of years and share the proceeds with nu employees .to make amends the company gives the descendants of gamma employees a tiny fraction of what they’ve stolen as a bonus and the nu employees descendants ,who continue to profit from the previous theft by an order of magnitude more then gamma employees bonus, complain about gamma employees descendants preferential treatment being unfair

[rayiner]

Your hypothetical fundamentally misrepresents the economics of what happened:

> share the proceeds with nu employees … nu employees descendants ,who continue to profit from the previous theft by an order of magnitude

Slaveholders were feudal lords. They didn’t “share the proceeds” with the serfs. They “privatized the profits and socialized the losses,” as we would say today. The profits flowed to a handful of families who happened to be white. But all the other white people suffered a deadweight loss. And the civil war nuked much of the south’s wealth. The war cost the south $2 billion, more than the south’s GDP and almost as much as the total value of its real and personal assets. The war also cost the union over $3 billion, an amount equal to its entire GDP. After that, there wasn’t some pool of money to generate dividends shared by all white people. Instead, there were taxes to pay for a war over something nearly all over them never benefited from.

If your ancestors were white independent farmers or sharecroppers, they were poorer for having to compete with massive plantations powered by slave labor. German Americans (the largest group of white Americans) never even arguably benefited from slavery. Half of them came here as indentured servants themselves in the 1840s. They scraped out a hard life in the midwest while having to compete with slave plantations in the south. Their biggest involvement with slavery was fighting and dying in disproportionate numbers to end it. And of course Irish, Italians, Asians, etc., came here after slavery ended.

So let’s tweak your example to reflect the reality. The C-suite of the company happened to be nu, and stole from gamma employees. They hired their nu kids as nepo babies and shared the profits with them, while underpaying the other nu employees. Eventually, some of the nu, including a large number who joined the company only recently, overthrow the C-suite and end the theft. Over the next 150 years, more nu employees keep joining the company, so today more than half have no ancestors who were even here during the theft.

Then the company creates a promotion policy where it gives a big preference to gamma employees over employees who happen to be classified as “nu”—regardless of whether the nu employee’s ancestors were even at the company during the time of the theft. Nobody would consider that a fair arrangement.

[BrenBarn]

So, what if you steal $1000 from me and then give it to your cousin?

[dahart]

Yep. Maybe a little bit like a sports handicap, you’re not trying to give someone a better chance of winning than everyone else, you’re trying to give them equal chances based on historical data.

Gemini gave me an okay analogy: “If a pendulum is knocked permanently off-center by a structural bend or a magnetic field, the only way to center it again is to apply an equal and opposite force. Affirmative action policies attempt to apply this counter-weight to straighten the broader societal scale.”

I’m not sure but is there a question about whether we actually had pre-existing unfairness? Blacks got the legal right to vote in 1965. Before that was effectively institutionalized racism, fully entrenched cultural bias, right?

[rayiner]

Discriminating against an individual based on their race is a moral wrong, unlike applying pressure to a pendulum. So your example doesn’t work because it doesn’t raise the disputed moral question.

Our system of morality and justice operates on individuals, not groups. It’s fundamentally mistaken to view the issue in terms of a pendulum that represents group outcomes.

[dahart]

> Discriminating against an individual based on their race is a moral wrong

People pick partners based on race. Is that morally wrong?

> Our system of morality and justice operates on individuals, not groups.

What do you mean? Class actions don’t exist? Did I imagine the 19th amendment?

[graemep]

> People pick partners based on race. Is that morally wrong?

Depends on their reasoning. If it is that they are attracted to people with a particular physical appearance that correlates with race, then its not morally wrong. If you are doing so because they do not want to pick a partner who they believe is of an inferior race, that is morally wrong.

[dahart]

Exactly. It depends. It’s not a given.

[rayiner]

> people pick partners based on race. Is that morally wrong?

Wrong, but not illegal.

> What do you mean? Class actions don’t exist?

You can’t have class actions based on pre-existing groups (say, “Italians”). You have to define the group in a way that provides a high level of certainty that all class members were subject to the harm that’s the basis for the suit.

[dahart]

> Wrong, but not illegal.

Why is racial preference in partner wrong?? Who agrees with this anywhere?

[freejazz]

>You can’t have class actions based on pre-existing groups (say, “Italians”). You have to define the group in a way that provides a high level of certainty that all class members were subject to the harm that’s the basis for the suit.

Yeah, and?

No response on the 19th amendment?

[AnimalMuppet]

There were things like redlining, where blacks could only buy housing in certain areas. Those areas also tended to have worse schools, so the next generation of blacks was less well educated than whites of equivalent intelligence. That led to worse jobs, which led to worse financial outcomes, which led to living in worse parts of town, which led to the next generation having less education...

So, yes, there was pre-existing... "unfairness" may be too strong for some of it; it wasn't all unfairness. Some of it was the effects of past unfairness, even if the (deliberate) unfairness was no longer present. The pendulum was in fact bent, to at least some degree.

But I like the analogy, because you only apply the counterforce until the pendulum is straight. Then you stop. Things were bent enough that affirmative action may in fact have been necessary. But it should not be necessary forever. Even if it was the right thing to do, there comes a time when the right thing to do is to stop.

(Then you get into "is now the right time", and things get a whole lot murkier...)

[rayiner]

Even if an individual’s condition today reflects historical injustices to groups, that doesn’t justify discriminating between individuals today based on their group. To your redlining example: it’s true a black american who inherits a house may have lower home equity than a white american who inherits a house. But isn’t the white american who didn’t inherit anything worse off than both? You can’t lump white americans together based on a group generalization—that’s the very thing we decided is immoral.

The historical argument also doesn’t survive attempts to generalize its underlying principles to immigrants. Objectively, Black americans are extremely privileged by virtue of being americans. A redlined community in 1950s America was still better than my dad’s village in Bangladesh.

Finally, your argument demolishes how affirmative action is actually practiced. Its biggest beneficiaries are immigrants and their children, in particular hispanics. That produces a very unfair result under your logic, because latin america is solidly middle income, and was even more so in the 20th century. In 1990, Mexico’s GDP per capita was ten times higher than India’s and China’s. Yet colleges and corporations discriminate in favor of “hispanics” descended from Spanish conquistadores, and against “asians” whose parents grew up in third world villages.

[graemep]

Your reasoning is exactly why I loathe any step towards this sort of thing in the UK. You cannot infer disadvantage from a simple racial categories. For example, the majority of South Asians I know in the UK have affluent and/or well educated parents. On the other hand I know there are people whose parents were poor educated, spoke English as a second language, went to schools in bad areas, etc. If you try to balance by ethnic group its the former who will get the most advantage from it. The Asian side of my ancestry was both more affluent, and had more people go to university than the white side.

As the article says the best universities here look at predicated A levels grades, their own admissions tests, and interviews. From what I have heard at open days etc. they are often clear that they do not care about ethnicity or skills at sports.

[dahart]

> that’s the very thing we decided is immoral

Racism is the thing we decided is immoral, actions based on belief that one group is inferior to another, not any and all notions of groups for any reason.

> Objectively, Black Americans are extremely privileged by virtue of being Americans. A redlined community in 1950s America was still better than my dad’s village in Bangladesh.

Whoa. They should be happy with what they have, and put up with racism and inequality here because there are poorer people somewhere else in the world? Some Blacks in 1950 couldn’t vote - they were “privileged”?

[rayiner]

> Racism is the thing we decided is immoral, actions based on belief that one group is inferior to another, not any and all notions of groups for any reason.

No, what we decided was wrong was using race as a salient factor to discriminate between people. That’s why all our laws use that word. The laws reflect the moral principle.

> They should be happy with what they have, and put up with racism and inequality here because there are poorer people somewhere else in the world?

You’re the one supporting a system of affirmative action that treats people unequally. My point is that, if your justification for that unequal treatment is the historical circumstances of people’s parents and grandparents, then it’s quite relevant that almost any applicant with roots in America has a huge head start over almost any applicant with roots in Asia, Africa, or the Middle East.

I’m not the one who brought up the redlining example. That’s an example invoked by proponents of affirmative action. But if you invoke that reasoning, you should follow it through to its logical conclusions. If a university is choosing between an applicant whose family home in America has reduced value due to redlining, and an applicant whose family home is in a literal third world village, then what’s the moral logic for giving an advantage to the first applicant?

> Some Blacks in 1950 couldn’t vote - they were “privileged

None of my grandparents could vote in 1950 because they lived in a colony. Nobody whose family comes from China, Vietnam, etc., has grandparents who could vote in 1950.

[dahart]

Yes! Exactly. Affirmative action should naturally end itself if it works. The goal is to equalize opportunity and stop preferential treatment, not to hang on to preferential treatment.

Well said, it does need to stop eventually. Now might be the right time, even if we’re not all the way there, given all the problems and unintended consequences and all the backlash.

[anamax]

> If you believe that some people have a pre-existing unfair bias in their favor, then applying a countermeasure is indeed fair.

What definition of "some people" and "unfair" are we using?

I ask because I'm pretty sure that Obama's daughters "have a bias in their favor" in comparison with my lily-white nieces. (The parents of said nieces make around $40k/year.)

Is it fair to apply "countermeasures" to benefit said daughters relative to said nieces?

You can argue that said nieces have an unfair bias relative to similarly situated black children, but that's not how these systems tend to work.

And, it's not just Obama's daughters.

[BrenBarn]

I totally agree that there are lots of problems with just assigning the benefits based on coarse categories like "race". My point is just what I said in the quote: a process that seems "locally" unfair may produce a more "globally" fair result. Or it might not! I mean, you have to do it right. But if your goal is to produce a fairer result you might do things even though they seem unfair from a different perspective.

[UncleMeat]

Hm. How does this vibe with your blanket judgement about Bangladeshis?

[rayiner]

You shouldn’t make “blanket judgments” that apply to every individual Bangladeshi. In a context where you’re evaluating individuals, you should do so without regard to their ethnicity or nationality. In the context where you’re talking about masses, then it’s permissible to draw inferences about aggregate characteristics.

Simple example: at the doctor’s office, I want them to measure my height, without regard to the fact that I’m Bangladeshi. But that doesn’t mean that medical journals must blind themselves to the fact that a group of 10,000 Bangladeshis is going to have a much lower average height than a group of 10,000 Germans.

[UncleMeat]

It is very clear that you are not talking about height.

You are also different policy treatment of these groups.

[rayiner]

> It is very clear that you are not talking about height.

It doesn't matter whether it's height or anything else. The point is that there's a fundamental difference between contexts in which you're evaluating an individual, and contexts in which you're evaluating groups in the aggregate.

> You are also different policy treatment of these groups.

I do not support any policy that would treat a specific individual differently because they're Bangladeshi.

[dahart]

If only it were actually that simple and fixed with platitudes. Culture and belief is passed on from generation to generation, otherwise we wouldn’t have had the persistent problem in the first place. How do we fix a problem that we already have historical evidence that when left alone doesn’t go away on its own, that people who weren’t the original cause of the problem still, in fact, perpetuated it? How can we know people have nothing to do with the problem today, given that there are still discrepancies in outcome? I’m not defending Affirmative Action, the question at hand is what’s the alternative proposal?

[rayiner]

It's not a "platitude" it's an aphorism. It reflects the principle--already ancient to Plato 2,400 years ago--that we don't solve injustice by shifting that injustice onto innocent third parties. If you can prove wrongdoing by specific people then you can punish it. But if you define treating someone differently based on skin color as a moral crime—which I think is necessary for a multi-ethnic society to function—then you can’t use differential treatment to reengineer outcomes.

Apart from enforcing neutral principles, the other solution is individualism. We need to stop reinforcing the salience of race and racial communities and treat people as individuals.

[dahart]

It feels like a platitudinal aphorism to me, it’s trite and cliche and overused and was delivered as if it’s insightful in hopes of ending the debate. Google appears to agree vigorously that “two wrongs don’t make a right” is a platitude.

One problem with that platitude is that there are plenty of ways that two negative things can balance each other out or become positive in some way.

Aren’t you making deep cultural presumptions and imposing your own opinions? Affirmative action is controversial, and it’s had unintended consequences when used, but what’s the rationale for claiming it’s a “wrong” or “injustice”? Not everyone believes that.

You’re also deliberately ignoring the point that there might be no such thing as innocent third parties, but only people who aren’t aware they’re part of the problem, even if it’s subtle and unintended.

History already tried the Laissez Faire approach, and it didn’t work. Chips fell in a bad place. This isn’t about proving wrongdoing or punishment, it’s about acknowledgement of a problem, and reflection and self-improvement as a group.

[rayiner]

An aphorism is an expression of a general principle. This one seems cliched because it reflects a principle deeply ingrained in our society. We reject “an eye for an eye” and instead say “two wrongs don’t make a right.” We have since Plato’s day. You don’t disregard core principles merely because a particular social problem is difficult to solve.

Affirmative action is wrong because we have defined treating an individual differently based on their race as a moral wrong. The act is wrong, regardless of your motivations. It’s like how stealing is wrong even if you’re doing it because someone else stole from you first.

I’m not ignoring your point that third parties may not be innocent. I said above that if you can prove wrongdoing by specific individuals, you can punish them.

> acknowledgement of a problem, and reflection and self-improvement as a group

There are no “groups,” just individuals who must be treated according to their individual merits, without regard to their group membership. That was the whole principle of the civil rights era.

[dahart]

> we have defined treating an individual differently based on their race as a moral wrong. The act is wrong, regardless of your motivations

No, I don’t think so, You’re conflating racism with discrimination. We humans discriminate positively and negatively all the time. People discriminate based on race and gender and age for the purposes of picking a life mate or sexual partner, and society has exactly zero problem with that. Discriminating based on race is absolutely not a morally wrong act regardless of motivations. Intent matters, and the situation matters.

This talking point about all discrimination being wrong is fairly popular, and there are a lot of people who can’t see the difference between positive discrimination and negative discrimination. This is one reason I think affirmative action should end; it’s too subtle of a distinction and we were too successful at planting the idea that discrimination is bad.

You’re also conflating law with mores in your example. There are cases where stealing something is moral, regardless of whether it’s legal. There are also cases where stealing something is legal too, for example you can legally take back something stolen from you if you do it non-violently.

> There are no “groups”

I was referring to humanity, to all of us.

[alistairSH]

You’re also deliberately ignoring the point that there might be no such thing as innocent third parties, but only people who aren’t aware they’re part of the problem, even if it’s subtle and unintended.

I was about to post the same and that's 100% my take... sure, I didn't own slaves and I don't intentionally do anything racist... but I can absolutely acknowledge that by virtue of genetic lottery (white, with educated parents, etc) I had it orders of magnitude easier than the kids who grew up on the other side of town (black, less educated parents, etc).

I said it in another comment - affirmative action may not be the best solution, but it's tiresome to see people trot out the "2 wrongs" argument without proffering a better solution to the problem.

[nec4b]

What about white kids on the other side of the town with drug addicted parents?

[dahart]

What about them? Being white doesn’t make people immune to drugs, nor guarantee anything, right? So what’s your point? Race advantage is something you can’t always see by looking at individuals, especially cherry picked examples. Bias is a statistical effect, so you may need to look at everyone in order to see it, unless we are talking about clear cases of oppression, inability to vote or slavery or violence or things like that. Most of that has been resolved, but subtle bias is still around.

[dahart]

Thank you. Yes the whole problem and confounding factor with this argument is that racism exists, and emerged on its own. If we choose Laissez Faire, we already know the outcome, and it’s bad. The notion that we should do nothing to fix it and let the chips fall where they may would amount to institutionalized racism as opposed to institutionalized (positive) discrimination. Plus affirmative action can and should end, whereas racism does not without changes.

[JuniperMesos]

The alternative proposal is not treating racial discrepancies in outcome as a problem to be solved.

[dahart]

Okay, that’s true, it’s one of the available choices. That’s a rather extreme position to take, given the history of slavery, racism, and sexism in the U.S. We know for a fact that outcome discrepancies were caused by racism before 1965. The discrepancies have been on the decline since then. So, when exactly, did equal opportunity start? We didn’t have it in 1966 yet, despite the law. Did we have it in 1980? Outcomes have closed since then, so no, obviously not. When, then? What reason is there to believe outcomes discrepancies aren’t a problem, given that society generally believes they are?

[JuniperMesos]

> Okay, that’s true, it’s one of the available choices. That’s a rather extreme position to take, given the history of slavery, racism, and sexism in the U.S.

Slavery, racism, and sexism have happened in every single human society that has ever existed in some form or another, the US isn't special here. Discrepancies in average outcomes between different ethnic groups as measured by the statistical tools of industrialized states are at least as old as industrialization, and have relatively little correlation with whether a particular ethnic group was acting racistly towards another one in any given time and place.

> We know for a fact that outcome discrepancies were caused by racism before 1965.

No we don't.

> What reason is there to believe outcomes discrepancies aren’t a problem, given that society generally believes they are?

Societies generally believe all kinds of contradictory and mutually-inconsistent things, because a society is comprised of the aggregate of a large number of individual people who all have different understandings of the world, self-interests, group loyalties, etc. I don't assume that if society generally believes something, this is an unchanging fact about society, or that the thing is in fact correct, or that I should agree myself.

[graemep]

> Slavery, racism, and sexism have happened in every single human society that has ever existed in some form or another, the US isn't special here.

Sexism is different as its not a group trait that affects whole families or communities so the disadvantage is not inherited.

The US is not unique with regard to race, but not all societies are the same. The US has a history of race based slavery which had a cultural impact, and it had racist laws and lynch mobs etc. until very recently.

> have relatively little correlation with whether a particular ethnic group was acting racistly towards another one in any given time and place.

There were actual racist laws in the US which is pretty good evidence of people being racist in the 1960s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_segregation_in_the_Unit...

In most of the world people could legally marry someone of different race. In the UK an author could depict a marriage between people of different races in a children's book in the 1950s - I cannot think of any American examples of the same.

[dahart]

> No, we don’t

You’re either trolling or completely ignorant of U.S. history.

Look up Jim Crow laws; it was the law to suppress blacks in the U.S. for the better part of a hundred years, ending around 1965. Yes we absolutely do know for a fact that racism was a major causal force of racial disparities in the U.S. before 1965. This isn’t even up for debate, and there are zero respectable sources that claim otherwise. Saying we don’t know doesn’t make it true, nor change any minds, it just reflects really poorly on you.

You might also want to google Suffrage, lynching, red-lining, and the U.S. history of racial disparities.

It’s funny that you have heard of slavery, but apparently don’t understand how it held black people back…?

Here’s just one place to start educating yourself, if you want:

https://www.minneapolisfed.org/article/2022/how-the-racial-w...