Harris argues that Identity Politics has become a political religion. He distrusts identity politics of all kinds, and has argued that to the extent any person claims that their race is anything other than homo sapiens, this is a problem. In this short video, Harris is distressed that in modern day America, so many people attempt to inject their personal identity or their personal tribe into a conversation where only the facts are relevant.
In the mid-1980s I had the undeserved honor to work with one of the science giants of the 20th century for two weeks. He told me that a scientist expends far more time and resources trying to disprove his conclusion than proving it. That was a major life lesson. Knowledge of gene pools is helpful in medicine to prioritize areas to search for problems and solutions. Otherwise, we’re ignoring evidence. Assuming genetic pool from physical appearance is not evidence, Biology doesn’t care about identity politics, and neither should we.
Bill – I’m really enjoying reading your comments. It is striking to me that even if the average rating of a trait of any grouping of people is a bit different than the average rating of that same trait in any OTHER grouping, so what? It would be immoral and unscientific to fail to evaluate each individual one by one. I was speaking to a Chinese woman a few weeks ago. She worked at an adoption agency and she was reacting to a statement she sometimes hears in the U.S.: “Chinese people are smarter than average.” She told me that she thought this was off-base, continuing: “I’ve met a lot of Chinese people who are not so smart.” Even if I believed that Chinese people were smarter on average than the a pool of total Americans, I would still be careful evaluate each candidate and pick the one who fits the job requirements best based on a variety of job-relevant factors, none of which would be “race.” If I failed to do my decision-making at the individual level, I might be setting myself up for a big mistake for any particular hire. This is how I would approach every hiring decision every time. That said, I see here that as of 2015, Asian men out-earn every other demographic group.
What you’re describing is the original meaning of Affirmative Action. Companies tried to deal with hiring bias by publishing policies stating they don’t discriminate. The DoJ said that this is not good enough, it is necessary to act affirmatively by reaching out to under-represented demographics with such efforts as advertising in publications popular with the demographic, holding recruiting events in the demographics’ neighborhoods. The objective was to increase the size of the talent pool, a no-brainer for any business owner and best practice by far.
The term has been hijacked to mean racial preferences, precisely the opposite of the original intent. Now we don’t have a term to discuss the obvious. We’re focused on equality of outcome rather than equality of opportunity. Life sucks.