Discrimination against certain categories of individuals on the basis of bodily features seems so tribal, inefficient, and bigoted that I have caught myself thinking that laws against such discrimination might be acceptable after all. The case of Harvard University president Claudine Gay and the events she has been associated with, however, bring into focus the danger of this course of conduct: forgetting that discrimination in favor of some group is ipso facto discrimination against some other group.
A Wall Street Journal column by Jason Riley suggests that Ms. Gay owes her prestigious job in large part to her race, her DEI (“Diversity, equity, and inclusion)” activism, and her progressive ideology (“Why Harvard Can’t Fire Claudine Gay,” December 19; see also “As Pressure on Harvard President Increases, University Board Feels the Squeeze,” Wall Street Journal, December 23, 2024). Somebody more competent, more scholarly, and less activist would likely have got the job were it not for the discrimination practiced at Harvard. Even assuming that this is not true, the stain of affirmative action–discrimination to combat discrimination–would remain.
Under the excuse of fighting racial and “gender” discrimination, as well as discrimination against any “marginalized group” that gets on the victimization bandwagon, a faction in our society has anointed itself (to use a synecdoche) with the mission of governing others, that is (in the sense of Anthony de Jasay), of harming others’ lifestyles and opportunities in the pursuit of their own contentment and interests. The complicity of governments over the last several decades has been crucial to this enterprise: without their direct and indirect support and subsidies (including to institutions of higher education), it is doubtful that the current tsunami of tribalism, ignorance, and bigotry could have spread so rapidly and so widely.
We now see how attempts at politically—that is, coercively—solving problems of bigoted discrimination are likely to result in a new sort of bien-pensant and quasi-official discrimination, including against those with the wrong opinions. The main problem with anti-discrimination laws is that they translate into discrimination mandates. In the jungle thus created, politicians on the other side react by proposing their own discrimination in favor of their own clienteles.
Despite many historical failures at protecting individual liberty in more rather than less free societies, diversity has always been crushed incomparably more harshly in unfree societies. The slogan “Queers for Palestine” would be rather funny were it not for its tragic naivety (see Billy Binion, “The Contradictions of ‘Queers for Palestine’,” Reason Magazine, October 27, 2023). Activists who witchhunt “micro-aggressions,” even if non-violent, unintentional, and inconsequential, blamed a savage and bloody aggression against Israelis, including women and children, on the latter’s government. The outing of the DEI fraud inspired a Wall Street Journal editorial titled “The DEI Rollback of 2023” (December 26).
DEI appears to be a slogan for intimidation, uniformity, and submission in any dimension other than sex and (certain) skin colors.
A major contribution of political economy is to help analyze how the opinions and actions of politicians, bureaucrats, naïve ideologues, and benevolent authoritarians do not lead to nirvana. It is not by mere happenstance that economist John Stuart Mill could, more than half a century ago, write such powerful books as On Liberty (1859) and The Subjection of Women (1869)—the latter being a rational critique of real, government-supported discrimination.
READER COMMENTS
Richard W Fulmer
Dec 28 2023 at 2:41pm
Exactly. DEI isn’t coercively combatting discrimination; it’s coercively enforcing discrimination against politically disfavored groups. And activists are not at all shy about admitting that.
The source of America’s worst disgraces – slavery, the mistreatment of Native Americans, Jim Crow, eugenics – was not difference of opinion, race, sex, class, talent, wealth, or religion. Rather, it was that people divided along such lines were able to subvert government’s coercive power to advance their own ideas and interests.
Dylan
Dec 28 2023 at 5:44pm
I’m sympathetic to your views here, but playing devil’s advocate, I’ll repeat a thought from an earlier discussion. What if you view the DEI movement as part of shifting cultural mores that make it more costly to practice statistical discrimination? As you have said, information is costly to collect. If you can take a shortcut and judge a person based on perceived group characteristics rather than as an individual, that will be very tempting. But, what if we raise the cost of taking those shortcuts? Not as a matter of law or regulation, but through social shaming?
MarkW
Dec 29 2023 at 8:17am
I would say your devil’s advocate argument is a clear example of the Motte & Bailey fallacy.
Dylan
Dec 29 2023 at 10:02am
Care to explain further? I’m not attempting to respond directly to any specific argument that Pierre presented, but suggesting a lens which it is possible to view the DEI movement. Which, appears to primarily be a bottoms-up social movement as opposed to something imposed via regulation. Indeed, DEI initiatives have been challenged for going against non-discrimination laws. Laws that many libertarians have been against on free association grounds.
Pierre Lemieux
Dec 29 2023 at 5:01pm
Dylan: If DEI is a bottom-up movement, it is a small-bottom-up movement, from the intellectual establishment and rich kids. And note that, as in Jim Crow times, the state supported and amplified the mob’s feelings, until some prospective state tenants tried to fight them in the name of another mob. Hence, the jungle I mentioned.
Dylan
Dec 30 2023 at 9:02am
“If DEI is a bottom-up movement, it is a small-bottom-up movement, from the intellectual establishment and rich kids.”
This is believable, but do you have any evidence? And, if it is true, it seems somewhat noteworthy that they would be advocating for discrimination against themselves, being that the intellectual establishment and rich kids in the U.S. are both predominantly white?
MarkW
Dec 29 2023 at 5:37pm
You’re defending an anodyne version of DEI that bears little resemblance to how DEI is actually being implemented.
Richard W Fulmer
Dec 29 2023 at 10:50am
But that is not what DEI advocates are trying to do. They demand that we prejudge people based on their preferred set of perceived group characteristics rather than on others’ perceived group characteristics.
Free markets don’t prevent prejudice, but they do make it expensive. Unreasoning discrimination costs businesses valuable customers, suppliers, and employees. In the words of Rabbi Jonathan Sacks:
Dylan
Dec 29 2023 at 3:02pm
I agree that it is unlikely that any DEI advocate is trying to do this, but nevertheless they have the effect of making (at least some types of) statistical discrimination more costly.
As to your second point, I will quote Caplan from this blog in 2010:
steve
Dec 29 2023 at 3:20pm
People within market systems have shown that they are willing to forego profits (for hundreds of years) in order to enforce their discrimination against disfavored groups. If you are in the group that benefits this wont bother you. If you are in the affected group then it will.
Steve
David Seltzer
Dec 29 2023 at 4:51pm
Steve: “People within market systems have shown that they are willing to forego profits (for hundreds of years) in order to enforce their discrimination against disfavored groups.” Until it becomes too costly. In South Africa to reduce losses, the mining sector shifted its employment away from white labor unions afforded rights others weren’t, to employing black miners who worked for less. Disaffected whites responded with the Rand Rebellion.
Richard W Fulmer
Dec 29 2023 at 5:36pm
Bigots are often willing to spend other people’s money to indulge their prejudices, but they are much more reluctant to spend their own. For example, slave owners in the antebellum South were subsidized by the government at all levels. Subsidies included slave patrols that were authorized to conscript locals to join in hunts for runaways, militias and military installations created to suppress slave rebellions, and state railroad construction that leased slave labor from slaveowners during agricultural “off seasons.”
Had the South had truly free markets, slaveowners would had been unable to socialize the costs of their “peculiar institution,” and slavery would have been much less profitable and possibly even unprofitable. Instead, slave owners were able to subvert government’s coercive power to advance their own interests.
Pierre Lemieux
Dec 29 2023 at 5:50pm
Steve: To add to what David mentioned, compare freer societies with unfree ones. How, over centuries, did Jews, irrationally hated by large parts of the population, survive? Was it better in unfree societies? And how free were “market systems” during the “hundred of years” you mention? Also, have a look at my post “Jim Crow: More Racist than the Railroads.” Nothing is perfect (especially since most people don’t agree on what perfection is), but more liberty makes life easier for disliked individuals (if they are not the actual rulers, of course).
Mactoul
Dec 30 2023 at 4:20am
If the discriminator loses by his discrimination then what is the meaning of saying
Not clear which is the group that benefits from discrimination. Is this the group of discriminators?
But by standard economic theory they are losers, not gainers.
Pierre Lemieux
Dec 30 2023 at 11:30am
Mactoul: One doesn’t lose when one is willing to pay for what he prefers (discriminating in this case). If such an economic theory existed, it would imply that one loses when heating his house in the winter.
Richard W Fulmer
Dec 29 2023 at 5:22pm
If by “statistical discrimination” you mean differences in status and outcomes – things like wealth, income, jobs, career advancement – between people of different ethnicities, then such “discrimination” has existed everywhere and at every time throughout history. Such differences are hardly limited to free market economies. People are different, and these differences are largely the function of cultures shaped by geography, climate, and history.
The climate in Malaysia, for example, is very hospitable, and the people who originally settled there did not need to struggle to live. Chinese immigrants, accustomed to working hard just to survive in much harsher climates, came to Malaysia with little more than the clothes on their backs. Within a few generations, however, the immigrants’ descendants were, on average, much wealthier than the native Malaysians. Such stories are not uncommon.
Demographics alone can account for significant differences. For example, according to an AP article on America’s aging population, the median age for different ethnic groups varies significantly:
Ethnic Group . . . . . . . . . . . . . Median Age
Non-Hispanic Whites . . . . . . . . . 44.5
Asians . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37.2
Blacks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35.5
Hispanics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30.0
Why would we expect the average 30-year-old to have the same job experience, income, and accumulated wealth as the average 45-year-old?
Why is America “guilty” of a statistical discrimination that not only exists everywhere, but that is all but dictated by differences in culture and demographics?
Politicians and those in the DEI industry benefit from such “problems” because, being inherent, they can never be solved. Their continued existence is “proof” that more resources are always needed. Even better, the intractability of the problem elicits the guilt needed to lead the public to cough up ever more money.
Pierre Lemieux
Dec 29 2023 at 5:27pm
Dylan: You touch on an important issue. Discrimination certainly has an important role in enforcing morality. Think of how people don’t trust fraudsters, non-reciprocal social players, or murderers. Not to speak of discrimination in personal relationships. Also, nobody should nor can prevent people from using statistical clues: if the Greens commit significantly more murders and I meet a Green in a dark street, I am more likely to become more alert to a possible danger. I’ll be more prudent if Donald Trump or Claudine Guay is elected president. Discrimination however becomes blamable when it a priori denies the equal moral value of all individuals that is inseparable from a free society; it is especially blamable when organized or supported by a mob or by state coercion. I think such distinctions are important, and perhaps I should have mentioned them. (In my list of posts to do, I have one on that topic: when Mrs. Grundy should be blamed and not blamed.)
Dylan
Dec 29 2023 at 6:40pm
Pierre, I’ll be honest that I’m not sure I followed all of your reply, so let me just focus on this part.
Absolutely true. We all use statistical discrimination, many times without even thinking about it, probably several times a day. Lots of the time, it’s of little consequence. However, sometimes these mental shortcuts we take where we judge an individual not by their own merits, but by our perceived view of the averages of that group can have profound consequences. I’d say in those cases we have at least some duty to judge the individual, even if it is more costly to do so.
Let’s say I’m hiring for a job where the skills needed are not that high, but I do need to make sure that the person is reliable, shows up on time, completes the work, etc. I receive a 20 applications that on paper meet the minimum qualifications, and I only have 3 openings. What if I have a way that can remove half of the applicants based on an assumed correlation between their name and measures of conscientiousness?
Richard W Fulmer
Dec 29 2023 at 7:33pm
Dylan,
I agree that we should try to judge people as individuals rather than as cardboard cutout stand-ins for some category. However, information isn’t free, and people use all sorts of heuristics to reduce the costs of gathering data.
For example, economist Thomas Sowell started teaching well before Affirmative Action went into effect. He was surprised to find that, as a first-year university professor, students were clamoring to get into his classes. He asked another professor about it. His colleague replied, “Well, you’re black. The students figured that any black man who has become a professor at a prestigious university must really be something.” By contrast, after Affirmative Action was instituted, he found that some students avoided his classes because they assumed that he’d reached his position due only to his skin color.
Were students in the 1970s more prejudice than students in the 1960s? Or were the students – whether in the 60s or the 70s – just trying to make rational decisions given limited time and information?
All that said, not only is DEI not about judging people as individuals, but its advocates explicitly reject any such notion. They turn people into cardboard cutout stand-ins based on their intersectionality model and treat people according to whatever label the model produces.
Years ago, I watched a televised debate between a university professor and an Imam. The professor made what I thought were cogent arguments based on facts and logic. The Imam’s reply to all the professor’s points was the same: “I do not need to respond to you. You are a woman and women are foolish.”
What is the difference between saying, “You are a woman therefore I dismiss you and your arguments,” and saying, as DEI adherents do, “You are a cis-gendered, heteronormative, white male therefore I dismiss you and your arguments”?
Pierre Lemieux
Dec 29 2023 at 8:51pm
Dylan:
I agree that there is some moral duty to try to judge an individual as an individual (at least if the cost is not too high). This moral duty could be a corollary of James Buchanan’s ethic of reciprocity.
Dylan
Dec 29 2023 at 9:18pm
@Richard
I agree that we use all sorts of heuristics/shortcuts because gathering individual data is costly. Ideally, we would find ways to reduce the cost of gathering that data, making it less worthwhile to practice. What I’m proposing (and, I admit I haven’t thought deeply about it) is that one consequence (and again, not something that I think is explicitly intended) of the DEI movement is that it attacks this from the other end. If I know that if I only hire young white guys to be my computer programmers I’m going to get grief about it, well, that is an additional cost on me. And, it could tip the balance towards me at least giving an interview to someone I might have otherwise put in the no pile to start. If I’m a for profit company, I’m still primarily motivated to hire the person I think will be best for the job, but it will at least cause me to think a little bit longer about aspects I otherwise might not have consciously thought about.
Richard W Fulmer
Dec 30 2023 at 4:00pm
Dylan,
I think that the cost of accusing and punishing innocent people for non-existent racism outweighs the benefits of a few more minority hires, especially given that Affirmative Action already provides significant incentives to hire minorities.
Another cost of DEI is that we’re falsely teaching our children that the country is systemically and unalterably racist. How will telling white children that they are indelibly racist lead them to better accept minorities? Telling people again and again that they are racist and pounding the lesson home could well be self-fulfilling.
How will telling minority children that they are helpless victims of an unjust system give them any sense of agency? What sort of lives will they have if we succeed in teaching them that there is nothing they can do to improve their lives or those of their loved ones?
Ron Browning
Dec 29 2023 at 6:32am
An individual’s own prejudices are that individual’s best knowledge.
Pierre Lemieux
Dec 29 2023 at 5:30pm
Ron: Examined prejudice. If your prejudice is that everybody else is a crook, you won’t have much success in life–except if that prejudice is true in the particular environment where you live.
Ron Browning
Dec 30 2023 at 8:03am
If I have a prejudice that all people are crooks, I am sadly burdened with a belief that will continually drag my life down. Sympathy should be in line for someone who has grown up in an environment so corrosive as to leave them with such a harsh view of their fellow man. Nevertheless, this is the best that this person has to go with. Who has the moral authority to force education upon this person? Not I. I am thought , as a peer of this overly prejudicial person, willing to more thoroughly examine that which he has shunned. That which the overly prejudicial person has repelled from, is a fertile field for me to explore. I live peacefully alongside those who others might consider overly prejudicial.
I do admit that I have a prejudice against people who advocate for forced education and association, concerning those that they consider overly, and somehow harmfully, prejudicial. I am also able to peacefully coexist with those who have an unwarranted high esteem for their own wisdom. I have no moral authority to re-educate them.
Pierre Lemieux
Dec 30 2023 at 11:38am
Ron: If by “re-education” you mean coercive re-education (as opposed to attempts at persuasion, frowning, or private discrimination), I agree with you. Do I read you correctly?
Mactoul
Dec 29 2023 at 10:36am
But a supreme prerogative of the individual.
Pierre Lemieux
Dec 29 2023 at 4:51pm
Mactoul: Except in tribes, one individual can criticize other individuals.
Mactoul
Dec 30 2023 at 4:25am
I don’t understand your reply. Are you saying it is not an individual prerogative to judge tribes?
Pierre Lemieux
Dec 30 2023 at 11:39am
Mactoul: I am saying the opposite.
john hare
Dec 30 2023 at 4:16am
I might be using discrimination in my business. We sometimes need unskilled people that will work hard on a short term (1-3 days) job. One temp service specializes in foreign workers and Haitians are the current preferred workers. No English and limited Spanish but they pay attention and take over as soon as you show them the procedure. Is it discrimination to prefer them over citizens that are low productive?
P.S. These guys are not cheap, just effective per dollar.
Dylan
Dec 30 2023 at 9:28am
John, this is the point that I was trying to get at. Thank you for giving a good example. To answer your question, yes it is discrimination to prefer Haitians over citizens, just definitionally so. It may be rational if your observations on relative productivity between the groups is accurate. But still, you are using a perceived group trait to help in making your decisions. Obviously, not all Haitians will be high productivity workers and not all citizens will be low productivity workers, but it is costly to find out which is which. So, if you have experience that workers that belong to one group tend to be better workers you can save a lot of time and effort by just going with them and not ever giving the local guys a chance.
Note how that rational behavior by you, if practiced more broadly by everyone in the construction industry, can end up perpetuating those differences. If I’m better than the average for my group, but don’t have a way to prove* that to you ahead of time, than there is little sense for me to invest in myself, because I will be dragged down by my affiliation with my group.
*This presents an opportunity in the market for others to step in and provide that validation. The temp agency you use might be providing that service for better than average Haitians.
john hare
Dec 30 2023 at 5:45pm
I had never worked a Haitian until about six months ago, They don’t have much of a track record locally that I am aware of and some of the opinions are not good. Maybe it works for us because the core crew is Mexican and I am somewhat used to dealing with communication problems.
We went through dozens of citizens trying to expand the crew after the recession ended. That was my base preference, didn’t work..
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