I have no doubt such a policy would be a success, but most Republicans have shown themselves to be utter cowards over the last several decades; Washington DC politicians simply don’t want awkward dinner party conversations with pretty young things who work in the media. Easier to just float along as a liberal with their ideological speed dial set to 50%.
Trump got elected because he was the only politician to take mass immigration seriously, and even he did nothing about it when he got to the Swamp.
At this point it’s pretty clear that even if a guy like Masters got elected the real control is in the bureaucracy--the “Cathedral” as Moldbug called it. We’ve gone way beyond the point where even a well-meaning President could change anything.
I think it's important to take into account what being labeled as anywhere near Bigot-adjacent has meant in our society for the past 50 yrs.
Post Civil Rights, anything that comes coded as Racist or Segregationist is the great stigma of our time, essentially picking up the baton from Traitor to Heretic to Witch to Commie/Fascist etc, to where it is now the all-purpose slur to smear someone w guilt and shame and put them outside the boundaries of the Good.
So you may have a conservative rep or businessman in say the Midwest or Northeast who would agree with abolishing AA personally, but that man has a wife, daughters, neighbors, etc, and they all will let him know that him being publicly branded as "Racist" could negatively affect all their lives and future prospects.
The Civil Rights movement is still the great moral issue of our time, the foundation of so much modern morality, for many people on the Left it has replaced traditional religion, and for better or worse there are so many trip wires of Guilt wrapped around the narrative that it's usually only the brave or the foolish or reckless who oppose it.
Maybe the reasons progressives don't seem too concerned is that they believe institutions can continue to engage in discrimination in practice even without the cover of law (not sure how true this is or not). It may be that conservatives genuinely face a dilemma: 1) do ineffectual things like officially banning affirmative action in an unenforceable way; or 2) do effectual things that would slaughter sacred cows in the process, like amending or repealing sacrosanct civil right legislation, in which case they would get called super-duper racist and face public backlash that option (1) doesn't elicit.
But also, Republican politicians may simply not care much about meaningful results. They can gin up support among the low-IQ base by complaining about Amazon banning Dr. Seuss or whatever; substantial reform is redundant. You interviewed Richard Lowery about the UT Austin Liberty Institute, and it seems like this happened there: conservative politicians supported it nominally to score a few 'owning the libs' points, and then immediately lost interest, allowing it to fall through, because they knew few voters would follow the issue beyond the initial press release. In general, it seems like there are just too many idiots in the conservative movement that lack the focus to demand much more than superficial action on the part of their politicians.
Stop pretending that gaming the affirmative action system doesn’t benefit middle and upper class whites. Hiring of incompetents is more than just a virtue signal, it allows for shoddy performance across the board, including well-placed whites – it makes them look better than they would be if hiring was based on REAL merit. Upper class whites loath and fear their poorer white brethren because they see them as competition. Eliminating the competition through token-hiring is a win-win for upper-class whites. Look around you – not only in regard to politics and the military, but including the arts, like music and architecture. Can you really say that you have seen a qualitative improvement since the 1964 civil rights act? Where has talent risen to the top, like it did before upper-class whites started gaming the system?
If you ban the collection of racial demographic data, colleges will just keep doing the sort of thing Harvard is doing now. They'll use the eyeball test, look at you in an interview, code you as whatever race they think you are, and rate your "personality assessment" accordingly.
The only difference will be that without the data, we will no longer be able to objectively prove they are doing this. This would be a massive victory for the left.
Great article. Will all come down to how it's sold. Need a catchphrase, like "Fundamental Fairness." Preempt the "You're a racist!" attacks by hammering home the message that "diversity" is code for "unfair hiring." It may be a challenge getting the suburban Moms on board--curious how the polling you cite breaks down by sex. But if you make it about their sons, Moms will come through: an ad showing a Mom complaining that her hard-working son with straight As was just rejected by State U. "Hard work used to mean something in this country." Etc.
"When I bring this question up to people, the standard response is that they’re afraid of being called racist. Doesn't supporting Dobbs also anger the media? How about claiming fraud in the 2020 presidential election?"
Anecdotal for sure, but I know a lot of Christians that are very afraid of being called racist. I think the accusation still stings more than being called "anti-women, anti-trans" etc.
But in the same way that evangelical support for Donald Trump was inverse to level of church attendance, I could see "evangelicals" being more opposed to affirmative action as church attendance declines.
>Another problem in interpreting these results is that, in ballot initiatives, people often don’t know what they are voting for. One study that looked at 1,211 ballot initiatives from 1997 to 2007 found that they were on average written at a grade level of 17, meaning less than a quarter of the public could even be expected to understand what they were reading.
This article is good but I think this right here shows that it's somewhat written in folly. If less than a quarter of the public has the mental capacity to understand what they are voting for, then less than a quarter of the public should vote. This whole "let's appeal to people with mental ages of 10" is exactly like begging your child to please go to bed on time. Sadly, with respect to 125+ IQ people, the average person has a mental age of 12 and should be treated as such. They shouldn't be allowed to vote or disobey any more than we were at 12. https://exousiology.org/PoliticalAgency
Worth noting that the majority of Americans in every census racial category oppose affirmative action and have for decades. This doesn’t get widely reported for some reason.
I have one issue with the characterization of all large social programs coming about before mass immigration. I think that is a bit ahistorical. The programs of the 1930s immediately followed 40 years of intense, massive immigration. In the 60s, many of those immigrants were still living and working in the US.
Only a small point. Even though the LBJ era social programs preceded the large rise in immigration, was addressing racial inequality domestically not a big impetus for these reforms?
The polls do not tell you the intensity of feeling. A minority of voters who really care about an issue can overwhelm a majority who are mildly on the other side.
If everyone who opposed affirmative action felt as strongly about it as Richard Hanania, it would be a magic bullet. But instead it's probably a dud.
The data policy would work, as would the electoral strategy. That it hasn't been pursued despite overwhelming popularity suggests that diversity is a ruling class priority. The strong corporate and institutional support pro-affirmative action campaigns have gathered supports that hypothesis. That raises the question, why is diversity so important to the ruling class? At first it seems weird - why saddle your institutions with the considerable cost of systematic incompetence? Answer: bioleninism. Minions who know for a fact that the only reason they are where they are is because of their loyalty to the regime, because they have zero ability or merit, will be very loyal indeed.
"In the 2020 vote in California, supporters of affirmative action raised $31 million, compared to $1.6 million for opponents. Ballotpedia provides a list of individuals and institutions on each side of the question. In support of affirmative action, we see 4 government entities, 8 major corporations, 7 labor unions, and 13 activist organizations."
Oh the Irony of the Golden State Warriors and Oakland Athletics supporting AA, but shielded from it.
I have no doubt such a policy would be a success, but most Republicans have shown themselves to be utter cowards over the last several decades; Washington DC politicians simply don’t want awkward dinner party conversations with pretty young things who work in the media. Easier to just float along as a liberal with their ideological speed dial set to 50%.
Trump got elected because he was the only politician to take mass immigration seriously, and even he did nothing about it when he got to the Swamp.
At this point it’s pretty clear that even if a guy like Masters got elected the real control is in the bureaucracy--the “Cathedral” as Moldbug called it. We’ve gone way beyond the point where even a well-meaning President could change anything.
I think it's important to take into account what being labeled as anywhere near Bigot-adjacent has meant in our society for the past 50 yrs.
Post Civil Rights, anything that comes coded as Racist or Segregationist is the great stigma of our time, essentially picking up the baton from Traitor to Heretic to Witch to Commie/Fascist etc, to where it is now the all-purpose slur to smear someone w guilt and shame and put them outside the boundaries of the Good.
So you may have a conservative rep or businessman in say the Midwest or Northeast who would agree with abolishing AA personally, but that man has a wife, daughters, neighbors, etc, and they all will let him know that him being publicly branded as "Racist" could negatively affect all their lives and future prospects.
The Civil Rights movement is still the great moral issue of our time, the foundation of so much modern morality, for many people on the Left it has replaced traditional religion, and for better or worse there are so many trip wires of Guilt wrapped around the narrative that it's usually only the brave or the foolish or reckless who oppose it.
Maybe the reasons progressives don't seem too concerned is that they believe institutions can continue to engage in discrimination in practice even without the cover of law (not sure how true this is or not). It may be that conservatives genuinely face a dilemma: 1) do ineffectual things like officially banning affirmative action in an unenforceable way; or 2) do effectual things that would slaughter sacred cows in the process, like amending or repealing sacrosanct civil right legislation, in which case they would get called super-duper racist and face public backlash that option (1) doesn't elicit.
But also, Republican politicians may simply not care much about meaningful results. They can gin up support among the low-IQ base by complaining about Amazon banning Dr. Seuss or whatever; substantial reform is redundant. You interviewed Richard Lowery about the UT Austin Liberty Institute, and it seems like this happened there: conservative politicians supported it nominally to score a few 'owning the libs' points, and then immediately lost interest, allowing it to fall through, because they knew few voters would follow the issue beyond the initial press release. In general, it seems like there are just too many idiots in the conservative movement that lack the focus to demand much more than superficial action on the part of their politicians.
Stop pretending that gaming the affirmative action system doesn’t benefit middle and upper class whites. Hiring of incompetents is more than just a virtue signal, it allows for shoddy performance across the board, including well-placed whites – it makes them look better than they would be if hiring was based on REAL merit. Upper class whites loath and fear their poorer white brethren because they see them as competition. Eliminating the competition through token-hiring is a win-win for upper-class whites. Look around you – not only in regard to politics and the military, but including the arts, like music and architecture. Can you really say that you have seen a qualitative improvement since the 1964 civil rights act? Where has talent risen to the top, like it did before upper-class whites started gaming the system?
If you ban the collection of racial demographic data, colleges will just keep doing the sort of thing Harvard is doing now. They'll use the eyeball test, look at you in an interview, code you as whatever race they think you are, and rate your "personality assessment" accordingly.
The only difference will be that without the data, we will no longer be able to objectively prove they are doing this. This would be a massive victory for the left.
Great article. Will all come down to how it's sold. Need a catchphrase, like "Fundamental Fairness." Preempt the "You're a racist!" attacks by hammering home the message that "diversity" is code for "unfair hiring." It may be a challenge getting the suburban Moms on board--curious how the polling you cite breaks down by sex. But if you make it about their sons, Moms will come through: an ad showing a Mom complaining that her hard-working son with straight As was just rejected by State U. "Hard work used to mean something in this country." Etc.
"When I bring this question up to people, the standard response is that they’re afraid of being called racist. Doesn't supporting Dobbs also anger the media? How about claiming fraud in the 2020 presidential election?"
Anecdotal for sure, but I know a lot of Christians that are very afraid of being called racist. I think the accusation still stings more than being called "anti-women, anti-trans" etc.
But in the same way that evangelical support for Donald Trump was inverse to level of church attendance, I could see "evangelicals" being more opposed to affirmative action as church attendance declines.
>Another problem in interpreting these results is that, in ballot initiatives, people often don’t know what they are voting for. One study that looked at 1,211 ballot initiatives from 1997 to 2007 found that they were on average written at a grade level of 17, meaning less than a quarter of the public could even be expected to understand what they were reading.
This article is good but I think this right here shows that it's somewhat written in folly. If less than a quarter of the public has the mental capacity to understand what they are voting for, then less than a quarter of the public should vote. This whole "let's appeal to people with mental ages of 10" is exactly like begging your child to please go to bed on time. Sadly, with respect to 125+ IQ people, the average person has a mental age of 12 and should be treated as such. They shouldn't be allowed to vote or disobey any more than we were at 12. https://exousiology.org/PoliticalAgency
Worth noting that the majority of Americans in every census racial category oppose affirmative action and have for decades. This doesn’t get widely reported for some reason.
I have one issue with the characterization of all large social programs coming about before mass immigration. I think that is a bit ahistorical. The programs of the 1930s immediately followed 40 years of intense, massive immigration. In the 60s, many of those immigrants were still living and working in the US.
This is spot on as usual but Republicans will be terrified of losing more women voters because they are the main beneficiaries of affirmative action.
Only a small point. Even though the LBJ era social programs preceded the large rise in immigration, was addressing racial inequality domestically not a big impetus for these reforms?
The polls do not tell you the intensity of feeling. A minority of voters who really care about an issue can overwhelm a majority who are mildly on the other side.
If everyone who opposed affirmative action felt as strongly about it as Richard Hanania, it would be a magic bullet. But instead it's probably a dud.
You should send this article to the various Republican senate campaigns.
The data policy would work, as would the electoral strategy. That it hasn't been pursued despite overwhelming popularity suggests that diversity is a ruling class priority. The strong corporate and institutional support pro-affirmative action campaigns have gathered supports that hypothesis. That raises the question, why is diversity so important to the ruling class? At first it seems weird - why saddle your institutions with the considerable cost of systematic incompetence? Answer: bioleninism. Minions who know for a fact that the only reason they are where they are is because of their loyalty to the regime, because they have zero ability or merit, will be very loyal indeed.
Incidentally, the Supreme Court will be holding oral arguments on affirmative action *less than a week* before the election.
I've been wondering loudly for months why Republicans aren't setting themselves up to take specific advantage of that.
"In the 2020 vote in California, supporters of affirmative action raised $31 million, compared to $1.6 million for opponents. Ballotpedia provides a list of individuals and institutions on each side of the question. In support of affirmative action, we see 4 government entities, 8 major corporations, 7 labor unions, and 13 activist organizations."
Oh the Irony of the Golden State Warriors and Oakland Athletics supporting AA, but shielded from it.