WHAT CONSTITUTES EVIDENCE OF RACIAL DISCRIMINATION?
by John Spritzler
June 11, 2021
The URL of this article for sharing it is https://www.pdrboston.org/evidence-of-racial-discrimination
In my article, "Racial Discrimination Against Non-Whites is Rampant and Harms Working Class People of ALL Races," I show that in the United States there is a substantial race gap between whites versus non-whites (in which non-whites are the worse off group) in regards to family wealth, income, unemployment, and incarceration; I wrote "The only way to deny that these facts prove there is unjust racial discrimination would be to argue that there is something about blacks and Hispanics that makes it proper and just that they should be worse off than whites this way--that they are inferior races of people. Since this racist argument is false, the above cited facts have no explanation other than unjust systemic racial discrimination."
I stand by these words.
I just want to point out here that I did not make the "straw man" argument (for the existence of racial discrimination) that some people--who want to deny, or dismiss the seriousness of, racial discrimination--enjoy refuting. The straw man argument that these people enjoy refuting is this one:
"If there is a difference between two groups of people then it must follow that it is caused by systemic discrimination against the worse-off group."
Yes, this is an absurd argument. Its absurdity can be seen by considering the difference between men and women: men are on average taller than women and get breast cancer far less often than women. But obviously these differences are not the result of any systemic discrimination against women.
But note that what I wrote is a very different argument. My argument was that unless (note this word!) "there is something about blacks and Hispanics that makes it proper and just that they should be worse off than whites this way--that they are inferior races of people"--i.e., unless there is something about the difference between blacks and Hispanics compared to whites that is analogous to the innate biological differences between men and women, such as an innate difference in intelligence or "criminality," etc.--then the only remaining explanation for the differences I cited is unjust racial discrimination. And in my article I refute some of the main assertions that have been made about non-whites to supposedly explain their worse-off-than-whites status without admitting the possibility of racial discrimination as an explanation. I also flatly denied that there are any relevant innate differences between non-whites and whites (analogous to the truly existing and relevant biological differences between women and men) that can explain the gaps I cite between the races.
For anybody to refute the argument that I actually made, they would have to show that there are indeed relevant innate differences between the races (like the biological differences between men and women) that would explain the gaps I cite. The burden of proof is on the person who claims that there are such relevant racial differences.
Note the word "relevant." Given any criterion for assigning human beings to two distinct groups (hair color, spoken language, skin color, eye color, waist size, etc., etc.) there will almost certainly be some factors (besides the criterion that distinguished the two groups) that will turn out to be statistically significantly different between the two groups. But the crucial question remains, are any of these differences relevant--for a reason having nothing to do with any discrimination against the worse-off group--to outcome gaps between the groups with respect to wealth, income, unemployment or incarceration? If there are such relevant differences, then of course it would not be logical to infer that racial discrimination was the cause of any such gap. But when it comes to these gaps between races in the United States, there are no such relevant differences; at least the burden of proof lies with the person who claims that there are.