I've been thinking about how we address racism, and I often feel like people talk past each other on this topic. I'm curious to hear your thoughts on what might be more effective: universalist policies or race-conscious policies?
Universalist Policies: These are policies designed to benefit everyone, regardless of race. Proponents argue that by lifting everyone, we can indirectly help marginalized communities. Examples include universal healthcare, free public education, and basic income programs. The idea is that these policies create a more equitable society overall, and everyone benefits from the same resources and opportunities.
Race-Conscious Policies: These policies are specifically designed to address racial inequalities directly. Affirmative action, targeted scholarships, and reparations are some examples. Supporters believe that universal policies alone aren't enough to tackle the deep-rooted systemic issues that disproportionately affect certain racial groups. They argue that without targeted efforts, racial disparities will persist, even though these policies tend to be more unpopular.
My thoughts are that the effectiveness of a policy is what ultimately matters. If one works better, I'll pick that one. If they both work the same, I'll pick either one of them.
Proponents of race-conscious policies argue that universal policies maintain inequality, while supporters of universal policies believe they could disproportionately benefit Black Americans. I think this debate lies more in mathematical disagreement.
Aside: To be more specific about affirmative action, it didn't seem to impact the overall college enrollment of Black Americans significantly. Instead, it appeared to disproportionately benefit children of highly educated African immigrants, who weren't the intended target. I think a better policy would be to equalize skill-building opportunities for everyone in early childhood, where test score gaps begin to manifest. I borrowed this idea from the book The Parent Trap by researcher Nate Hilger.
Posted by SoWhatKnowGenius
5 Comments
I am generally against race-conscious policies because they are much harder to actually materialize and likely to face even fiercer opposition. Reparations are just being used as a distraction at this point.
I’d like to see an example of quota/affirmative action/positive discrimination systems anywhere that actually reduced group disparities to the extent that they were no longer needed. Is there any evidence to suggest that they’re not just permanent installations for rent-seeking privilege?
You make a policy Race Conscious if you don’t want to spend the money and try to kill the program by using your political opponents
If you think a policy is worthwhile, you would be a universalist
Univeersalists policies. The other oens are hard to justefy with with a liberal philosophy.
I support crafting universalist policies in a manner that is race conscious. You identify problems that everyone faces to some degree but that racial minorities and/or other historically disadvantaged groups are more likely to face, you craft policy that fights those issues in a technically de jure colorblind manner, and you don’t go around messaging the policy as some sort of stealth affirmative action even though one of the policy goals in the minds of the folks creating it in the think tanks and such is to reduce racial disparities
This way you can actually get the policy to be passed and not quickly struck down by the courts. Some progs will cope and seethe about how doing such policy rather than the explicitly race conscious policies makes you a big bad white moderate that MLK Jr warned us about, but I kinda don’t give a shit about them, I’d rather get the actual progress rather than the raging against political realities that aren’t going to be changed