Arguing for Inequality

Last time, I introduced John Baker's Arguing for Equality and summarized the kinds of inequalities he's concerned with. (I should note that he is concerned with inequality among nations as well as within them but spends much less time on that subject.) The structure of the book is largely presentation of arguments against equality, followed by his responses.

So the first clear takeaway is implied by the structure. There are a lot of people who do not believe the kinds of equality Baker wants to achieve are desirable; or if they might be desirable in the abstract, do not believe they are achievable. The arguments justifying economic inequality, and their counterarguments, are rather complicated. Or at least they seem to be complicated because they require revealing and discrediting some deeply embedded assumptions in our culture, mostly associated with the pseudoscience of economics, which I have recently mentioned. I'll get to that. 

But I want to start with what ought to be  simpler case, inequality based on race and gender. Any rational arguments for these forms of inequality, that is arguments that can be rebutted by use of reason, have to depend on factual claims. These take the form that people of African descent (or other non-European heritage), and women, have characteristics that make them unsuited for leadership or high status positions in society. For example, classical tumpeter Rolf Smedvig claimed that women don't have the temperament to play brass instruments virtuosically. Harvard economist and holder of various high level government jobs and the presidency of Harvard Lawrence Summers claimed that women don't have the intrinsic aptitude for high level work in math and science. A more widely held view is that women are temperamentally suited to child rearing and less competitive pursuits than those suitable to men. And of course there is the widely bruited assertion that Black people have lower average IQs than white people and therefore are appropriately of lower social status.

 

Before even getting to the factual validity of these claims, there is an obvious logical flaw. Even if these claims were true, there are some women who have more aptitude for math and science than some tenured male professors, including Lawrence Summers, and some women who succeed very well in competitive environments, and some Black people who have higher IQs than Charles Murray and Andrew Sullivan. (Combined, I would say.) Therefore this logic cannot justify a general inequality of status.

But of course these claims are factually invalid. Aptitudes, character, and proclivities are a function of people's environment as much as, or more than, their genes and gonads. When people are given similar advantages and opportunities, we see these inequalities melt away, sometimes astonishingly fast. For most of the 20th Century there were few female physicians. When medical schools stopped discriminating, women who would formerly have gone into nursing went to medical school instead, and within just a few years the number of men and women graduating with M.D.s became approximately equal. When Black people move to higher income neighborhoods and attend better schools, their academic and ultimately economic achievement increases markedly. As a matter of fact, just high quality pre-school alone has a substantial effect on ultimate academic achievement. So these sorts of inequalities are just a self-fulfilling prophecy.

However, there are even more pervasive irrational arguments for these inequalities. These include the outright assertion that God decreed differences in status between sexes and among races; and an unexamined loyalty to tribe. Men and white people defend their privilege because they like having it.

I outsource now to Daniel Schultz at Alternet, who rather successfully explains all sorts of wingnuttery as ultimately tracing back to white supremacy. 

It's funny what passes for normal these days. Nearly 100 employees at our local health care system are bucking the company's covid vaccination mandate, complaining that they might get fired for refusing to take a shot. Supporters turned up last week to support the employees, waving Gadsden flags and waving signs reading "Vaccine Mandates = Communism" or "Vaccine Coercion Is Tyranny."

 

Communism? Really? But then:

Wisconsin Senate President Chris Kapenga aid Friday that health care executives requiring employees be vaccinated against COVID-19 are "bowing to the woke culture being pushed by the left."

"Woke," roughly, means aware of racial and gender based injustice. So what the heck does it have to do with vaccine mandates? Well:

 

The political and legal commentator Teri Kanefield put out a fascinating idea in a video blog the other day arguing that since the mid-1950's, the US has been struggling toward becoming a true multi-cultural, multi-racial democracy. It's a tough fight, and one in which Kanefield sees progress, however slow in coming. She urges her listeners not to give into easy cynicism on the subject.

But if Kanefield's right about the direction of American history, there's a dark flip side to it: everything in politics has come to revolve around the question of whether the society should be governed for a white Christian minority or for the benefit of all. Government spending, military policy, education, global warming and now public health all come down to that underlying issue, some for obvious reasons, others simply because one side is for it so the other has to be against it.