[Tau]

Besides, the fake white people in the study had names like Caleb and Lesly. I don't think name quality had much to do with it.

[xasop]

People should not be judged on their name. Certainly some people do decide to alter their names; and that's their choice. However, the fact that certain names are, due to racial origin, perceived negatively, should be all it takes for it to be admitted something needs to be done.

I hadn't seen that study before. The reason I haven't responded until now is that I wanted time to think it over.

I stand by what I said previously, that a free market is the best way to resolve these issues. Artificially increasing employment opportunities for a specific group of people is likely to have two immediate consequences: one, it increases resentment towards that group of people from those without that special privilege; and two, it encourages laziness if workers know they are employed for reasons other than their productivity. The latter both enhances the former and reduces overall productivity, which creates negative consequences both social and economic.

I'm aware that I've just asked you for a source for your claim, so I can't very well state my own as fact without one. I'll do some more research on this when I have time and see if I can find something to substantiate or refute it. But based on my intuition and experience, I believe that such a solution cannot be temporary because it enhances the problems it aims to solve; the only way to make such a solution sustainable is to provide ever-increasing benefits to that group of people, eventually making them nothing but a liability to society.

My preferred solution, as I said in my last post, would be to give the underprivileged financial benefits to enable better access to education and allow the free market to take care of the rest. Only by demonstrating that they are equally capable through skilled labour will they truly address the issue of social equality. Yes, it will take a long time, but that's not justification for a solution that gives some temporary relief without addressing the underlying problem. Shifting our problems onto our children is not an answer.

In any case, we're discussing a study involving racial discrimination in America, which may or may not be similar to the case in Australia. Regardless, the approach I would take is the same.

[Tau]

I guess what I don't understand, Parsifal, is how your argument is valid in a situation where the positive discrimination only serves to counteract negative discrimination? I agree that randomly giving one group an edge over the other is terrible from a free market economy, but we're starting at a place where one group already has an edge over the other. How can we get anywhere if we aren't willing to address that fundamental problem?

So just to be clear, what I'm about to say has no source. It's just me applying the way I think in chem and eco to this situation, and thinking out loud about my conclusions. I rather suspect that there are social equilibriums that society can fall into. That is, there are comfortable positions where change is much more difficult than the status quo, and so no change occurs. During periods of upheaval, such as the Civil Rights Movement or Reconstruction for race relations in the US, we can move to a new and better equilibrium, but then little change will occur until the next period of upheaval. The only evidence I can think of for this theory is the observation that the wage gap between races hasn't done much in the last few decades.
 


If, as Parsifal says, all it took was waiting for the free market to do its job, we'd expect to see the wage gap decreasing on the scale of decades. We don't.

If this baseless speculation is true, and I think it probably is, then radical action is needed to change the current equilibrium. To apply this to Australia, this means that this referendum is, if not pleasant, then at least necessary.

[xasop]

I guess what I don't understand, Parsifal, is how your argument is valid in a situation where the positive discrimination only serves to counteract negative discrimination? I agree that randomly giving one group an edge over the other is terrible from a free market economy, but we're starting at a place where one group already has an edge over the other. How can we get anywhere if we aren't willing to address that fundamental problem?

We can't. That's exactly my point:

Yes, it will take a long time, but that's not justification for a solution that gives some temporary relief without addressing the underlying problem.

I don't believe that providing incentives or requirements to improve employment opportunities for specific races will even begin to address the problem. I would expect it to make it worse, based on the fact that we already have some such programmes here, and they do exactly that.

If, as Parsifal says, all it took was waiting for the free market to do its job, we'd expect to see the wage gap decreasing on the scale of decades. We don't.

That's not what I said. I said we should provide them with financial support to improve their quality of life (and thus health, education and employability) as a temporary measure, and then let the free market take care of the rest. If that is true, then we would only expect to see that result if both of those things are currently the case wherever these data were recorded.

Does America currently provide financial support? Based on what I know of American society, you essentially treat your black population as "out of sight, out of mind", which is almost certainly not going to work wonders for fixing the problem. You can't expect a free market to do anything to fix a problem which is fundamentally rooted in a difference in quality of life.

Is the market in America currently free? It certainly isn't here; we already have programmes in place to give Aborigines preferential treatment in certain situations, and they have the effects I described previously of instilling laziness in Aboriginal workers and resentment in everyone else. I don't know enough about America's economy to say how true that is over there.

If this baseless speculation is true, and I think it probably is, then radical action is needed to change the current equilibrium. To apply this to Australia, this means that this referendum is, if not pleasant, then at least necessary.

I strongly disagree, even if your speculation is true. The Constitution, the highest law of all, is not the appropriate place to introduce discriminatory legislation, even if one's intent is pure. Social problems come and go, but the Constitution is something that defines our nation.

If any special treatment beyond financial support is necessary, and I strongly doubt it is, we should just pass an ordinary law to take care of it. Don't amend the Constitution for tomorrow based on today's problems.

[EnigmaZV]

I wonder what this graph would look like if it adjusted for education and experience. My guess would be that the discrepancy would be much smaller.