Hidden Forms of Discrimination?

Both the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s and the feminist movement of the 1970s were enormous successes. Let's face it, these movements were necessary because if they hadn't occurred then nothing would have changed.

But what both movements discovered was that equal opportunity does not necessarily translate into equal success. This realization led to the development of Critical Race Theory and a lot of feminist whining about "the patriarchy."

Once each movement had addressed the visible forms of discrimination, yet still didn't achieve what they consider parity, they concluded that there must be subtle, invisible forms of discrimination at work. Blacks developed the concept of "Systemic Racism" and feminists came up with "the patriarchy." Republicans, not to be undone, come up with the "deep state." 

Notice that no one thought to look for natural differences to explain the discrepancies. Everyone immediately assumed it was some outside force working against them.

Blacks score about 10-15 points lower on IQ tests than whites. Hispanics are somewhere in between and East Asians and Ashkenazi score about five points higher than whites. No one knows why this is the case and I'm not sure that anyone really understands what IQ measures but we do know that it is a good predictor of life and academic success.

This discrepancy has persisted for decades and probably isn't going away anytime soon. Even if this discrepancy didn't exists, whites have such a huge historical advantage that it's not surprising that blacks aren't achieving parity. There is no need for any hidden discrimination in the form of "Systemic Racism."

So what about women? Women have two problems when competing with men. One is fairly well accepted and the other more controversial. The first is that men are more aggressive. If one chooses a male and a female at random there is about a 60% chance that the male is more aggressive. But at the extremes, the overwhelming majority of the most aggressive individuals are male.

Trust me, no one becomes CEO of a Fortune 500 Company without being very, very aggressive. This also accounts for the so-called "gender pay gap." Men work longer hours and take on more dangerous and higher paying jobs and that's why there's a pay difference.

The second and far more controversial problem is the claim that men and women have slightly differently shaped IQ curves. The curve for women is slightly taller and narrower while the curve for men is slightly wider and flatter. 

In the average the differences are meaningless but at the extremes they become significant. As one psychologist described it the shape of the men's curve, assuming it really is that way, would mean more dumbbells but also more Nobels.

I don't hear feminists whining about men winning most of the Darwin Awards but they do complain about men dominating the CEO positions and Nobel prizes.

So, I lean toward rejecting the existence of hidden forces and suspect it's just the ways things are. This is why I reject the whole concept of DEI. Equity is not a reasonable objective if there are natural differences and variations.