Equity and Excellence are antithetical. Our VP was selected solely for her race and gender despite winning only 1% of her own party's primary votes, now she embarrasses us every time she opens her mouth.
Leaving race out if it, the generalized problem with “equity” (aka “equality of outcome”) is that it can only result in the more talented being artificially chopped down to the level of the less talented, since it is of course unlikely that the less talented will prevail over the more talented assuming both are provided with the training and skills to maximize their talents. For example, if we had “equity” in professional basketball or beach volleyball where every height quintile were proportionally represented, the overall quality of basketball and volleyball would drop, as height is a huge factor in success in those sports and the best players are almost universally taller than average.
The push for “equity” must inevitably result in mediocrity. This is essentially the plot of Vonnegut’s “Harrison Bergeron”, so these are not new discussions, just old wine in new bottles.
Her performance in Munich - so vacuous and out of her depth she tried on her “total phony tries to condescend to a room full of 4th graders” voice - was a new sort of low even for her. I’m sure Biden’s SC pick will possess some intellectual ability, even if she is as much an activist as she is a jurist or scholar. But Sonia Sotomayor will be forever tainted by her intense identitarianism. I was actually a pretty strong Obama supporter at the time and her “wise Latina” comments, in particular, well before most of us were hearing about standpoint epistemology and enhanced, sometimes exclusive “knowledges” based on one’s identity alone, made a bad impression that’s never left. I don’t know if it’s true as reported that Scalia remarked to someone, re: the second vacancy during the Obama Administration, “I know you’re going to send us a liberal, but at least send us a smart one”. But whatever Sotomayor’s intellectual merits relative to those her peers or others recently shortlisted, her own obsession with her own identity and her supporters’ emphasis on it during her nomination is unfortunately a significant part of how she’s perceived, in a way Elena Kagan is not.
Equity and Excellence are antithetical. Our VP was selected solely for her race and gender despite winning only 1% of her own party's primary votes, now she embarrasses us every time she opens her mouth.
Leaving race out if it, the generalized problem with “equity” (aka “equality of outcome”) is that it can only result in the more talented being artificially chopped down to the level of the less talented, since it is of course unlikely that the less talented will prevail over the more talented assuming both are provided with the training and skills to maximize their talents. For example, if we had “equity” in professional basketball or beach volleyball where every height quintile were proportionally represented, the overall quality of basketball and volleyball would drop, as height is a huge factor in success in those sports and the best players are almost universally taller than average.
The push for “equity” must inevitably result in mediocrity. This is essentially the plot of Vonnegut’s “Harrison Bergeron”, so these are not new discussions, just old wine in new bottles.
Her performance in Munich - so vacuous and out of her depth she tried on her “total phony tries to condescend to a room full of 4th graders” voice - was a new sort of low even for her. I’m sure Biden’s SC pick will possess some intellectual ability, even if she is as much an activist as she is a jurist or scholar. But Sonia Sotomayor will be forever tainted by her intense identitarianism. I was actually a pretty strong Obama supporter at the time and her “wise Latina” comments, in particular, well before most of us were hearing about standpoint epistemology and enhanced, sometimes exclusive “knowledges” based on one’s identity alone, made a bad impression that’s never left. I don’t know if it’s true as reported that Scalia remarked to someone, re: the second vacancy during the Obama Administration, “I know you’re going to send us a liberal, but at least send us a smart one”. But whatever Sotomayor’s intellectual merits relative to those her peers or others recently shortlisted, her own obsession with her own identity and her supporters’ emphasis on it during her nomination is unfortunately a significant part of how she’s perceived, in a way Elena Kagan is not.