It’s that time again. If you’re a full subscriber, comment below with any questions, queries, or quandaries, and John and I will pick a few to respond to in our next recording session. And if you’re not yet a full subscriber, consider becoming one. You’ll have the opportunity to ask a question yourself, and you’ll get access to the Q&A episodes, early access to weekly TGS episodes, weekly post-show episodes, and a host of other goodies.
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For as long as I can remember I have considered the generational poverty found in the inner city to be the single biggest moral challenge we face as a society. I used to wonder: How can we Americans tolerate this segment of our population living in conditions of low income, crime, unemployment, ineffective education and the accompanying despair? I am in my 70’s and sufficiently cynical about us as a country that I no longer wonder how we can tolerate this situation, but it still seems to me that we shouldn’t. Glenn and John, I’d like to know what you think of the following assertions in the context of generational, inner-city poverty:
• While there are many individuals and groups that support people in need, those supports are not adequate to address the inner city problem; something bigger is needed.
• The Great Society legislation of the 60’s was a “big” effort but not ultimately successful. This effort can be thought of as a liberal attempt to address the problem.
• There has yet to be a similarly “big” conservative effort.
• The fate of people in the inner city is a function of BOTH individual effort (agency) AND the nature of their environment (supports—or the lack thereof—in many forms: better schools, more and better jobs, etc.). Any solution must involve both ingredients.
• Any large effort to tackle this problem will be expensive, and goals will likely need to be prioritized. While generational poverty can be found in Appalachia and elsewhere and is worthy of amelioration, slavery and later forms of subjugation/discrimination reflect the government’s historical role in creating what is now the inner city problem and, therefore, brings with it a higher moral debt to be paid.
• Reparations would not solve the problem and ignores the role of individual agency.
OK, Glenn (if I may). I got a paid subscription to your newsletter so that I could ask a question, and I think an answer would be of general interest to readers.
I am an affirmative action hire. There were 17 tenured/tenure track members of my department all male when I was hired when women were 20% of PhDs in my profession. I was the first woman ever tenured in my department and since being hired I’ve done better than most of my colleagues on the research side and very well also on teaching and service.
I regularly team-teach an econ/phil ‘women and work’ course with an economist and in the course of that I’ve learnt about empirical data indicating that discrimination against women and minorities, mostly unintentional, is alive and well. I endorse Barbara Bergmann’s consequentialist argument for affirmative action in her old book In Defense of Affirmative Action which is by no means out of date. The aim of affirmative isn’t compensation for past injustices or the promotion of ‘diversity’ (which I hold is of no value) but to ameliorate ongoing discrimination which for practical purposes can’t be done through passive non-discrimination regulations, even if rigorously enforced. Blind review would be great—it’s worked wonders in hiring for symphony orchestras and should be done for admission to colleges and professional programs. But it isn’t feasible in hiring for most jobs, including academic positions.
So, what do you propose? Without affirmative action, my prospects would have been at best secretarial. Is there something wrong with the extensive data, including correspondence studies with matched fake resumes and the like, that strongly suggest discrimination in employment is ongoing? And if the data is legit, do you have an alternative?
Let me add that I don’t think hiring for academic positions is a problem any longer. I’ve participated in many searches over the years, including recent ones where candidates were required to submit ‘diversity statements’. This is BS—and ChatGPT does a great job composing these statements. But occupational sex segregation hasn’t significantly abated since turn of the millenium and in jobs that don’t require a college degree it remains the norm. And the natural experiment of WWII suggests that the dearth of women in many traditional blue-collar jobs doesn’t reflect either women’s preferences or competence.
So, I agree that affirmative action is being employed in areas where it isn’t needed, or legitimate—in hiring for faculty positions and admission to colleges and graduate programs. But it hasn’t been employed in hiring in the non-college grad job market where the majority of men and women compete, including hiring for staff positions at my university. I put this to a lawyer from our DEI department who had earlier visited my office in response to a student complaint that I had used ‘All mothers are women’ as an example of a categorical proposition in my logic class but he dismissed me as a crank.
OK, Glenn—enough rambling. Discrimination in employment for a range of occupations is documented. Blind review isn’t feasible for most jobs and passive non-discrimination regulations aren’t enforceable: how do you prove that you weren’t hired because you were a woman or minority. What do you propose?
I like your stuff. I’ve even read one of your actual professional articles. So eagerly awaiting a response.