When your chosen policies conflict with your stated objectives

From The Problem with Trying to Measure ‘Racial Resentment' by Robert Cherry. One might assume that the three or four decade-long obsession with finding structural racism as the foundation of American culture, despite a persistent lack of affirmative evidence and an increasing volume of refuting evidence, might be a singular cognitive phenomenon. How can one believe something so weakly supported for so long?

But all we need to do is recollect that some of the best minds our species has ever produced similarly held long-lasting beliefs in things which were not true. And not just individuals but whole cultures as well. Alchemy serves as an example with Isaac Newton's decades of efforts in pursuit of that magical outcome.

Resistance to evidence is one of the quirks we know characterizes us. So the critical theory postmodernist belief system, despite its manifest contradictions and absence of evidence is comprehendible from that perspective. But, given its pernicious and disastrous consequences, it cannot be tolerated.

Cherry does a decent job of scratching the surface of the issue attached to trying to measure and quantify the nebulous and constant redefined "racism". As explicit aspects of old style overt racism have declined and disappeared, adherents of the cult of belief have become ever more desperate and creative in finding ways to try and evidence an undefined racism.

When your tools of diagnosis (IAT as an example) increasingly have the appearance of casting knuckle bones to forecast the future, you should see that as a sign that something is amiss.

From Cherry:

Writing in the New York Times recently, Thomas Edsall highlighted this perspective in a discussion of a forthcoming book by Duke professor Ashley Jardina. He noted that in her book, she attempted to measure the level of racial resentment by asking survey respondents whether they agreed or disagreed with statements such as “blacks should work their way up without any special favors.” She found that the results revealed a “new type of racial prejudice — one that is a subtle combination of anti-black affect and the belief that blacks do not adhere to traditional American values associated with the Protestant work ethic.”

The article does mention a study that calls into question Jardina’s results: Harvard researchers Riley Carney and Ryan Enos posed similarly designed questions to respondents, but substituted other ethnic groups for African Americans, including white ethnic groups such as Lithuanians. The results were indistinguishable from those measured when they asked the same questions with blacks as the target group.

Carney and Enos are taking the position that a values system that is applied equally to everyone can still be considered racist. So much for Dr. King's wish for being judged by the content of one's character than the color of one's skin. Carney and Enos show that people of all colors are being judged by the content of their character and yet Carney and Enos still believe that that reflects racism.

Just as Newton kept looking for that missing piece of evidence. Though I suspect that overestimates the capacity of Carney and Enos' capabilities compared to those of Newton.

Many whites who score highly on the racial-resentment scale likely believe that a weak work ethic impedes black progress. Indeed, this viewpoint is not uncommon among black Americans. A 2015 CNN survey asked respondents to quantify the role that various factors play in the economic and social problems black Americans face. As one would expect, a majority of black respondents classified discrimination and a lack of employment opportunities as “major reasons.” Many will be surprised, however, by the other causes they found important. Among black respondents, 61 percent believed that the breakdown of the black family was a major cause, while only 11 percent believed it was no cause at all. Similarly, 42 percent of black respondents believed lack of motivation and willingness to work hard was a major cause, while only 21 percent believed it was no cause at all. In fact, blacks were more likely than whites to say these factors were important.

Same belief held across racial lines but academics consider racist when held by one group and racist when held by the other. It is as if they do not see the inherent racism of their own position.

All of this is academic if it stayed within the academy. But these pernicious ideological ideas of don't stay within the compound of leprous ideas. They spread and infect. The foster division and a culture of victimhood which in turn induces failure. Instead of wasting time chasing an ideological construct which is not true and which cannot be true based on its own contradictions, why not pursue ideas which can foster progress and improvement. Which is what Cherry calls for.

Rather than debating whether negative attitudes about the work ethics of young black men justify labeling someone a racist, we should spend more time trying to combat their joblessness. Despite a robust 28 percent increase in employment of young black men since 2010, in 2017, 19 percent of those 16 to 24 years old were neither in school nor at work, compared with 14 and 10 percent of comparably aged Latino and white men, respectively. A 2018 study found that these youths are often disconnected from close family as well. Disconnected young people are about two-and-a-half times as likely to be living with family other than their parents, about twice as likely to be living with a roommate, and eight times as likely to be living alone than their more-connected peers.

The more disconnected these youth become, the farther they distance themselves from the paid labor market and the more likely they are to engage in illegal activities. A 2016 research paper by criminologists Gary Kleck and Dylan Jackson examined whether the jobless were more likely to engage in serious property crime. They found that the unemployed who were looking for work and those who were jobless because of acceptable reasons, such as schooling or family caregiving responsibilities, were no more likely to engage in criminal behavior than the general population. By contrast, those who were jobless and had no legitimate reason for not seeking employment were four times more likely to engage in property crime.

Stop focusing on unprovable and substantively non-existent structural racism and start focusing on the policies which actually have the prospect of improving lives.

A novel concept not widely held in academic quarters.