Wesley Yang’s take

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Wesley Yang started with this.

Among Biden’s first acts in office was to issue an executive order that has been taken as a warrant by those keen to extend this mandate further—into the provision of medical services by race and other areas to equalize outcomes wherever statistical disparities in outcome persist. Those disparities were henceforth to be understood as the product of a foundational, pervasive, trans-historical, and unyielding racism that can only be dislodged through the overt distribution of opportunity and reward by race in pursuit of “equity”, which has displaced mere equality as the aim of racial activism.

the federal government and other private entities have already crossed a Rubicon and signaled a willingness to defy legal precedent and public opinion in accordance with the ruling consensus of the new regime that they have thereby inaugurated.

I call this regime the Successor Regime. 2021 is its Year Zero.

Have a nice regime.

31 thoughts on “Wesley Yang’s take”

  1. Given that Biden defended CRT and criticized Trumps executive order in the debates before the election, and his allies and especially Vice President made Equity a talking point during the campaign, I think we need to acknowledge that there is no reason to be surprised here. If you voted for Biden, you voted for this, full stop. If you vote for a Democrat in the future, you are voting for this, full stop.

    Now that is out of the way, let’s get down to brass tax.

    California voted against affirmative action nearly 60/40. Though it’s notable that the measure won support in the big cities. Nonetheless, California schools are moving forward with a plan to eliminate the SAT in order to pursue Equity goals. The SAT itself played around with a sort of racial equity based scoring system, largely because the colleges wanted it.

    Why are the people with the power to make these decisions making them, even though they lack a democratic mandate and experience some pushback?

    The most logical answer is that they have a mental model of the world that believes these initiatives are good things. Why do they have that mental model? I believe they reason they have this mental model is that lacking an explanation for stubborn black failure decade after decade, something has to be to blame. As each successive effort to improve black performance fails ever more crazy conspiracy theories must be proposed and ever more coercive means must be implemented.

    Only when we face the reality that black underperformance is stamped on them from birth by their genetics can build a mental model of the world based on reality.

    I know there are a lot of people who think we can push back against CRT without publicly acknowledging black genetics. I think that is a fools errand. People who say that are still working with a mental model that, deep down, acknowledges reality. They somehow think that other people can develop working mental models of the world without access to the same basic facts they have. They can’t. This is an empirical reality. “Hand wavy vague multi causal explanation for the gaps without much math involved” was tried and it lost the zeitgeist. You can only swing that narrative for a limited time, eventually people ask “where’s my equality, all those reforms were supposed to work, why’d didn’t they work”.

    • “If you voted for Biden, you voted for this, full stop.”

      Paging Greg G. Please pickup a white courtesy telephone.

      (Greg lectured me many times here in the comments that Biden was a traditional moderate and that the D woke primary was not indicative of the broader party. I’m still waiting for his apology. Not gonna hold my breath though.)

    • A few things: the broader point that if there is no other explanation for the gap, the equity approach is all that’s left, is right. However the explanation is unlikely wholly genetics. Even the genetics stuff can be fixed.
      Policies that might actually work.
      1. Lead abatement might close a bit of the gap. Lead is bad, and very black cities like Detroit have a bunch of it.
      2. The gap in breast feeding between whites and blacks, is huge, and there are tentative studies saying this affects IQ.
      3. Vitamin D, blacks don’t get enough D in northern climates, could have an affect on kids development.
      4. Let’s create a policy of letting lots of high IQ Africans immigrate. There are at least 20 million africans with IQs over 115. Let’s just change the population average and get rid of the gap. Average IQ of blacks would then be equal to whites, problem solved, If

      • 1. and 3. seems reasonable, though the expected gains can presumably be forecast by comparing populations in northern high lead areas vs. southern low lead areas.

        2. Seems interesting though I wonder how you ensure that it occurs.

        4. Importing Africa’s elite may solve that particular problem for the US, but what about African nations? I’d imagine that will be quite a bit harmful to those nations.

        • In terms of harming those nations, do it slowly over 20 years. It’ll look like we made changes that accrued slowly over time that fixed racism. Look the gap gets smaller every year. It also won’t hurt Africa too much, I assume there are more than 50 million people in Affrica above that level, and the population is growing, we can take 1 million a year, with out too much harm

          • I note that your estimate for the high IQ African population jumped from 20 to 50 million.

            Per the World Bank, Subsaharan Africa had 1,136 million people in 2020. If we assume an average IQ of 85 (I’ve seen lower estimates, none higher), then we’d expect 2.3% of the population to have an IQ greater of equal to 115, or 26 million. Drawing 1 million per year over 20 years, despite population growth, would bring most of Africa’s elite to the United States. That would likely be crippling for many African nations.

            Would this be a long term solution? Or would the fertility of this population be low, similar to high IQ people of other races in developed nations?

            Implementation of this program would also be difficult. Are we going to administer IQ tests to prospective black immigrants? Won’t Dems just call this discriminatory (even eugenic!) and demand that we let in more people?

            The political impact is also uncertain. Presumably, these Africans would be largely Democratic as black Americans and most minority immigrant groups tend to be. While American slavery and Jim Crow wouldn’t be issues, colonialism is another progressive bugbear, and I’d expect Dem politicians to push for reparations/favors to the now expanded black voter base.

        • Another good intervention is preventing pre-term births. Premies have lower IQs. Blacks are 50% more likely to have pre-term births. Lower that disparity you might close the gap. I would be surprised if more than 50% of the gap was genetic. I think there is low hanging fruit, but we are too afraid to confront it.

          • Hey, why not go all the way? Why not have a federal program which pays for all poor people to have complete medical coverage? Call it something like Medicaid. Yeah, that’s the ticket.

            (Perhaps what we are too afraid to confront is that, as the title of an old book had it, “your doctor can’t make you healthy.” You have to do healthy things.

            No doubt we could make a considerable dent in the prematurity rate if we forced all pregnant women with risk factors to move into a maternity clinic, where patients would be prescribed diet and exercise–and forced to go along!–and where drug and alcohol use would be strictly limited. But that’s not going to happen.)

      • I can just see selling number 4:

        (to American blacks): We want to replace you with your smarter African brothers.

        (to Africans): We want to take all your smart citizens. That will turn your continent into a sh*thole but we don’t care.

        • African elites already make up a huge % of affirmative action recipients and it hasn’t made race relations better. African Americans in particular seem to have gotten wise to the con, and the two groups don’t really get along.

      • Regarding number 4, others have already pointed out that African Americans an African migrants are separate cultures that don’t necessarily mix, but even if we assume the did mix well, that would only make the problem worse.

        Adding more to their population with African immigrants only retrenches the ethnic differences between whites and blacks and increases tensions. At that point, ameliorating the inequalities won’t stop the grievance politics, because the grievance politics will be driven more by distrust of the “other” than the original inequality.

        If genetics differences in IQ really is the root of different outcomes between whites and blacks, then the best way to both remove those differences and ease social tensions is to encourage white/black intermarrying. It’s hard to maintain grievances when everyone has ancestors on both sides of the conflict.

    • If you voted for Biden, you voted for this, full stop.

      The political left has taken over universities and corporate media and Internet platforms to brainwash much of the public into voting Democrat, even when they don’t agree with all the stuff the Democrats are doing.

      You can blame the voters if you want, but that’s not productive, it won’t change anyone’s mind or improve anything.

      My advice to you and myself: either pursue a hobby or a serious career related to politics, either in media, or in a university, or as a researcher, whatever. Or accept your fate as a bystander and just watch and try not to be miserable about things that are out of your control and enjoy your short time on Earth.

    • Weirdly if it was generally accepted that it is genetics and if black women had a very strong desire to change that, they could, especially with 70% of black birth currently to unmarried women.

      I doubt that they would because black USAers are really doing great, only 1/3 are poor by market income and after transfers it is much lower than that. Blacks dominate Basketball and football down even to the high school level, and that is important in the USA. People love to talk about even their High School basketball/football careers.

      I think blacks are really not as unhappy as woke people would lead you believe.

      And I do not think it is mostly NOT about IQ or smarts. Blacks might think white people are crazy to waste their youths just so that they can get a boring job like accountant after graduation. Also they might think white people work too much and enjoy life to little. Starting businesses is hard and risky and in many areas does not require a high IQ.

  2. “…and other areas to equalize outcomes wherever statistical disparities in outcome persist.”

    It’s been said once if it’s been said a million times. Inequality of outcomes will persist forever when the statistical disparities you’re concerned about are a product of bad culture, low IQ, poor planning for the future, and the mainstream glorification of all three.

    Bad choices are a thing. They exist. They are real. No one fears your armies of intellectuals with cattle prods. They will fail.

      • I’ll jump down this rabbithole, if only to follow the glimmering light of “mainstream glorification”
        – where did this come from? cui bono?

        • “Cui bono?”

          A lot of people assign nefarious and conspiratorial reasons behind this, which I don’t discount entirely in some unique cases, but conversely Occam’s Razor provides a simpler answer.

          Money.

          Glorifying these behaviors presents a lower-hanging monetary benefit, which vice has always presented, since history began. It is more beneficial short-term to keep inner-city populations gorged with EBT/WIC junk food with the knowledge that their early deaths simply transfer the behavioral legacy to another inner-city replacement or better yet, relative, that will do the same thing. It is easier (and much less financially threatening) to keep them chasing baubles than to invest for the future, and education, or even something as simple as a house in a better part of town…I mean come on, the profiteer making the buck DOESN’T WANT them living next door, for pete’s sake.

          These behaviors are glorified from within and outside the culture because many people are benefiting financially from the continued self-destruction, and some economists will tell you there’s no such thing as the ‘Broken Windows Theory of Economics’….psssha.

          • If the goal is to give them EBT cards in order to avoid spending on education…why do we spend like $20k/pupil/year on inner city Baltimore schools?

            It seems like we spend a ton of money trying to ennoble blacks, far more than EBT actually. It just doesn’t do anything.

            I can believe that record labels are fine glorifying drug dealers to make money, but I don’t think record labels are trying to reduce the education budget.

            On the contrary, educators can only get paid if we convince everyone that educating blacks is possible. If the Null Hypothesis is true…why are we wasting 20k?

          • To – asdf on July 23, 2021 at 4:11 pm said:

            “If the Null Hypothesis is true…why are we wasting 20k?”

            Because it is not actually being wasted. The tons of money spent ‘not doing anything’ does do something…it goes inside the pockets of huge special interests that also aren’t ‘doing anything’.

            There is an ocean of federal and state and municipal money being funneled into a giant 3-card monty shell-game intended and designed to do entirely the exact opposite of its intended purpose.

          • intended … to do .. the … opposite of its intended purpose.

            Tom Lehrer’s Old Dope Peddler has the wonderful line, “doing well by doing good”. People in politics and the education business sincerely believe they are “doing well by doing good”–though many K-12 teachers will also tell you, “I could be making more money doing something else” (having as an article of faith that the more schooling a person has, the more money they can make).

            Almost everyone in the education biz believes what they are doing is a great social good.

  3. From the medical services link:

    “In a follow-up study we found that patient self-advocacy may play a role in these disparities: white patients were perceived to advocate for cardiology admission more often and more intensely, and providers acknowledged such behavior impacted their decision making. Alarmed by these findings, we sought an immediate solution. As we began to advocate for change within our institution, however, we encountered significant resistance to calling this discrepancy an instance of institutional racism and to making race-explicit interventions—even at a time when the documentation of racial health inequities is accelerating.”

    White people got better care because they insisted on it (I’d suspect this is at least somewhat IQ related), but this is somehow being squeezed into the institutional racism narrative. I find it hilarious that they were shocked by the resistance to the institutional racist explanation, when it seems clear that the root cause of the problem is that black people didn’t advocate for their own healthcare as well as white people did. What is the institution supposed to do, ignore white people’s self-advocacy, or admit black patients when the doctors don’t think they need additional care? Neither one seems to be a great option. They even tell us that even pairing black patients with black doctors doesn’t seem to be sufficient.

    • If that’s an instance of institutional racism, then institutional misandry in this country is out of control.

      • Heh, the feminists, unsurprisingly, claim just the opposite. They say women get fewer strong paid meds because, on average, doctors don’t take their claims of pain and the severity thereof as seriously as they do claims from men, partly because they ‘advocate for themselves’ too much, and the doctors think they are exaggerating. Not that getting lots of easy opioids is necessarily good thing, but any statistical disparity in the wrong direction drives them up the wall.

  4. “Year Zero” seems awfully melodramatic, not to mention ahistorical. This regime – in terms of the fundamental logic of its functioning – goes back nearly 60 years, to the Civil Rights Act and the judicial holdings and administrative regulations that have extended its logic over three generations. Christopher Caldwell’s “Age of Entitlement” is excellent on this point.

    Nothing that Biden is doing marks any kind of obvious break with the trend of the Obama administration and other Democrats before, and in retrosepct Trump’s election was just a mild speedbump pushing the pause button on some of these matters. Pushing play again does not make it “year zero”.

    • Yang gets that:

      https://twitter.com/wesyang/status/1417406032570114086

      Kendi purifies the argument for affirmative action and removes all the complications and ambivalence written into court doctrine around it. He says that the way to know if there is racism present is if disparities are present. If disparities are present, then racism is present.

      “It’s very hard for liberals that have accepted the case for affirmative action to reject Kendi-ism, though many, like Ezra Klein, are discomfitted by the purified version of the fuzzier, hazier practice they’ve embraced”

      His retweet:

      https://twitter.com/aaronsibarium/status/1417524904505774081

      “But because the whole point of critical race theory was to be, well, /critical/ of those disparities, this limiting principle wasn’t terribly limiting. Instead, it served to justify more and more microinterventions into behavior, speech, and thought.”

      —

      Anyway, it’s certainly the case that civil rights logic with unprincipled exceptions is qualitatively different from civil rights logic without them, for reasons we have all become well aware of in the last decade.

      The issue is simply that 1964 MLK leads inevitably to 1967 MLK (pick up MLKs 1967 “where do we go from here” and its straight up Kendi-ism).

      There was a backlash in the 1970s against this stuff that resulted in a kind of muddle detente, but the progressive left has spent several decades breaking down the moral majority that made up that backlash so it doesn’t happen again.

  5. +1 on Wesley Yang! I never heard of this guy until a week ago and he is fantastic!

  6. Two parent families would do a lot to solve the problem. Alternatively Joe Biden could issue an executive order requiring high performance Asian American families to adopt a Black Child.

  8. The state of Vermont allowed BIPOC residents early access to the vaccine.

    This one might be OK. If there was a vaccination that prevented skin cancer wouldn’t make sense to prioritize white people or for sickle cell anemia black people? Are dark skinned people dying more from Covid, perhaps due to lower vitamin D levels?

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