Trump Contra Griggs: Will Trump End Disparate Impact Madness?
[sry no sleep last night. Can't bring myself to edit this properly]
This is a good, clear, short account of this (in my opinion and that of many on the non-left) absolutely crucial subject--Griggs v. Duke Power and the disparate impact doctrine.
Richard Hanania makes some similar points about disparate impact law, part of what he (and Caldwell) refer to as a second civil rights...something. Movement? Revolution? Both Caldwell and Hanania say it's the origin of Woketarianism.
I've tended to disagree, thinking that the ground of all this stuff was, at least largely, two progressive-left theses:
[1] Social constructionism about race--or, more specifically, the view that there are no natural differences in abilities or tendencies between racesand[2] What we might call the thesis of pervasive racism (which is one axiom of CRT).
(Both of these have analogs about sex, too. The first thesis, applied to sex, struck the vast majority of reasonable people as ridiculous...until recently...)
If you (foolishly) accept both these theses, then you are likely to think that any disparity you find between races (sexes) is due to racism (sexism).
The best philosopher I ever knew, and the best historian of ideas, once said to me that Hegel was right when he wrote that the owl of Minerva takes flight only at dusk--that is: ideas show up in philosophy only after they've shown up elsewhere. We never actually come up with the important ideas that define eras. (Thou...how about Marx? I don't know enough to know. Sounds like the kind of stupid shit philosophers might actually have thought up on their own...)
Anyway, I don't know, and there may be no clear, identifiable cause and effect here. Disparate impact theory in the law may exist in some kind of feedback loop with leftist race madness in philosophy. I'm simply not qualified to say anything about the history here.
But, anyway: this is all extremely important.
Imagine that you were trying to destroy country C. Well, it'd be best to just blow it all up...but that's generally not realistic. Suppose you could make the people of C systematically less talented. What a coup! You could hardly do better--if you want to destroy C. Well, that's basically what Griggs has done to the U.S. It's made companies and other organizations afraid to be meritocratic...among other things.
Anyway.
No sleep.
But this is important. If Trump could nuke disparate impact doctrine--to get SCOTUS to strike down Griggs--he might just end up being the most consequential President of my life. That is, basically: the best.
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