E-Pluribus | May 6, 2021
Here is a round up of the latest and best writing and musings on the rise of illiberalism in the public discourse:
Matt Welch: The Equity Mess
America has long been billed as “the land of opportunity,” but in a culture increasingly focused on equal outcomes, opportunity alone no longer cuts it. Proponents of equity as the new paradigm focus on systemic issues that they say makes “opportunity” an empty promise for many, but Matt Welch writes that policies backed by the current administration may actually be making the problems worse.
For decades, these two divergent philosophical and public policy concepts were represented by a battle over adjectival phrases. Should we strive for equality of opportunity, or equality of outcome? Though intellectual and political enthusiasm for the outcomes-based approach did have some high-water moments in the 1970s, the long twilight struggle against 20th century totalitarianism produced a rough if sometimes reluctant governing consensus that states powerful enough to promise economic and racial parity were far more likely to produce mass immiseration. Striving for equality under the law — removing legal discrimination by government — was less ambitious, but more doable.
That laudable goal, particularly in the United States, is being elbowed aside. The 21st century rebranding of equality of outcome into the shinier and more malleable term equity, with its redolence of ownership and fairness, gave activists a linguistic workaround to what had previously been a public relations obstacle of utopian unattainability. You can’t and probably shouldn’t just wave a magic wand to erase observed inequality. But inequity? That sounds to the ear more like an immediate and surmountable wrong, deserving of intervention.
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In its best application, the modern political notion of equity can be an invitation to assess how policies impact historically disfavored populations, perhaps leading to discoveries that the more appropriate goal of equality under the law is being thwarted either by bad actors or bad design. So if the 46th president wants to subject his own actions, particularly the massive American Rescue Plan, to a results-based analysis, let us help him with the task. Track what happens to poor and minority kids as a direct result of the CDC’s school guidelines. See whether Biden and Harris follow through on their campaign pledges to scale back criminal justice overreach that has disproportionately harmed generations of black men. Measure whether economic opportunity at the lowest rung of the economic ladder has been expanded or legislated away.
Read it all here.
Erec Smith: Free Black Thought: A Manifesto
Consumers of news and information in the present day are hard pressed to peruse more than a few articles without running across the issue of race. While Martin Luther King’s message was broader than his famous judged not by color of skin but content of character remarks, even that seemingly basic concept of race relations seems passé in some quarters where one’s way of thinking is inextricably linked to one’s face. Erec Smith, writing on behalf of his collaborators for a new website, Free Black Thought, stresses the vital importance (particularly in education) of treating people as unique individuals first rather than pigeonholing them as members of a group.
The practical effects of the new antiracism are everywhere to be seen, but in few places more clearly than in our children’s schools. This is worth attending to because children trust us. They take to heart the messages we send about who they are, how others regard them, and what degree of self-efficacy they should feel in their encounters with the world. Of course, one might reasonably question what could be wrong with teaching children “antiracist” precepts. But the details here are full of devils.
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Coleman Hughes, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute, points to a self-defeating feature of Kendi-inspired grading and testing reforms: If we reject high academic standards for black children, they are unlikely to rise to “those same rejected standards” and racial disparity is unlikely to decrease. Ian Rowe, a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, characterizes the “antiracist” approach to grading of San Diego’s public school system as “the unintended, modern-day version of the soft bigotry of low expectations.” Faced with a 20% failure rate for black students, the school board declined to “attempt to replicate the factors empowering the 80% of black students who achieved passing grades” in favor of “dumb[ing] down” grading across the board in a misguided effort to erase disparities.
Other black thinkers are troubled by the potential psychological and social effects of antiracism. It may, for example, produce “a feeling of victimization or, at times, infantilization and learned helplessness in people of color.” Chloé Valdary, the founder of Theory of Enchantment, worries that antiracism may “reinforce a shallow dogma of racial essentialism by describing black and white people in generalizing ways” and discourage “fellowship among peers of different races.”
Read it all at Persuasion.
Wall Street Journal: Facebook Keeps Banning Trump
The saga of Donald Trump and Facebook continues. Facebook’s oversight board decided to continue Donald Trump’s post-Capitol riot ban in place… for now. The editorial board of the Wall Street Journal says there’s plenty of blame for poor decision making to go around, but in the end, suppressing speech by political leaders is unacceptable.
Mr. Zuckerberg created Facebook’s oversight board — composed of 20 academics, lawyers, NGO leaders and others — to take political heat off management for content moderation. Progressives are furious that the social-media giant offers a forum for conservative speech, and have demanded that it censor a range of First Amendment expression.
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Wednesday’s decision was the board’s first big test, and it mostly punted. President Trump has been off the platform for four months since he promoted false claims of a stolen election and encouraged his supporters to march on the Capitol to change the outcome. This prompted an ugly riot, and Mr. Trump posted material to his social-media accounts sounding sympathetic to the mob while also telling rioters to stand down. The company responded by freezing the President’s account and throwing its long-term fate into the hands of the mostly left-of-center board.
We said at the time that the President’s conduct was impeachable. Yet unprecedented acts like his removal from social media — and even more egregious censorship such as the coordinated Big Tech assault on the free-speech social-media platform Parler — likely caused more Republican voters and politicians to rally around the President.
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It’s no defense of Mr. Trump’s conduct to say that the digital public square shouldn’t suppress speech by political leaders. Nor is such a position even in the Republican Party’s interest given his attacks on other Republicans that would be amplified on Facebook.
Read it all here.
Around Twitter
The Facebook Oversight Board’s decision on Donald Trump’s ban continues to make waves:
Rep. Elise Stefanik says Twitter is acting unconstitutionally. David French begs to differ.
Another member of Congress threatens Twitter and “Big Tech”:
