You’re right that hiring should be merit-based, and in the real world you could end up with 4 black hires, 4 white hires, or any other outcome. The hypothetical example isn’t about what usually happens. It assumes identical qualifications so that merit is held constant, and then asks how much bias is required to produce a large group-level disparity.
From that neutral baseline, a single biased decision at a competitive bottleneck can flip an outcome from 2–2 to 3–1, creating a large disparity even though discrimination occurred only once. The point isn’t that outcomes should mirror group proportions, but that rare discrimination and large disparities can coexist.
Thank you for this illuminating critique of Jussim's paper. Although the paper is available, I confess that the dry (but very professional) language was a bit off-putting for me, which made the reading difficult. Your explanation makes it 100% more effective. Maybe because you work in communication, and he works in psychology... Anyway, you seem to have a way of rendering dense academic papers accesible, so please continue to do so.
Hell yeah. Racism of any kind is a serious accusation, and its definitions need to be based on more than just vibes and general feelings of disenfranchisement. Right now, I’d say that non white immigrants are facing discrimination that is systemic because there are actual policies in place that cause them real harm. Your work place is not a bastion of systemic racism because your white colleague touched your hair once. This is annoying, but it is far from systemic racism and the violent racism of this country’s past. If racism is to be taken seriously and flushed out, it needs to be as clearly defined as possible.
>>If systemic racism is meant to refer to institutional policies or practices, then those systems must be clearly identified and shown—independently—to cause unequal outcomes.
This is a bad formulation. A policy of using SAT scores for college admission certainly causes unequal outcomes.
The problem is this idea that racism is intrinsically immoral.
It’s a totally unjustified assumption. Every group is going to have their own culture that they socialize the best in. That’s not wrong and demands that they change for the sake of everyone else are arguably immoral and counterproductive.
If the majority of people are socializing primarily with others of their same culture, how does it logically follow that this must be what racism is when you are making a point about culture and not race? While the two terms overlap, they do not mean the same thing. And even if you were to substitute culture for race in your assertion, that still wouldn't mean that what you're describing is racism because...well....that's simply not what racism is. The actual textbook definition of racism is not what you are describing, although it is tangentially related to it. Feel free to look it up yourself.
>If the majority of people are socializing primarily with others of their same culture, how does it logically follow that this must be what racism is when you are making a point about culture and not race?
Sociology and history give a clear answer: because of the in-group/out-group affect.
Systemic discrimination is not that challenging to find across the world and through time. The American conceptualization of systemic racism is too myopically centered on Black and Brown versus white to see the general trends globally.
Societies tend to homogenize culture. That's why people know "American culture" means hamburgers/hotdogs, baseball caps, cars cars and more cars; versus Black culture, Japanese culture, etc. We can understand jokes and standup comedians who poke fun at cultural tropes. Cultural homogenization means that 2 socialcultural phenomena happen: a) conformity within group and b) exclusivity from other groups. Typically a nation-state forms: a State that enforces national identity shaped by sociocultural homogeneity.
There's plenty of evidence for this sort of nation-state that discriminates, with or without laws. Japan is a prototypical example. It's 98% racially pure. It has a long history of ensuring that homogeneous society, including the Meiji period's xenophobia. Its society modernized but remained exclusionary towards non-Japanese and conformist for Japanese. It will happily export its goods to the world now, but keep its culture.
It could be argued that Japan is racially discriminatory, but it doesn't meet the Western legal (UN) definition of discrimination. Their laws don't explicitly say "White Americans may not gain permanent residence" but their society's culture has gating mechanisms that ensure American immigrants don't stay around. How to we know? Because the country has been "open" to the West for over 100 years, yet the impact of their society is racial homogeneity. It is, effectively, systemic racism operating without codification. Though few people, including the UN, will call our Japan on this. Especially because Westerners have this weird fetish with Japanese exports (anime and Toyota).
America is not unique about racism. But many Americans are conspicuously unique in thinking there is a racial solution.
Derrick Bell, the American legal expert who gave us the means to sniff out systemic racism by way of critical race theory (CRT), should be more liberally discussed. Bell concluded that racism was permanent, and systemic. It took me a lot of reflection to understood how Bell came to such a radical conclusion. Americans are typically indoctrinated into the vision that racism will be overcome. Bell said, "No". Then I realized that Bell was not radical but only sounds radical to the colorblind vision. The meaning of race is constructed by society. There is no textbook definition of racism -- we codify that meaning through Black Codes, UN treaty, etc. Permanent, systemic racism is not a radical conclusion given the history of how societies create meaning for their culture. Japan has defined that culture to have racial meaning.
W.E.B. DuBois and Malcolm X should also be read directly by Americans. Don't read some journalist's interpretation of them. Listening to Coates or reading Kendi is just another interpretation of these radical thinkers too. DuBois beautifully wove his historical training with sociology to understand the mechanisms of racism during Jim Crow. Reading them is, ironically, the reason I oppose conservatives trying to cancel the so-called "Ethic Studies" programs where the assigned readings are from African Americans. These thinkers came to radical conclusions that explain a lot of what is going on in the US. But those conclusions do not fit neatly into either Party's platform.
Expecting race instead of merit to be the basis for any decision, in any environment is a different kind of racism. It is disheartening to see people believing that race is the foundation for applying equality.
I am not sure I get it. 4 jobs available, 500 white people, 500 black applicants.
You should not end up with 2 of each. It should be merit based and therefore you can end up with 4 black persons being hired - and vice versa. No…?
You’re right that hiring should be merit-based, and in the real world you could end up with 4 black hires, 4 white hires, or any other outcome. The hypothetical example isn’t about what usually happens. It assumes identical qualifications so that merit is held constant, and then asks how much bias is required to produce a large group-level disparity.
From that neutral baseline, a single biased decision at a competitive bottleneck can flip an outcome from 2–2 to 3–1, creating a large disparity even though discrimination occurred only once. The point isn’t that outcomes should mirror group proportions, but that rare discrimination and large disparities can coexist.
Thank you for this illuminating critique of Jussim's paper. Although the paper is available, I confess that the dry (but very professional) language was a bit off-putting for me, which made the reading difficult. Your explanation makes it 100% more effective. Maybe because you work in communication, and he works in psychology... Anyway, you seem to have a way of rendering dense academic papers accesible, so please continue to do so.
🙏
Hell yeah. Racism of any kind is a serious accusation, and its definitions need to be based on more than just vibes and general feelings of disenfranchisement. Right now, I’d say that non white immigrants are facing discrimination that is systemic because there are actual policies in place that cause them real harm. Your work place is not a bastion of systemic racism because your white colleague touched your hair once. This is annoying, but it is far from systemic racism and the violent racism of this country’s past. If racism is to be taken seriously and flushed out, it needs to be as clearly defined as possible.
What policies are harming non-white LEGAL immigrants?
>>If systemic racism is meant to refer to institutional policies or practices, then those systems must be clearly identified and shown—independently—to cause unequal outcomes.
This is a bad formulation. A policy of using SAT scores for college admission certainly causes unequal outcomes.
The problem is this idea that racism is intrinsically immoral.
It’s a totally unjustified assumption. Every group is going to have their own culture that they socialize the best in. That’s not wrong and demands that they change for the sake of everyone else are arguably immoral and counterproductive.
That's also not racism.
If the majority is doing that then yes it's precisely the textbook definition of racism.
If the majority of people are socializing primarily with others of their same culture, how does it logically follow that this must be what racism is when you are making a point about culture and not race? While the two terms overlap, they do not mean the same thing. And even if you were to substitute culture for race in your assertion, that still wouldn't mean that what you're describing is racism because...well....that's simply not what racism is. The actual textbook definition of racism is not what you are describing, although it is tangentially related to it. Feel free to look it up yourself.
>If the majority of people are socializing primarily with others of their same culture, how does it logically follow that this must be what racism is when you are making a point about culture and not race?
Sociology and history give a clear answer: because of the in-group/out-group affect.
Systemic discrimination is not that challenging to find across the world and through time. The American conceptualization of systemic racism is too myopically centered on Black and Brown versus white to see the general trends globally.
Societies tend to homogenize culture. That's why people know "American culture" means hamburgers/hotdogs, baseball caps, cars cars and more cars; versus Black culture, Japanese culture, etc. We can understand jokes and standup comedians who poke fun at cultural tropes. Cultural homogenization means that 2 socialcultural phenomena happen: a) conformity within group and b) exclusivity from other groups. Typically a nation-state forms: a State that enforces national identity shaped by sociocultural homogeneity.
There's plenty of evidence for this sort of nation-state that discriminates, with or without laws. Japan is a prototypical example. It's 98% racially pure. It has a long history of ensuring that homogeneous society, including the Meiji period's xenophobia. Its society modernized but remained exclusionary towards non-Japanese and conformist for Japanese. It will happily export its goods to the world now, but keep its culture.
It could be argued that Japan is racially discriminatory, but it doesn't meet the Western legal (UN) definition of discrimination. Their laws don't explicitly say "White Americans may not gain permanent residence" but their society's culture has gating mechanisms that ensure American immigrants don't stay around. How to we know? Because the country has been "open" to the West for over 100 years, yet the impact of their society is racial homogeneity. It is, effectively, systemic racism operating without codification. Though few people, including the UN, will call our Japan on this. Especially because Westerners have this weird fetish with Japanese exports (anime and Toyota).
America is not unique about racism. But many Americans are conspicuously unique in thinking there is a racial solution.
Derrick Bell, the American legal expert who gave us the means to sniff out systemic racism by way of critical race theory (CRT), should be more liberally discussed. Bell concluded that racism was permanent, and systemic. It took me a lot of reflection to understood how Bell came to such a radical conclusion. Americans are typically indoctrinated into the vision that racism will be overcome. Bell said, "No". Then I realized that Bell was not radical but only sounds radical to the colorblind vision. The meaning of race is constructed by society. There is no textbook definition of racism -- we codify that meaning through Black Codes, UN treaty, etc. Permanent, systemic racism is not a radical conclusion given the history of how societies create meaning for their culture. Japan has defined that culture to have racial meaning.
W.E.B. DuBois and Malcolm X should also be read directly by Americans. Don't read some journalist's interpretation of them. Listening to Coates or reading Kendi is just another interpretation of these radical thinkers too. DuBois beautifully wove his historical training with sociology to understand the mechanisms of racism during Jim Crow. Reading them is, ironically, the reason I oppose conservatives trying to cancel the so-called "Ethic Studies" programs where the assigned readings are from African Americans. These thinkers came to radical conclusions that explain a lot of what is going on in the US. But those conclusions do not fit neatly into either Party's platform.
The truth sucks. But it's still the truth.
Expecting race instead of merit to be the basis for any decision, in any environment is a different kind of racism. It is disheartening to see people believing that race is the foundation for applying equality.
How does Jussim address Derrick Bell's conclusion that racism is permanent?