If one group start with a basic advantage (like living in a society crafted by them, for them) while the others not only don't have that advantage, but also have to fight supplementry disadvantages the first group doesn't have to contend to, then treating them all the same way will obviously favor the first group. Equal treatment with unequal circumstances is not equality.
See I'd be much more inclined to go with this argument if someone could reliably produce actual examples where individuals in modern day are being turned down for jobs and opportunities because of their race. I'm not saying it never happens, as I said before there will always be racists in the world, but having been on the hiring side of things for more than a few years in various positions the line of 'you don't want to hire me because I'm *insert minority here* always seems to ignore the fact that the person that wasn't hired had a terrible resume, poor interview, or lacked necessary experience.
Why would any profit minded company turn down an employee based on race if they had a necessary skill that another applicant lacked? The only time I can really see it being a major factor is non-skilled labor: retail etc where you don't need any defined skill. Thus most of the hiring process is entirely on the hiring supervisors opinion of people rather than qualifications.
The only other scenario is the case where you end up with multiple candidates with equal skill, experience, and interview performance. In those scenarios? You're always going to encounter some bias which is human nature. We are wired to want to associate with similar people. If a black guy and a white guy are 100% equally qualified then there is a chance the white guy might get the nod over the black guy because the decision maker isn't even consciously aware of their own bias.
But the idea that there is some 'old white racist' sitting in a room throwing minorities resumes in the trash? I've certainly never seen anything of the sort. And any major corporation isn't likely to stay in business long doing that.
If you just let things as they are, then of course, this disparity won't disappear. Making the school system more efficient won't help minority kids get in, because it's not their performances that hold them back, but the prejudice of the society they live in.
Really? Is it? Because if I look at various sources:
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/09/03/sat-scores-drop-and-racial-gaps-remain-largehttp://www.jbhe.com/features/49_college_admissions-test.htmlThe simple fact of the matter is that the three majority minority populations in the US (Native American, Black, and Hispanic) all score lower on average on SATs than their White counter parts (who in turn score lower than Asian students). And since the SAT and ACT are pretty much the bar that is set for university entry in much of the country that seems like where we're running into the problem.
When are black or hispanic students with a 30 ACT score and 4.0 GPA got turned down from a university because of their race? Not only would it create a cultural outcry if a minority student with good grades was turned down for admission, what incentive would colleges have to do this? Most public universities tend to be much more heavily left leaning than their surrounding populations at least in the south.
Also that 2nd article is a good read in general as it goes into fair depth about the hows and whys. It's not as simple as 'black kids are treated poorly'. It's economic, cultural, geographical, the whole nine yards. And yes, one of the factors is that black students do suffer bias where school officials are more likely to push them into less educationally demanding paths, not challenging them. But it's only one of alot of factors.
Even when minority kids manage to enter and graduate college, the disparity remains because their talents will be seen as not worth as much. Being competent is useless when you cannot use those competences and/or benefit from them. Whitewashing doesn't happen because of lack of good actors from minorities, for example.
As I pointed out above, this is based on the idea that companies and hiring managers base their decisions on something as hazy as the race of the applicant in the majority of cases. Are you going to get some weighting one way or the other based on who is doing the hiring? Probably, as I said its just human nature and some inherent bias will never ever leave us as a species.
But based on the facts it doesn't look like that's happening. Because if it was those asian students would have all the same problems since they're not white. Instead we have a catch 22 where some minorities do worse on tests, thus they cannot get the same opportunities as others, that then makes it so that the next generation is also starting at the same disadvantage.
That's not racism. That's a fundamental problem with how we educate. The white student that does poorly because they grew up in a poorly funded neighborhood or because they simply do not learn the way that US school systems want to force everyone to learn? They're going to experience similar problems across the board: difficulty in college admission, lower success in the job hunt, etc.
As for whitewashing in cinema? I won't argue that hollywood is a game run by rich old white guys so I'm 100% certain that its part of it. But the other part? Like everything else its about money. Hollywood doesn't produce movies because they care about art. They care about profits and all of their data tells them that big name, bankable actors? That's how you get the big profits. And to find their next big 'draw' they're going to try and replicate what they already have: which are heavy on white actors because 40 years ago there was much more blatant racism.
It's an out-moded model that is slowly changing with the times, however, as they see films like Gods of Egypt with its most off the wall casting selection ever, crash and burn. Unfortunately Hollywood is probably a few decades behind the times with the rest of the country so it takes them awhile to catch up.
All of this come from prejudice, prejudice that is reinforced by things like not bothering to look beyond the stereotypes that are transmitted by jokes, novels, movies and other medias.
Like the jokes about white guys as serial killers or date rapists? The sitcoms that show every middle aged white guy is a moron that cant do anything without his wife and is a completely uncultured slob that cant even pronounce items right at the local mexican restaurant? Stereotypes and jokes are never going away. Ever. If we can actually treat everyone as equal and fair game so that (like the white guy stereotypes on TV) people realize that they are just that: tropes and not reality.
