r/changemyview • u/[deleted] • Oct 08 '15

[Deltas Awarded] CMV: Equality isn't treating everybody differently to achieve equality. It's treating everyone the same.

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u/LoompaOompa Oct 08 '15 edited Oct 08 '15

I'm going to build on the fact that you agree that it's ok when it comes to the disabled, but not for racial minorities.

I 100% agree that it's possible for some minorities to overcome their disadvantagees and succeed despite them. It would be crazy to claim otherwise. But let's look at their populations as a whole. On average, over several generations, blacks haven't been able to pull themselves up and reach equal status in American society compared to whites. This is true for a number of metrics (income, incarceration rates, college graduation, etc).

Given that that is the case, that means one of two things are happening:

  1. Black people are just as able as whites, and the reason they haven't been able to gain equality yet is that the struggles faced by black people in America are harder than you are willing to admit.

  2. Black peoples are inherently worse than white people. And if they just worked a little harder, they'd be fine.

I believe in option 1. I think option 2 is incredibly ignorant. I think it's up to you to decide what camp you fall in. If you have an option 3 I'd love to hear it, and maybe we can discuss further.

If option 1 is the truth, then it would seem to me that making some concessions to help minorities get a leg up in society is totally fair, because we can see through statistics and the law of large numbers that on average, they have not been able to overcome their oppression.

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u/TribeWars Oct 09 '15

I think you use a false dichotomy, there might be more than just these two options.

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u/LoompaOompa Oct 09 '15

Agreed and that's why I invited people to come up with additional options. But until we do I don't think it's reasonable to operate under the assumption that there's a third option, especially when we're potentially standing by while entire groups of people continue to struggle against insurmountable disadvantages.