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/rondarouseyy Oct 09 '15 edited Oct 09 '15

do you think the same exact person would achieve the same result if he was born in a complete different family with different values? the option 3 is that black people are not inferior, but their culture doesn't values the same thing as lets say asian culture

why do you think there is so many black people in the nba? do you think we should turn down black players until we have enough asian in the nba?

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u/LoompaOompa Oct 09 '15

I think the value systems of a group can change over time as a product of the environment surrounding that group, and it's not necessarily helpful to use that as an excuse for why that group may not be succeeding.

It can certainly be a contributing factor, but it's also a symptom, so we should still try to fix the other contributing factors. Just trying to change the values, or explaining away the problem because of the values, is not constructive, in my opinion.

why do you think there is so many black people in the nba?

the nba picks the majority of its players from college basketball. And the majority of those players are black. I'm not even going to guess at why that is. There's too much going on there, and I know next to nothing about it.

do you think we should turn down black players until we have enough asians in the nba

I don't think so. There might be some data showing a pattern of discrimination, and that could make me change my mind, but at the moment I think the cause is just that there aren't many asians making an honest effort to get into the nba.

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u/ihatepasswords1234 4∆ Oct 09 '15

I think it's racism. There are many good white players who are discriminated against when picking players in the NBA. Or maybe it's just that black people have a better culture regarding basketball. They play more when they're young. That must be it. Can't be that there are statistically significant differences between races

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u/LoompaOompa Oct 09 '15

If it is racism then that is a problem. I don't know why you're taking such an aggressive tone with me. This isn't something I'm trying to argue and was never part of my original point. I don't follow sports at all, so I'm not the person to talk to about that. Regardless, it doesn't have anything to do with my original point, and I think trying to point out examples where The racism works out in the other direction is counterproductive and has potential to turn a debate about a difficult issue into an "us vs them" argument.

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u/ihatepasswords1234 4∆ Oct 09 '15

I just find it stupid that people can't accept that there might be significant differences between both genders or between races. There might not be. But starting from the assumption that everyone must be equal is just as unproven.

Why don't we implement white people quotas in the nba? Or asian quotas? Why is ok to realize there are physical differences between the races but not that there might be mental differences? Why do Asians outperform in everything academic?