Summary of When Race Trumps Merit by Heather Mac Donald:How the Pursuit of Equity Sacrifices Excellence, Destroys Beauty, and Threatens Lives

By Justin Reese

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When Race Trumps Merit provides an alternative explanation for racial disparities, arguing that large academic skills gaps and differences in criminal offending account for the racially disproportionate prison population. This argument is driven by a sense of alarm, supported by detailed case studies of how disparate-impact thinking is jeopardizing scientific progress, destroying public order, and poisoning the appreciation of art and culture. As long as alleged racism remains the only allowable explanation for racial differences, we will continue tearing down excellence and putting lives at risk.

• Language: English
• Publisher: jUSTIN REESE
• Release date: Jun 4, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223796442

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This is an unofficial summary & analysis of Heather Mac Donald’s When Race Trumps Merit: How the Pursuit of Equity Sacrifices Excellence, Destroys Beauty, and Threatens Lives designed to enrich your reading experience.

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Introduction

A CULTURAL REVOLUTION

The year 2020 was a pivotal moment in American history when major institutions endorsed the view that the US is suffering from systemic racism. This led to a cultural revolution that challenged the adult establishment's allegedly oppressive norms of propriety in the name of liberation. The driving concept behind this revolution is disparate impact, which states that any standard or behavioral norm which negatively affects blacks is presumed to be a tool of white supremacy. A 1971 Supreme Court case, Griggs v. Duke Power Co., changed this rule, allowing employers to still be liable under the 1964 Civil Rights Act if those job requirements disproportionately affected underrepresented minorities. Disparate impact analysis is a cultural tool that has been used to invalidate school discipline policies, bank lending standards, and written tests for first responders.

It is based on the presumption of racial proportionality and assumes that the racial demographics of every institution would match that of the population at large. This presumption has been used to invalidate school discipline policies, bank lending standards, and written tests for irst responders. Bioethicist Ezekiel Emanuel and epidemiologist Cary Gross called on Congress to require that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) fund science researchers who look like the country and San Francisco’s Lowell High School admitted a majority of its students based on middle school GPA and standardized admissions test. Racial disparities in outcomes are caused by measurable differences in achievement and behavior, not racism. The University of California refuses to consider SAT and ACT scores in its undergraduate admissions decisions, and the American Bar Association will likely declare the Law School Admission Test optional for entrance to law schools.

However, America has radically changed course, with virtually every mainstream institution now trying to admit, hire, and promote as many non-Asian minorities as possible. Philanthropists and corporations spend millions each year on social-uplift programs to close the racial achievement gap. The most important details in this text are that even the greatest achievements of the West are being subjected to disparate impact analysis, which is destroying America's core institutions and putting future scientific advances at risk. This cultural self-cancellation is impoverishing the imagination, stunting the capacity for wonder and joy, and stripping the future of beauty, sublimity, and wit. It is also contributing to America's drug-addicted malaise and rising mental distress among the young.

Overview

THE BIAS FALLACY

George Floyd's death catapulted the idea that racism deines America into national prominence. On May 25, 2020, a clerk at a Minneapolis grocery store called 911 to report that Floyd had used a counterfeit bill and refused to return the cigarettes. Two Minneapolis police officers responded and Floyd refused to be put in their patrol car. Derek Chauvin, the senior officer, put his knee on Floyd's neck and back and kept it there for nine minutes, leading to Floyd's fatal heart attack. Chauvin was convicted of murder and manslaughter and received a state prison sentence of 22-and-a-half years.

The political and cultural establishments immediately turned Chauvin into a martyr for systemic racism and Floyd into its martyr. Activists and their media allies used the concept of disparate impact to prove the dominance of white supremacy. The press served up exposés of this industry’s or company’s too-white workforce to illustrate the lack of racial proportionality in elite America. This journalistic theme has deep roots, and organizations now preemptively accuse themselves of discrimination without waiting for the inevitable indictment. The publisher of the Science family of journals denounced his own publications for discrimination, and the American Mathematical Society pledged to address systemic inequities.

The dean of the Harvard Business School announced that they have not fought racism as effectively as they could have. Black investors make up less than 1 percent of venture capitalists and start-up founders, and 8 percent of MBA students are black. In 2020, the newsroom at the Los Angeles Times was 61 percent white, and 15 of the 157 staff members responsible for content were black. The press and activists sliced and diced the numbers to get the black proportions as low as possible. Blacks made up 3.8 percent of Meta's employees in 2020, but only 3.1 percent were in leadership roles and 1.5 percent were in technical roles.

Racism journalism backs up this data with personal anecdotes alleging employment discrimination. This just believe mandate is the credo of the #MeToo movement, as it makes of icial victims unsafe and violates their sanctity. A 2020 legal complaint against Facebook alleges that Facebook's white managers make it harder for blacks to get hired and promoted, thus undermining Facebook's own diversity efforts. A black virtual-effects specialist in Los Angeles told the Los Angeles Times that peers and supervisors constantly undermined her, and a black food writer recounted that the editor of Saveur magazine barely lifted his head while interviewing her for an entry-level position. The most important details in this text are that a social-impact manager at Pinterest received a minor rebuke during a performance review, a reporter at the Los Angeles Times felt targeted by higher-ups, and an assistant professor of counselor education at the University of Virginia was denied tenure.

Additionally, Wells Fargo's new CEO, Charles