Transcription
Let us ponder what Claudine Gay, President Joe Biden, and the CEO of United Airlines have in common.
They all promote the most consequential falsehood that governs public policy today. The idea that any racial disparity in any institution is by definition a result of racial discrimination. The American Mathematical Association declares math racist. Macy's was racist. Even colorblind technology is racist. We are dismantling meritocratic and behavioral standards that stand in the way. We must stop apologizing for Western civilization.
Let us ponder what Claudine Gay, President Joe Biden, and the CEO of United Airlines have in common, besides one suspects, worrying that Donald Trump and his MAGA supporters are a, quote, threat to democracy. Well, they all promote the most consequential falsehood that governs public policy today. The idea that any racial disparity in any institution is by definition a result of racial discrimination.
Some examples. If a cancer research lab does not have 13% black oncologists, the black share of the national population, it is by definition a racist lab that discriminates against competitively qualified black oncologists. If a law firm does not have 13% black partners, it is by definition a racist law firm that discriminates against competitively qualified black associates. If an airplane cockpit does not have 13% black pilots, it is by definition a racist cockpit. And if the prison population contains more than 13% black prisoners, our law enforcement system is racist. And of course, if Harvard no longer has a black president, it is a racist university.
The claim that racial disparities equal racial discrimination has been percolating in academia and the media for a long time. After the George Floyd riots of 2020, however, it was adopted by America's most elite institutions, from big law to big business to big finance. Even museums and orchestras took up the cry. The crazy optimists who thought that the diversity sledgehammer would never strike STEM, they were wrong. The American Medical Association insists that medicine is characterized by white supremacy. Nature magazine declares that science manifests one of {quote} humankind's worst excesses, i.e. racism. The Smithsonian Institution announces that {quote} emphasis on the scientific method and an interest in {quote} cause and effect relationships are part of totalitarian whiteness.
And so, pursuant to the principle that any lack of racial proportionality signals discrimination, we are dismantling meritocratic and behavioral standards that stand in the way of proportional representation. This evisceration of standards is known as disparate impact analysis. Step one of the medical licensing exam, for example, tests medical students' knowledge of anatomy, physiology, and pathology. It is administered after the second year of loss of medical school. Black students, on average, score at the bottom of the grading curve. Their low scores make it harder for them to land their preferred residencies. Step one, in other words, has a disparate impact on black medical students. The solution? Get rid of step one scores. Last year, step one of the licensing exam went pass/fail to ensure that hospital specialties, when choosing residents, could not distinguish among high and low-achieving students. Some medical schools have waived the submission of the Medical College Admission Test for black applicants because the average black MCAT score is a standard deviation below that of white applicants. The MCATs have already been redesigned to try to eliminate those gaps. A quarter of the questions now focus on social issues and psychology. To no avail. The medical school curriculum is being revised in the hope of shrinking the grade gap. More classes in white privilege, less time in clinical practice. The American Association of Medical Colleges soon to require that medical faculty demonstrate knowledge of intersectionality. The federal government is shifting medical research funding from pure science to studies on racial disparities and social justice. Why? Not because of any assessment of scientific need, but simply because black researchers do more racism research and less pure science. The National Institutes of Health has broadened the criteria for receiving neurology grants because considering scientific accomplishments alone has a disparate impact on minorities. Now, having been in foster care or having used the welfare program WIC as a child will be counted as a qualification for doing federally funded Alzheimer's research. We better hope that Biden gets in for treatment before these results kick in.
What is at stake in these revisions? Future medical progress and ultimately lives. The legal profession, which gave us the disparate impact concept in the first place, has itself become a target for the anti-meritocrats. Upon taking office in 2021, President Joe Biden announced that he would no longer submit his judicial nominees to the ABA for a preliminary rating. Allowing the ABA to vet candidates was incompatible with the quote diversification of the judiciary, explained a member of the White House Counsel's office. Are you kidding me? As any lawyer in this room knows, the ABA cannot open its collective mouth without issuing a bromide about the need to diversify the bar. Its leading members are obsessed with the demographics of corporate law firms and law school faculties. This is the same ABA that gave its highest rating to the Supreme Court nominee who would claim during a challenge to COVID vaccine mandates that quote over 100,000 children are in serious condition from COVID and many are on ventilators. Oh, yeah. Well, that would be Justice Soto Sonia Sotomayor, of course, she of wise Latina judge fame. It is a measure of how far the Biden administration intended to stray from even a diversity-driven standard of competence that he saw the ABA as a roadblock.
Meanwhile, bar associations are watering down standards to eliminate disparate impact. In 2020, California lowered the pass score on its bar exam because black applicants were disproportionately failing. Only 5% of black law school graduates passed the California bar on their first try in February 2020 compared to 52% of white law school graduates and 42% of Asian law school graduates. The lack of proportional representation among California's attorneys was proof of a discriminatory credentialing system. The pressure to eliminate the LSAT requirement for law school admissions is enormous because it too has a disparate impact. A single mother told an ABA panel, quote, "I would hate to give up on my dream of becoming a lawyer just due to not being able to successfully handle this test." The problem always lies with the test and never with the test taker. You heard it here first. The LSAT requirement will be axed.
Gifted and talented programs for high-achieving students are being dismantled across the country because enrollment, however colorblind and objective, is insufficiently diverse. Better to prevent children, including the Arn grandchildren, from reaching their highest potential than to allow any lack of racial proportionality in an accelerated classroom.
Everything that is going on in the criminal justice system today is a function of disparate impact. If you wonder why district attorneys are not prosecuting whole categories of crime, such as shoplifting, trespass, fare beating, looting, if you wonder why police officers are not making certain arrests, it is because prosecuting crime or apprehending lawbreakers has a disparate impact on black criminals. We have decided that we would rather not enforce the law at all, no matter how constitutional that enforcement, than to put more black criminals in jail. Walgreens, CVS, and Target would rather close down entire stores and deprive their elderly customers of access to the medications and other basic needs than to cost shoplifters and hand them over to the law because doing so would disproportionately yield black shoplifters as the viral looting videos attest. Macy's flagship store in New York City was sued several years ago because the majority of the people its employees stopped for shoplifting were black. The only allowable explanation for that fact was that Macy's Macy's was racist. It was not permissible to argue that Macy's arrests simply mirrored the shoplifting population.
Even color-blind technology is racist. Speeding and red light cameras disproportionately identify black drivers as traffic scofflaws. You've already guessed the solution to such disparate impact. It's the same as with the medical licensing exam. We throw out the cameras. The result of this de-prosecution and de-policing has been widespread urban anarchy and in 2020 the largest one-year spike in homicides in this nation's history. Thousands more black lives have been lost to drive-by shootings. Dozens of black children have been fatally gunned down in their beds, in their front yards, and in their parents' cars. No one says their names, something we are always urged to do by the Black Lives Matter activist following any officer-involved shooting. Why? Because their assailants were not police officers. They were not white supremacists. They were black criminals.
So, what about this claim that any disparity in any institution is the result of racism? Is that correct? It is not. The truth is this. The reason for racial underrepresentation across a range of meritocratic fields is the academic skills gap. The reason for racial overrepresentation in the criminal justice system is the crime gap. And even in this audience, I'm going to issue a trigger warning. I'm going to raise uncomfortable facts, ones that many well-intentioned Americans would rather not hear. Keeping such facts off stage may ordinarily be appropriate as a matter of civil etiquette. But it is too late for such forbearance now. If we cannot acknowledge the skills gap and the behavior gap, we are going to continue destroying our civilizational legacy. And let me also say that I'm talking about group averages and not about any given individual. Thousands of individuals within underperforming groups outperform not only their own group averages, but thousands of individuals within other groups as well.
Okay, so here are the relevant facts. In 2019, 66% of all black 12th graders did not possess even partial mastery of the most basic 12th grade math skills, defined as being able to do arithmetic or read a graph. Only 7% of black 12th graders were proficient in 12th grade math, defined as being able to calculate using ratios. The number of black 12th graders who were advanced in math was too small to show up statistically on a national sample. The picture was not much better in reading. 50% of black 12th graders did not possess even partial mastery of basic reading, and only 4% were advanced. According to the ACT, only 3% of black high school seniors were college-ready in 2023. The skills gap never closes. The disparities in the SAT, the LSAT, the GREs, and the GMATs were just as wide.
Remember these data when President Biden and his supporters vilify Americans, especially Republicans, for alleged bias on the ground that this institution or that is not proportionally diverse. We can argue about why these disparities exist and how to close them, something that policy makers and philanthropists have been trying to do for decades. But in light of these skills gaps, it is irrational to expect 13% black representation on a medical school faculty, say, or among a law firm's partners under meritocratic standards. At present, you can have diversity or you can have meritocracy. You cannot have both.
As for the criminal justice system, the bodies speak for themselves. President Joe Biden is fond of intoning that black parents are right to fear that their children will be killed by a police officer or by a white gunslinger every time those children step outside. The mayor of Kansas City proclaimed last year that existing while black is another high-risk activity that blacks have to engage in. Mayor Quinton Lucas of Kansas City was partially right. Existing while black is a more dangerous activity than existing while white, but the reason is black crime, not white vigilantes. Now, you may have heard that dozens of people were shot in Kansas City on Tuesday, one fatally, during celebrations of the Super Bowl victory, a shooting that had all the hallmarks of a gang shooting. Of course, Mayor Quinton Lucas' response was to call for more gun control. No, Mayor Lucas, the answer is not gun control, it is impulse control.
And as a result of that lack of impulse control, black juveniles in the post-George Floyd era are shot at 100 times the rate of white juveniles. Blacks between the ages of 10 and 24 are killed in drive-by shootings at 24 times the rate of whites in that same age cohort. Dozens of blacks are murdered every day. More than all white and Hispanic murder victims combined, even though blacks are just 13% of the population. The country turns its eyes away. Who is killing those black victims? Not the police, not whites, but other blacks.
As for the interracial violence that President Biden continuously rebukes us for as a stain on America's soul, he's referring to whites, well, again, let me give you the data. Blacks are a greater threat to whites than whites are to blacks. A black person is 35 times more likely to commit an act of non-lethal violence against a white person than vice versa. And yet the national narrative insists on the opposite idea, and we all dutifully play along. These crime disparities mean that the police cannot restore law and order in neighborhoods where innocent people are most being victimized without having a disparate impact on black criminals. And so, we have decided not to restore law and order at all. It is urgent that we fight back against disparate impact thinking. As long as racism remains the only allowable explanation for racial disparities, the left wins.
It is all coming down. Even the arts are coming down. Classical music, visual art, theater, all are dismissed as a function of white oppression. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City mounted an astonishing show last year called The Fictions of Emancipation. The show's premise was that if a white artist creates a work intended to show the cruelties of slavery, that artist, in this case the great 19th century French sculptor Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux, is in fact arguing that the natural condition of blacks is slavery. A completely preposterous hypothesis. Prosecuting this nonsensical argument required the Met to ignore or distort almost every feature of the Western art tradition, including the representation of the nude human body, artist's use of models, and the sale of art. Only Western traditions of creativity are subjected to this demystifying acid. Chinese, African, and Indian cultural traditions are still treated with curatorial respect. Their works analyzed in accordance with their creator's intent. As soon as a critic turns his eye or ear on Western art, however, all he can see or hear is imperialism and white privilege. It is a perverse obsession. We are teaching young people to dismiss the greatest creations of humanity. We are stripping them of the capacity to escape their narrow identities and to lose themselves in beauty, sublimity, and wit. No wonder so many Americans are drowning in meaninglessness and despair. We must stop apologizing for Western civilization.
To be sure, for centuries America was blind to the grotesque violation of its founding ideals that was slavery and segregation. We were once a white supremacist country, and this one fact I actually agree with the 1619 Project. And forget I ever said it, but I'll I'll admit it here. But we are not that country today. Every mainstream institution is twisting itself into knots to hire and promote as many underrepresented minorities as possible. Yet those same institutions grovelingly accuse themselves of racism.
The West has liberated the world from universal squalor and disease thanks to the scientific method and Westerners passion for discovery and knowledge. It has given the world plumbing, hot showers in frigid winters, not needed here obviously, flight, clean water, steel, antibiotics, and just about every structure and every device that we take for granted in our miraculously privileged existence. And I use the word privilege here to refer to anyone whose life has been transformed by Western ingenuity, i.e., to virtually the entire planet. The West created the idea of constitutional government and civil rights. Yes, to our shame, we had slavery. And what civilization did not? Only the Anglosphere expended lives and capital to end the nearly universal practice. Britain had to occupy Lagos in 1861 to get its ruler to give up the slave trade. We heard this morning about the importance of coastlines and navies. Well, the British navy used 13% of its manpower to blockade slave ships leaving the western coast of Africa in the 19th century. I'll be willing to pay reparations when I see Nigerian leaders paying reparations for the Dahomey kings' capture and sale of their fellow Africans. It'll never happen, believe me.
Every ideal which the left uses to bash the west, whether equality or tolerance, was created by the west. Those fascinating maps with Dr. which Dr. Arnn showed us this morning were a reminder of how stunningly small the European landmass was. And yet, what transformational accomplishments. We heard about Kirchner needing to get material through the shallows and swamps. He builds a railroad. That's classic western ingenuity.
The attack on colorblind excellence is putting US scientific edge at risk. China cares nothing for identity politics. Instead, it is throwing everything it's got at its most talented students. Yes, as Dr. Arnn said, China can count. In fact, it ranks number one in international tests of K-12 math, science, and reading. The US ranks 25th. China is racing ahead in nanophysics, artificial intelligence, and other critical defense technologies. Chinese teams dominate the international Olympiad in informatics. Meanwhile, the American Mathematical Association declares math racist, and President Biden puts a soil soil geologist with no background in physics at the top of the Department of of Energy Science programs. This new science director may know nothing about nuclear weapons and nuclear power, but she checks off several intersectional boxes. I'll give you a clue. Think Kamala Harris. And publishes on such topics as a critical feminist approach to transforming workplace climate.
So, what do we do? Well, besides airlifting a few cargo holds of gender feminists onto Beijing University, which is something that if we get President Trump back in office, I'm going to suggest he do. We could proclaim that standards are not racist, and that excellence is not racist. We assert that identity is never a qualification for a job. I know for a fact that being female is not an accomplishment. And I suspect even though I'm often treated as a quota hire to my absolute chagrin. But I I also suspect that being gay and being black are also not accomplishments.
Should Republican office seekers campaign on the restoration of merit and standards? Hell, yes. Of course, the mainstream media and some in their own party will accuse them of waging a culture war. Oh, please. It is progressive elites who are engaging in cultural revolution. Most Republicans are not even playing defense. How about legislation to ban racial preferences in medical training and practice? How about eliminating the disparate impact standard in statutes and regulations? How about ending the allocation of life-saving drugs on the basis of race, as we saw during the COVID era? The GOP should by all means promote the virtues of free markets and limited government, but the diversity regime is the nemesis of both. Lowering standards helps no one, since high expectations are the key to achievement. In a word, speak the truth, never apologize, and never back down. Thank you for your attention.