"White privilege" is not a statement about racism necessarily. It's an acknowledgement that being white confers certain benefits. It doesn't mean that you don't respect your black friends, just that you're more likely to get a
callback for a job than your black friends, among other things.
I bolded that sentence because it seems particularly contradictory. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the ideological statement seems to be, "I promote liberty by protecting a person's right to discriminate." I don't understand how that is an internally consistent ideology.
These sort of arguments always arise when we start talking about competing rights. As you say that the right to work is not an actual right, I could say that the right to discriminate is not an actual right, and we'd get nowhere, so let's table that for the moment.
Instead of focusing on what is a right and what isn't, I want to talk about how the use of rights is basically a means to steer resources in one direction or another. For me, giving employers the right to discriminate basically means they get to choose who works and who doesn't, who makes what and who doesn't, and ultimately who can get ahead and who can't. That steering almost always occurs along racial, gender and sexual lines, leaving those groups out in the cold.
Of course, by outlawing employer discrimination, I'm hoping that jobs are steered in my direction. There is an ideological element to my stance, but it's definitely more influenced by the practical consideration that when discrimination is legal, people like me get screwed. It's a matter of competing interests in the end, because people have differing opinions on what's fair and what isn't. We don't have to agree on that, but I think it's irrefutable that discrimination almost exclusively works against the groups I mentioned earlier.
Aye, you certainly are right, at least from what I've seen, that discrimination works mostly exclusively against the groups you mentioned.
On the point of liberty and discrimination being mutually inconsistent, this is a tough one.
I guess you can say this is how I view it or explain myself.
There is a welder doing freelance work for major steel companies, he is the best in his class, a master of the Stick and the MIG. One day he welded two steel components together that serve particular interest, and are very valuable in their own right. Two steel companies come to him and both ask him for the incredibly valuable weld, both match each others prices. Now he has a choice, albeit a curious one, it is in his right to give the thing HE CREATED to whichever company he wants, the intent behind it could be anything. Maybe he liked the other spokesperson better, maybe one company was more consistent with his ideologies. Maybe one company had a Black CEO and the other had a White CEO, and he chose the latter for that reason alone. You suppose we control that welder's decisions for who he wants to sell to?
There is a small business owner along the lines of machining. One day two men come looking for the job position he needs filled, both asking for the same wages and benifits, he also has a choice to make, again a curious one.
The most important part of this is that HE CREATED the job, a job doesn't just come out of nowhere, a job is a position, OWNED by someone, PRIVATELY owned by someone, created by someone, and he holds the ownership of it. No company is entitled to receive the freelance welder's material, no person is entitled to receive the business owner/employer's open position.
Here lie two solutions.
#1, you take away the right of property and ownership in favor of the right of entitlement, ala Affirmative Action.
#2, you do absolutely nothing about it and let those who own the goods and services choose who to give their property to.
Of course this COMPLETELY discounts public sector jobs. You don't have to agree with American values to be American, that's one of the things that makes America America. But a public position? Oh yes, you have to agree with America to be in a public office. . .
. . . that is to say you have to agree with the people who elected you, as a servant of the people, otherwise they wouldn't elect you.
If any employer of a public job where to discriminate in employment it would be completely un-American, that is to say it would not and should not be in their capacity to commit something that people in America disagree with BECAUSE they have not been elected by the people!
That leaves three solutions.
#1, Affirmative Action for public office.
#2, eliminate any position in which the people not elected could create jobs (my personal favorite as a follower of the Austrian School, like Mises and Hayek and those folks). That means ridiculous things like abolishing the Federal Reserve - oh, that's privately owned, nevermind - how about the Department of Justice? Agriculture? FDA? Education? Eh, they're probably not discriminatory anyways.
#3, completely ignore it and let the public sector do whatever it wants.
Now the public job point could seem completely moot, but. . . actually, I came back a few hours after writing this and completely forgot where I was going. I think I was going to try and illustrate the difference between the public and the private and something. . . oh well.
Lastly, the inefficiency of the bureaucracy. To punish a whole group for ones actions is foolish and destroys efficiency and brings down the genuine hard working employers who want to give that equal opportunity but happened to pick the 'wrong' one because of some OTHER reason, and it won't solve much of anything, it is even more so foolish, both in concerns to rights of privacy and choice, to create a gestapo to identify the intent of every employer when they employ one over another.
What can we do?
I don't know if that's a topic for a different discussion, but to me and for me it is a purely different discussion and a social consideration or blanket punishment is out of the question. That's when we start talking about theoretical economics, philosophy, theology, sociology, psychology, and theology. Frankly I don't think I'm ready for that myself, too insecure beyond what I've said here, but eh, with computers and internet you can get the viewpoints and information out of anything.
So for whatever admittedly stupid or immoral reason or intent someone may give or have for not employing one person over the other it is no grounds to take away everyone's rights to make a smart or moral decision or that stupid and immoral decision.
At least that's how I think.
