Theories of income inequality and institutionalized racism and sexism are all the rage on college campuses. The idea that society is structured to keep some people down has engulfed our culture, academia, and politics — but there’s as much anecdotal evidence to support these theories as there are positive reviews of the Fantastic 4 sequel.
Rutgers University professor Lee Jussim published an article in Psychology Today proving that the gap between sexes, races, and economic groups rarely has anything to do with discrimination.
“Gaps are everywhere,” wrote the social psychology professor. “The selective go-to explanation in the social sciences is discrimination. It is selective, because it is typically only applied when the group is one the left deems both oppressed and protected in some way (racial and ethnic minorities, women, LGBT, and so on).”
Evidence of minorities outperforming whites in income or standardized testing, or women outperforming men in school are ignored by social scientists and the media because it doesn’t fit the narrative.
“However, for those groups the left does care about, even leftist academics who one might think should know better equate gap = discrimination,” said Jussim.
That’s not to say there’s no such thing as discrimination, there is, but it is rarely the exclusive contribution to “gaps.” For example, Jews and Asians are the subject of discrimination and yet have some of the highest income and best test scores in school.
“Gaps do not always result from discrimination,” he continued. “And discrimination, even when it occurs, does not always result in a gap disadvantaging the discriminated group.”
Arguments of institutionalized racism and gender pay gaps are effective political tools for racial arsonists and liberal politicians to justify societal inequalities and assure that the government can make it all better. The notion that an evil society of white men created the institutions to put down women and minorities is simplistic and anti-academic.
Biology, culture, IQ, and circumstance play a larger role in determining one’s outcome than dead, white men.
The ones who are truly hurting those on the lower end of the economic scale are those selling the fallacy of institutionalized discrimination.
