1 00:00:00,240 --> 00:00:04,360 So, when it comes to the claim that the central claim of social 2 00:00:04,360 --> 00:00:07,920 justice, disparities are proof of discrimination. 3 00:00:08,119 --> 00:00:11,680 Therefore, we need a state to coercively intervene and 4 00:00:12,160 --> 00:00:15,240 violently control interactions between consenting adults. 5 00:00:15,400 --> 00:00:19,600 We generally have 3 theories that two that are competing with 6 00:00:19,600 --> 00:00:22,560 the social justice theory. Social justice, loosely referred 7 00:00:22,560 --> 00:00:26,560 to as critical theory, is that disparities are the result of 8 00:00:26,560 --> 00:00:28,840 discrimination, genetic determinism. 9 00:00:28,880 --> 00:00:33,040 The oldest of these theories is that disparities are either the 10 00:00:33,040 --> 00:00:38,840 result of God designing the races to be different or the the 11 00:00:38,840 --> 00:00:42,360 process of evolution that took place for thousands of years on 12 00:00:42,360 --> 00:00:46,440 different geographical areas yielded a different type of 13 00:00:46,440 --> 00:00:49,120 person in each area. That's why we see disparities 14 00:00:49,120 --> 00:00:52,560 between the races. However, there is 1/3 approach 15 00:00:52,560 --> 00:00:56,600 that is not explicitly racist. It's referred to as culturalism. 16 00:00:57,000 --> 00:01:00,800 This is the claim that disparities are the result of 17 00:01:00,840 --> 00:01:05,000 different groups embracing different cultural norms. 18 00:01:05,000 --> 00:01:08,320 This was summarized by Thomas Soul in a book Economic Facts 19 00:01:08,320 --> 00:01:12,160 and Fallacies. Soul says many of the social or 20 00:01:12,160 --> 00:01:15,880 cultural differences between American blacks and American 21 00:01:15,880 --> 00:01:20,040 whites nationwide today were an antebellum times pointed out as 22 00:01:20,040 --> 00:01:22,280 differences between white southerners and white 23 00:01:22,280 --> 00:01:25,160 northerners. These include ways of talking, 24 00:01:25,320 --> 00:01:28,200 rates of crime and violence, children born out of wedlock, 25 00:01:28,440 --> 00:01:31,520 educational attainment, and economic initiative or lack 26 00:01:31,720 --> 00:01:34,200 thereof. Well, only about 1/3 of the 27 00:01:34,200 --> 00:01:37,080 antebellum white population of the United States lived in the 28 00:01:37,080 --> 00:01:40,560 South. At least 90% of American blacks 29 00:01:40,560 --> 00:01:43,240 lived in the to the South on into the 20th century. 30 00:01:43,640 --> 00:01:47,280 In short, the great majority of blacks lived in a region with a 31 00:01:47,280 --> 00:01:51,080 culture that proved to be less productive and less peaceful for 32 00:01:51,080 --> 00:01:55,080 its inhabitants in general. Moreover, opportunities to move 33 00:01:55,080 --> 00:01:59,080 beyond that culture were more restricted for blacks. 34 00:01:59,280 --> 00:02:01,920 Another term for this is institutional theory, summarized 35 00:02:01,920 --> 00:02:05,120 by Niall Ferguson in his book Civilization, the West and the 36 00:02:05,120 --> 00:02:08,160 Rest. He Says institutions are of 37 00:02:08,160 --> 00:02:11,120 course in some sense the products of culture, but because 38 00:02:11,120 --> 00:02:15,120 they formalize a set of norms, institutions are often the 39 00:02:15,120 --> 00:02:18,720 things that keep a culture honest, determining how far it 40 00:02:18,720 --> 00:02:21,360 is conductive to good behavior rather than bad. 41 00:02:21,640 --> 00:02:24,840 To illustrate the point, the 20th century ran a series of 42 00:02:24,840 --> 00:02:28,920 experiments imposing quite different institutions on 2 sets 43 00:02:28,920 --> 00:02:34,000 of Germans in the West and E, 2 sets of Koreans in North and 44 00:02:34,000 --> 00:02:38,440 South, and two sets of Chinese inside and outside the People's 45 00:02:38,480 --> 00:02:41,080 Republic. The results were very striking 46 00:02:41,320 --> 00:02:45,160 and the lesson crystal clear. If you take the same people with 47 00:02:45,160 --> 00:02:48,000 more or less the same culture and impose communist 48 00:02:48,000 --> 00:02:51,080 institutions on one group and capitalist institutions on 49 00:02:51,080 --> 00:02:55,040 another, almost immediately there will be a divergent in the 50 00:02:55,040 --> 00:02:58,840 way they behave. Other examples used by Seoul 51 00:02:58,840 --> 00:03:02,920 would be England was once the most prosperous industrial 52 00:03:03,120 --> 00:03:08,400 nation on the planet in late 1700s through the 1800s. 53 00:03:08,640 --> 00:03:13,480 However, before that, Greece and Italy during the days of the 54 00:03:13,520 --> 00:03:18,560 Roman Empire or Alexander the Great, the beautiful buildings 55 00:03:18,680 --> 00:03:22,440 of Athens, the brilliance of Plato, Aristotle and Socrates. 56 00:03:23,440 --> 00:03:27,960 If you go even further back, Greece and Italy were far more 57 00:03:27,960 --> 00:03:31,640 prosperous than Britain then Britain was far more prosperous 58 00:03:31,640 --> 00:03:34,000 later on. If just race was the 59 00:03:34,000 --> 00:03:37,960 explanation, we'd see all the races more or less stagnant and 60 00:03:37,960 --> 00:03:42,720 then moving at a similar pace. But we don't see anything like 61 00:03:42,720 --> 00:03:44,760 that. If you look at the Japanese 62 00:03:45,040 --> 00:03:49,800 Empire, relatively stagnant until after the Second World 63 00:03:49,800 --> 00:03:51,920 War. If you look at India, after 64 00:03:51,920 --> 00:03:56,040 embracing free market reforms in 1991, we saw a drastic decrease 65 00:03:56,040 --> 00:04:00,480 in the overall poverty level. When Deng Xiaoping embraced a 66 00:04:01,080 --> 00:04:04,200 much more free market approach to economics in China, we saw 67 00:04:04,200 --> 00:04:08,920 people in China increase in their overall standard of 68 00:04:08,920 --> 00:04:11,760 living. So the the problem is cultures 69 00:04:11,760 --> 00:04:16,480 and institutions, not race, not gender, not a critical theory. 70 00:04:16,839 --> 00:04:22,480 One more note on critical theory is from racism didn't cause the 71 00:04:22,480 --> 00:04:25,760 new problems of today. From Wilfred Riley's book Taboo, 72 00:04:25,760 --> 00:04:28,880 10 Facts You Can't Talk about. He says the Black Lives Matter 73 00:04:28,880 --> 00:04:34,040 movement alone has staged 2406 major marches against racism 74 00:04:34,160 --> 00:04:38,160 during the past few years. However, any serious claim that 75 00:04:38,160 --> 00:04:42,120 contemporary or recent bigotry is the cause of phenomena such 76 00:04:42,120 --> 00:04:46,960 as 75% black illegitimacy rate founders on three rocks. 77 00:04:47,200 --> 00:04:51,240 First, these problems did not exist among blacks or anyone 78 00:04:51,280 --> 00:04:56,080 else when racism was much worse. 2 these problems do not exist 79 00:04:56,080 --> 00:04:59,880 for successful dark skinned African and Asian immigrants to 80 00:04:59,880 --> 00:05:03,880 the United States. And three, many or most such 81 00:05:03,880 --> 00:05:07,400 problems do exist among poor whites, perhaps the most 82 00:05:07,400 --> 00:05:11,280 genuinely neglected group in America, to roughly the same 83 00:05:11,280 --> 00:05:13,720 extent that they do among blacks. 84 00:05:14,400 --> 00:05:18,880 Another book promoting the idea of culturalism or institutional 85 00:05:18,880 --> 00:05:23,120 theory is Civil Rights Rhetoric or Reality, by Thomas Sowell. 86 00:05:23,240 --> 00:05:26,960 He says Japanese immigrants to the United States also 87 00:05:26,960 --> 00:05:30,080 encountered persistent and escalating discrimination, 88 00:05:30,320 --> 00:05:33,320 culminating in their mass internment during World War 2. 89 00:05:33,800 --> 00:05:37,800 But by 1959, they had about equaled the income of whites, 90 00:05:38,040 --> 00:05:42,960 and by 1969, Japanese American families were earning nearly one 91 00:05:42,960 --> 00:05:47,160 third higher incomes than the average American family.