What about scenarios when race is arguably a predictive indicator of merit? For whatever reason, an equally qualified black candidate and, to a less extent, someone of Hispanic decent for a college admission on paper (SAT and GPA) is a little less likely to earn a four year degree and less likely to move on to a masters or PhD program after earning a four year degree. Various factors are posited to explain it - stress of dealing with family life that is more likely to be poor which can affect grades, desire/incentive to help them out by going to work today by dropping out of college or failing to continue on to graduate school to support them financially, plus other possible reasons. I guess the question is, what determines merit? It would seem to be whomever is the most likely to graduate and maybe continue on to graduate school should be a significant consideration, which means race should be used as a criteria if it is a predictive factor, even though it seems discriminatory. This can at times be true for male vs female as well, depending on the particular graduate program in question (where males may be less likely to complete it than females and vice versa, all else equal on paper). What do you think?
The world has become very selective --I'd say incoherently selective -- about what contexts it will and won't allow discrimination based on immutable characteristics (both legally allowed and socially allowed.)
For example, society -- and the law -- does not blink an eye when young men are charged more on their car insurance excess compared to young women. Yet in the same breath, society balks at charging women more for health insurance, even though women incur more health costs (by bearing children and living longer, on average).
Now, something rubs me the wrong way about disadvantaging (or advantaging) someone for
merely belonging to a group with a certain average on a certain immutable characteristic. It seems to me a version of 'the sins of the fathers' being visited upon the sons. So, I don't think men should be charged more than women for motor car insurance, even if men, as a group, are more likely to claim. And nor should women be charged more for health insurance, merely because women claim more. The solution to the former is to ban differential insurance rates for immutable group characteristics (like race or gender). The solution for the latter is single payer health insurance.
Now, it may also be true that, when controlling for grades and aptitude (statistically speaking), Black students might still be less likely to graduate than students of other races. This would mean that, if you were using objective selection criteria alone, Black students with a certain GPA and aptitude score should be less preferred for entry into a course compared to a nonBlack student with the same scores. This would also apply the other way: if it were shown that Black students were more likely to finish a course than nonBlack students with the same GPA and aptitude scores, they should be preferred to those students for entry.
But using race as a criterion so openly might lead to a better graduate completion rate, but opens up a can of worms that's better left shut. So, don't use race as a selection criterion. Just stop discriminating by race. Full stop.
A consequence of a race and gender blind admission process (or hiring process, or promotion process) is that some races and genders will be unevenly represented. For example, in Australia, the dinky little bikes that mail carriers use have an upper weight limit for the rider. Men are taller, heavier, and more obese than women, and so this rule is likely to rule out a lot more men than women from even being able to apply. But it's not
arbitrarily ruling them out -- it's related to the job requirements.
