Hildegarde

 So.  I was thinking over the discussion yesterday, and what occurred to me was this:

I don’t think we have a problem in  this country these days with  lots of people thinking work is beneath them, or that it is contemptible in the way Aristotle thought it.

In fact, especially in the United States, we seem to have made a fetish of work.  We boast endlessly that we work longer and harder than anybody else.

The entire CEO, big law corporate lawyer class spends more time in conspicuously working than it does in conspicuous consumption.

Get into the office at six and don’t leave until  midnight?  No problem.  Come in o n Christmas Day to make sure that deal gets done in Tokyo?  Absolutely.

The problem is not that we disparage work, but that an entire class of people–most upper middle class professionals, for instance, and our hyperworking class as described above–think some kinds of work are so mindless that ANYBODY can do them. 

And the class of workers they think this about–plumbers, electricians, mechanics, construction workers–are not only not unskilled, but often are very skilled indeed.

I  invite any of you to learn how to fix your own plumbling.  I know people who’ve managed to do it.  I don’t know a lot of them.

But you can see this attitude driving a lot of law and, worse, a lot of court cases for racial and sexual discrimination–oh, THAT?  Any  idiot off the street can do THAT.  If there’s any kind of disparate impact, the only POSSIBLE explanation is invidious discrimination.

I’m not saying invidious discrimination doesn’t exist.  Of course it does,  in some individual cases.

But the disparate impact rule is curious as much for the way  it is not applied as for the way it is.

The single largest example of a requirement that results in large scale racial disparities is the steadily increasing number of jobs that require “college” as a basic credential.

Not only do “underrepresented minorities” graduate from high school at a far lower rate than Asians and whites, but they graduate from top-tier colleges and universities at an exponentially lower rate.

By the time you get to top tier law and medical schools, or even business schools, you’ve hit tokenism right in the face.

Even so, almost nobody  is arguing that the standards in place in all these things amount to  “institutionalized racism” or that they should be changed so that “underrepresented minorities” can be more fully represented.

And even when somebody does make such an arguement,  it never prevails in court.

Part of that is because of a truism:  you tend to support the system through which you, yourself, were successful.

Judges don’t strike down law school requirements for disparate impact because they’re convinced that law school requirements are fair, just and objective–they’re the same requirements the judges themselves had to meet, and they’re sure they’re important.

But what has made this situation  really dangerous, and really destructive, is the  other half of it–the half that says OUR requirements are legitimate, but THOSE jobs are so stupid they can have no legitimate requirements.  Anybody can do them.  They don’t require intelligence, or knowledge, or skill.

It is under that set of assumptions that we  have seen court rulings and agency regulations that gut the requirements for getting licensed in a slew of skilled trades, and skilled tradesmen’s unions forced to adhere to “goals and timetables” that can only be fulfilled by cheating somewhere along the line to  keep the numbers up.

But  it’s not really that simple, because this is a country that loves lawsuits.

So if you send a guy out to do a job and he does it badly, and an accident ensues (think buildings exploding  in Philadelphia)–your company  is going to be civilly liable, and it’s probably also going to be criminally liable.

So you can’t just cheat. 

And  you can’t get out from under another problem–once you START cheating, you can’t ever hold the line. Once you change requirements in order to get your numbers up, you’ll also get up your numbers of OVERrepresented majorities with qualities you don’t want to touch with a ten foot pole.

The  problem is actually not invidious discrimination, but bad school systems that teach little or nothing.

The sane way to  handle all this would be to demand that even schools in poor and minority districts teach what they’re supposed to be teaching.

But that won’t work, either, not because teachers are sacrosanct, but because the judges and bureaucrats making the decisions HONESTLY don’t believe that the jobs  in question  have any real skill requirements.

Those are stupid  jobs for stupid people.

Anybody can do those.

And t hat’s your cheerful for today.