Black and Hispanic people do face more active discrimination. That has to do more with outward appearance and last names.
Vets on the other hand are an example of a lop-sided outcome. It was discovered a while back that most vets often went into blue collar professions and didn't really climb that many ladders. They instituted a rule where campaign badge holders and disabled vets must have their resumes reviewed first. Working on the west coast I can attest it's rare to see vets at all. I've met more vets from non-US military in the tech world than I have from my own country (not complaining, but worth noting). There's definitely a small contingent of people who would put their political disposition into hiring if they saw a candidate was a vet, but military are coached to chop their military experience from their resume once they have a stack of experience to avoid this.
All that to say, if I were OP I would not be okay with what you proposed just on a facade basis. If it incorporated class distinctions I might agree.
Unlike military service which has a discrete set of experiences and criteria, race is just something you're born with.
It also stands out in my mind that most of these statistics rely on self-identification. I don't know if anyone's dug into the validity of self-identification.
Harvard would like a word with you.
But in all seriousness, Asians face the discrimination of being perceived as foreign and “the other” more so compared to other racial minorities. So the claim that they generally don’t face discrimination is not true.
This isn't a great take because there's tons of in-group advantages going on today that are deeply rooted in racial discrimination.
The U.S. is still reeling from its deeply racist housing policies. What does this have to do with this DEI thread?:
- Wealth is the highest indicator of educational attainment, and in turn education is a high indicator of wealth. [1]
- Zoning laws were explicitly racist and meant to keep out certain races from white neighborhoods. My parent's home built during the WWII era in the SFBAY had covenants attached to it that stated under no uncertain terms that no PoC may live in the home (No longer enforceable of course). The racist roots of these laws is not a matter of speculation.
- Most household wealth is through homeownership. [2]
- High quality education is tied to housing via school districts, more expensive houses are located in schools with better funding and higher quality education.
- Many zoning rules such as minimum lot sizes, high setbacks, height limits (Designed to make it more expensive to buy for PoC in particular) remain in place today. It's a positive feedback loop where those who had an advantage are more likely to retain that advantage.
As OP stated, life isn't fair, and the rules are indeed rigged to favor those in power. Rebuking a group for using their limited advantages while ignoring the plethora of advantages for those up top isn't very equitable.
[1] https://research.stlouisfed.org/publications/page1-econ/2017....
[2] https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/notes/feds-notes/disp...
I just wanted to say that I don't think anyone should feel bad or like an impostor if they manage to get their foot in the door some way other than the traditional routes: you get lucky on a coding quiz, your dads meet at the country club, you bust your hump for 10 years in crappy jobs to work your way up to a good one, etc.
I am deeply troubled by racial discrimination favoring Latin people, despite benefitting from it in a narrow and immediate sense, because it makes people justified in carrying out their own discrimination potentially to my detriment.