The Skeptics Society & Skeptic magazine


EPISODE # 356

Heather Mac Donald — When Race Trumps Merit: How the Pursuit of Equity Sacrifices Excellence, Destroys Beauty, and Threatens Lives

When Race Trumps Merit: How the Pursuit of Equity Sacrifices Excellence, Destroys Beauty, and Threatens Lives (book cover)

Shermer and guest discuss:

  • race as America’s original sin
  • race relations over the centuries and decades
  • civil rights movement then and now
  • Is she just a conservative white woman complaining about “liberal kids these days”?
  • equality vs. equity
  • overt racism vs. systemic racism
  • disparate impact
  • Why do Blacks make less money, own fewer and lower quality homes, work in less prestigious jobs, hold fewer seats in the Senate and House of Representatives, run fewer Fortune 500 companies, etc.?
  • race and science
  • race and medicine
  • race and classical music
  • race and opera
  • race at Juilliard
  • race and Swan Lake
  • race and museums
  • race and art museums
  • race and the law
  • crime and mass shootings
  • George Floyd and race riots
  • the future of the problem of race trumping merit and what to do about it.

Heather Mac Donald is the Thomas W. Smith Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a contributing editor of City Journal, and a New York Times bestselling author. She is a recipient of the 2005 Bradley Prize. Mac Donald’s work at City Journal has covered a range of topics, including higher education, immigration, policing, homelessness and homeless advocacy, criminal-justice reform, and race relations. Her writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The New Republic, and The New Criterion. Mac Donald’s 2018 book, The Diversity Delusion: How Race and Gender Pandering Corrupt the University and Undermine Our Culture, argues that toxic ideas first spread by higher education have undermined humanistic values, fueled intolerance, and widened divisions in our larger culture. Her new book is When Race Trumps Merit: How the Pursuit of Equity Sacrifices Excellence, Destroys Beauty, and Threatens Lives.

About the Book

Does your workplace have too few black people in top jobs? It’s racist. Does the advanced math and science high school in your city have too many Asians? It’s racist. Does your local museum employ too many white women? It’s racist, too. After the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, prestigious American institutions, from the medical profession to the fine arts, pleaded guilty to “systemic racism.” How else can we explain why blacks are overrepresented in prisons and underrepresented in C-suites and faculty lounges, their leaders asked?

The official answer for those disparities is “disparate impact,” a once obscure legal theory that is now transforming our world. Any traditional standard of behavior or achievement that impedes exact racial proportionality in any enterprise is now presumed racist. Medical school admissions tests, expectations of scientific accomplishment in the award of research grants, the enforcement of the criminal law — all are under assault, because they have a “disparate impact” on underrepresented minorities.

When Race Trumps Merit provides an alternative explanation for those racial disparities. It is large academic skills gaps that cause the lack of proportional representation in our most meritocratic organizations and large differences in criminal offending that account for the racially disproportionate prison population.

The need for such a corrective argument could not be more urgent. Federal science agencies now treat researchers’ skin color as a scientific qualification. Museums and orchestras choose which art and music to promote based on race. Police officers avoid making arrests and prosecutors decline to bring charges to avoid disparate impact on minority criminals.

When Race Trumps Merit breaks powerful taboos. But it is driven by a sense of alarm, supported by detailed case studies of how disparate-impact thinking is jeopardizing scientific progress, destroying public order, and poisoning the appreciation of art and culture. As long as alleged racism remains the only allowable explanation for racial differences, we will continue tearing down excellence and putting lives, as well as civilizational achievement, at risk.

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This episode is sponsored by Wondrium:

Wondrium (sponsor)

This episode was released on May 30, 2023.

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