Heather MacDonald explains why we look at Cultural Problems with the Structural View as opposed to the Behavioural View – “I think there are ideologies. And I think that American culture now is very uncomfortable with inner city culture, with certain dysfunctional minority culture. Doesn’t want to talk about it. We want to turn our eyes away from it. And we have the most appalling history of Racism in this country. It is really unthinkable how Blind we were to the Profound Hypocrisy that governs so much of our politics for so long. I think our degree of guilt for that is now so Great and Understandable, frankly, that we’re very Reluctant to ascribe agency to blacks. We want to say everything, the continuing problems, the Failure to close the achievement gap, the crime disparities which are massive, the victimization disparities. Blacks die of homicide at Six Times the rate of Whites and Hispanics combined. That’s a civil rights problem, but nobody wants to talk about that. Instead, we want to change the narrative to be it’s all White Racism, which is a way of infantilizing blacks, of saying there’s nothing you can do for yourselves of getting rid of the acting white culture, you know, emulate. If the behaviours were the same and we still saw these socioeconomic disparities, then I will entertain Institutional Structural Racism. But as long as the behaviours are so Vastly Different, I think it’s premature to say the only possible explanation is structural racism.”
Heather MacDonald – The Diversity Delusion Part 4
