Thank you for sharing the video. If you don't feel like reading what follows, just skip to
this video. Ben Shapiro does a better job countering it than I do.
I'm quite familiar with the argument it makes, I just disagree with it and I can explain very easily why.
First, let me say that not everything in it is wrong in the video. As I already mentioned, if a person or business is caught rejecting identically qualified candidates for a job and it can be shown that there's a pattern of rejecting qualified applicants with "non white" sounding names, (and this could and has been easily measured), then I say throw the book at them. I've already proposed a very simple solution to this. Simply pass a law that says no personal information on resumes. A company is able to decide who to call in for an interview without knowing the candidate's age, gender or ethnicity. Identifying racial bias at the interview stage would be much easier, simply because of the smaller numbers and different context. But the very people who argue that racial bias is such an issue in hiring are also the ones who do not want an anonymous filter put in place. They are the ones agitating FOR MORE such information to be included in job applications.
As well, there is truth in saying that America most definitely does have a systemically racist history. The point of argument here is how that history continues to effect opportunity by race today. If this video's argument is correct, then explain to me why Black home ownership has gone down since the 50s? Is America more racist today than it was then? Why did single parent homes in the black community go from 25% in the early 60s to 75% today? Explain why black people emigrating from Africa and other ethnic groups do so well in the U.S.? Are they not affected by the systemically racist system?
Next, let's look at how this video addresses what it calls "implicit bias". The notion that you can remedy implicit bias through awareness training has never been proven. I know that sounds crazy, since every large company and governments engage in such training, but it's true. Look it up. But more to the point, be honest and ask yourself, could you hold such opinions as your video cites (i.e. American's fat, black people good at sports, Jews being stingy) and
not be aware of them? That is a nutty notion. Those biases where they exist are anything but unconscious. People know they have them and they think they're right to have them. Sure, education is required, but those prejudices exist in far greater degree in most societies outside of the Western world. It's difficult to eradicate.
Now let's get to the meatier and outright foolish part of the argument--the purported proofs and suggested remedies for "systemic" racism. This video does just what I referred to in my post above. It cites different outcomes by racial group and says these are proof of racism. For example, police shoot disproportionately more black people and therefore that's proof of racism. To say that, you have to COMPLETELY ignore crime, which I've heard is why police often get involved with members of the public. In other words, the picture is more complex and you need to consider a multitude of factors, not just one. This is repeated for just about every problem where the answer is "systemic racism"