Christopher Donovan: I once had an e-mail exchange with a prominent pro-white thinker on the (actual dollar figure) costs of racial diversity. I was nudging his publication to hire an economist to tally it up. From welfare to crime to affirmative action, the cost to American whites must be staggering, I wrote. I was thinking in particular of the amount lost by American business owing to black and Hispanic incompetence, criminality and lack of motivation. He responded that the project would simply be too large — it would take 1000 economists, not one. The idea drifted away.
But we can continue to take note of the very strong anecdotal evidence. The latest bit comes from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which has decided to go after businesses that “unfairly” make use of criminal records and credit checks when hiring. Naturally, blacks and Hispanics are disproportionately affected.
Of course, I would make the argument that racial discrimination laws should be thrown out entirely — employers, landlords or anyone else should be able to choose their employees or tenants as they please, and if they don’t want black employees, so be it.
Equally of course, the EEOC under Obama (or Bush, or anyone else) would not go for such an argument. By applying the “disparate impact” test to criminal background tests, it would indeed boost black and Hispanic employment. It will also dramatically increase the cost of doing business by allowing pilferers and incompetents onto the payroll.
If the EEOC prevails in this, whites will once again pay the costs of forced racial association, multiracialism and unwanted “diversity.”
Facing the Future as a Minority
Was the Immigration Act of 1924 Illiberal?
I wish Mr. Donovan well in either calculating the costs of diversity, or at least encouraging others to make such calculations. In the meantime I’ve got a simpler approach I’ve had some luck with.
What has worked for me is to cite Max Weber’s classic work on capitalism, and to get the person I’m talking to to acknowledge that Weber’s preconditions for capitalism don’t exist in the countries we’re getting our immigrants from, and that’s why these countries are so poor.
The most common response is that immigrants come here to become Americans, so there is nothing to worry about. There are two counter-responses: Remind them that their view is hardly consistent with the success of Obama, who is very popular with immigrants. The second is to remind them that multiculturalism exists to ensure immigrants do not adopt white cultural norms.
It’s not quite the same as calculating the costs of diversity directly. It’s also true that my arguments lack the precision and clarity of statistics. But my arguments make clear that diversity does come with a very high price.