This topic is near and dear, given my multiracial family. A few months ago I took my son to the library. One of the children's books on display looked interesting, so I picked it up. It was ostensibly a book on racism.
Yet within the first few pages, the book made it clear, in no uncertain terms, that race was a creation of white people and that all racism was the fault of the white race alone. This is troubling, to teach children that one race is the root of all problems, the root of all historical racism.
This book wasn't aiming to help children understand the errors of racism. It wasn't aimed at healing the sins of the past, but instead at reopening a wound, and pitting all races against one. It sought to reinforce the divisions of skin pigment, not move past them.
As a child, I was taught that race does not define you. Very simply, you should be judged by your character and your merit, not by something as shallow as skin pigment.
Yet somewhere along the line, this became a justification for banning "gifted programs," force-hiring, based largely on skin color, and which later expanded to include many new minority groups.
The result is not diversity, it's conformity. People are employed because while they look different in the end, they think similarly. DEI initiatives, like many government programs, became the very thing they were trying to eliminate.
The contradictions in this ideology are irreconcilable, especially for a family like mine which is forced to straddle both worlds where these contractions are laid bare.
We need to get your ideas to someone in the Trump inner circle.
I agree that for most bureaucracies and businesses that a war on DEI will have everyone running for cover. The left can and will try to roll it back, but large companies will get tired of the war and pursue a more reasonable middle ground of no discrimination (rather than discrimination in favor of leftists groups).
It would be nice if all personnel decisions were made on a merit basis. How do you how will we be able to know that they are? It's one thing to mandate nondiscrimination and another thing to bring it about. How will organizations prove they are nondiscriminatory? On the other hand, how will individuals be able to prove that organizations are discriminatory?
A few years back, I did the research that showed that 70 per cent of US senators were white men. Are white men that much more meritorious than other Americans? I would like to live a merit-based society, but I see a large amount of evidence that America is not a merit-based society. I agree that DEI is not the way to get there. What is the way to get there?
I agree with you. I was attempting to point out that our society is still making many important decisions that are not based on merit. My quest is figure out how to reduce such irrational decision making in our culture. I believe that Dr Magoon correctly identifies merit as the only possible rational base for decision making. How can we promote merit? I think it starts by relentlessly identifying non-merit based decisions. I think the 70 white male senators is a good indication there is still gender and racial bias in our country. I'm trying to figure out how to how to reduce the amount of irrational decision making in our country, and I will explore that problem till the day I die. Another interesting fact: the percentage of African American football players vastly exceeds the percentage of African American football coaches. Is that strictly merit based?
You never need to apologize for making a joke around me. I wish I could give everyone who makes me laugh 10 Bucks. What is your venmo account?
Again, your arguments assume that disparate outcomes between groups are a sign of a lack of Merit or a sign of discrimination. This is categorically not true.
You have an ideology that is looking for a problem, so of course, you see the problem everywhere.
Until you come to terms with that fundamental incorrect assumption, you will never be able to understand the human condition or be able to make reform proposals to improve society in this domain.
Individual humans are genetically different from each other, and those differences are not equally distributed between groups. The differences in genes create differences in intelligence, desires, abilities, and preferences.
Genetics, intelligence, individual preferences, culture, life choices, geography, work effort, career choice, and other factors easily explain differences in outcomes between groups.
Because of the above, very large differences in outcomes between groups are inevitable in any complex society.
As for how to get more Merit, here are a few articles that I have already written:
Yes, there is officially no discrimination in the United States at this point. But plenty of decisions by millions of Individual people are still not merit based. Is that OK with you? Obviously, society would be better off if every decision was merit based—how do we get to that place? That is the question that I am asking and I will continue to ask.
I am in total agreement that individuals are genetically different from each other. However, I do not believe that white men are genetically better endowed to be football coaches than black men. I also don't believe that white men are genetically better endowed to be senators than the approximate 230 million Americans who are not white men. I am simply using these disparities to show that I think there is some irrational, non merit based decision making going on in our country. I am deeply convinced that you are interested in reducing the amount of non-merit based decision making in our country.
I think behind your statements is the assumption that Merit-based decisions will lead to roughly equal outcomes between groups. And the assumption that a lack of discrimination will lead to equal outcomes between groups. That is simply not true. Nor are disparate outcomes a sign of discrimination.
Until you accept Inequality as a fact, you will not understand the problem.
Inequality is the human condition. We cannot undo it, and the Left has been trying to do it without success for more than 200 years.
Every organization in American society that exists in a competitive environment has a strong incentive to make merit-based decisions in hiring, firing, and promotions. If they do not do so, they will lose customers, investors, and employees.
The main deviations from merit are due to government policy mandating racial and gender discrimination. Deliberate discrimination to undo discrimination does not work.
I never said "mandate nondiscrimination." I said that deliberate discrimination is against the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and deliberate discrimination is the only way DEI can be implemented.
Disparate outcomes between groups are not evidence of discrimination. Voters choose the US Senate. That is not racial or gender discrimination. If you are concerned about gender representation in the US Senate, then you should run for the Senate yourself.
As for your question, I just gave you a long list of actions to repeal deliberate discrimination by the federal government in this article.
I do not believe that nondiscrimination will lead to equal outcomes for groups. I think it is highly probable it will lead to less unequal outcomes for groups.
A hundred years ago it was believed that men were rational, and women were irrational., thus it made sense for men to go to college. The barriers for a woman to attend college were massive. Now, that that discrimination in this area is virtually nil, more women than men are graduating from college. Nondiscrimination has led to a great change in outcomes for these two groups.
We have no idea what the outcomes for any group will be until the barriers of discrimination are removed.
Yes, we do know the outcomes because the barriers of discrimination have already been removed, except for DEI.
We still live in inequality.
One hundred years ago very few people, men or women, went to university. Now far more men go to university. Is that because of anti-male discrimination in the past and strong federal legislation against anti-male discrimination?
No, more men applied for university. The barriers to women going to college were not massive. Very few women even applied because they did not want to attend. And no federal legislation changed university admissions policies related to gender.
My grandmother went to university in the 1930s and faced no discrimination. That is actually where she met my grandfather. She got into the best university in the state in her first application. She had many female friends in university.
In all your comments, you have not given one concrete example of actual discrimination. You just assume that it exists, and assume that it explains a great deal of the unequal outcomes for groups.
Humans are genetically different from each other, and those differences are not equally distributed between groups. Genetics, intelligence, individual preferences, culture, life choices, geography, work effort, career choice, and other factors easily explain differences in outcomes between groups.
There is no evidence to assume that discrimination is a major cause of different outcomes. At the very least, there is not enough evidence to justify massive government interventions in institutions.
These are complex issues that you have thought about for years at whereas my attention has been elsewhere. So, I do not expect to be able to give you the best possible argument about these matters.
You are expecting that market forces will reduce irrational racial and gender discrimination. I am in basic agreement with that observation. But I must observe that those market forces existed in the antebellum South and they did not make a dent upon the discriminatory practice of slavery. African Americans were freed from profound irrational discrimination only by government intervention.
Thus, I think history tells us that market forces can be fruitfully augmented by some forms of government intervention., though definitely not the mandated discrimination of DEI. I am as stalwartly against DEI as you are.
One example of a successful government intervention was the Fair Housing Act. To enforce it, teams of investigators applied for leases at apartments. The black applicant got turned down with the excuse that no openings existed. A white applicant came along minutes later and was offered an apartment lease immediately. In this way. irrational racial discrimination has been vastly reduced in our society. One of the downstream benefits is that white people have gotten used to living alongside African Americans and found that their fears of sharing an apartment building with African Americans was exaggerated. Now Americans are generally much more at ease living alongside people of different ethnicities.
Another way in which the federal government intervened against irrational discrimination was the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. Lilly Ledbetter, who worked at Goodyear Tire, sued the company for gender discrimination, alleging that she had been consistently given lower pay raises compared to her male colleagues over her 19-year career. This is another way in which the federal government intervened to promote merit-based behavior in our society.
In these two interventions, the federal government has sought to eliminate irrational discrimination. Neither of them is a case of DEI, mandating irrational discrimination to atone for past discrimination. I think both of these laws have increased the amount of fairness in our society, not the amount of irrational discrimination which is what DEI aims for.
Of course, every government intervention of this kind has to be carefully evaluated to see that it is actually working against irrational discrimination efficiently and effectively.
Here is a third instance: when I was in high school, I was athletic and I went to the school principal and asked why we could not have interscholastic sports for girls, just as there were teams for boys. He just stared at me blankly. Fortunately, the federal government intervened in the form of title 9, and now girls have the opportunities that I was denied.
Were women supposed to wait until market forces resulted in equal pay for those successfully doing the same job as men?
I hope I have made it clear that I am against DEI, but I know that government intervention has been very effective in reducing the amount of irrational discrimination in our society.
Finally, if the Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlaws discrimination, is it incorrect to say that it mandates nondiscrimination? Every state has a law that outlaws murder, doesn't that mean that the law mandates not murdering?
A commenting rule in this Substack is that you must stay on topic. This article is not about getting rid of whatever discrimination may or may not exist in society.
The article is about getting rid of the set of DEI policies based on systematic and deliberate discrimination. If you are opposed to that, then I am fine with that.
Just so that you know that I am not avoiding answering your questions:
1) Slavery in the South before the Civil War is nothing like modern-day America. It was not a market economy.
2) I have no idea how effective the Fair Housing Act actually was, nor is it the topic of this article. Passing legislation and getting results are two different things.
3) There is no evidence that I know of that Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act got rid of actual discrimination. You just assume the effect. Disparate pay is not evidence to discrimination, nor is lower pay differences evidence of lesser discrimination.
4) Blacks actually prospered more economically in the 20 years before the Civil Rights Act than in the 20 years after. It is not clear how much effect the act actually had outside of abolishing de jure segregation in the Deep South.
5) Women's opportunities since 1960 expanded for the simple reason that women simply applied to universities and corporations. They were pushing on an open door. There was no federal legislation involved.
The very reason why the Left obsesses over the impact of Title 9 in college sports is because that is about the only federal legislation that clearly had an impact. You cannot credit women's opportunities to government legislation.
I would be perfectly happy if colleges abolished athletic programs.
6) Most importantly, you have not given any evidence today of actual discrimination other than DEI. And, yes, you are clearly assuming it because of disparate impact.
If you are interested in history, you might want to subscribe to my Substack. I present a general theory of history that you likely have not seen before.
Kathleen Weber Dec 12
done. Can you give me a link to the post I should read first?
Michael Magoon Dec 12
Thanks for the question!
It inspired me to write a “table of contents” article with an ordered list of links to all the related articles on this topic.
This is how YOU Invited me to begin reading your substack. You invited me to read your entire corpus and if I cannot comment on the whole corpus what is the point? Although I think you have many valuable ideas, I also think your work fails to address many important issues. Since your "general theory of history" Is a unified organism, it seems to quite pointless to be restricted to commenting on a fingernail or an eyebrow.
Of course, there is inequality in this world and there will continue to be inequality. But is that inequality solely due to variation in merit or is a significant part of it due to continuing ethnic, religious, and gender discrimination?
You challenged me to come up with evidence that employment discrimination still exists. Believe me, it's not just an “assumption" on my part. The EEOC continues to find cases of employment discrimination. For example:
1. **EEOC v. Lacey's Place LLC Series Midlothian**: Filed 2022 . This case involved a gaming parlor chain accused of pay discrimination and retaliation against female workers. The lawsuit was resolved with a four-year consent decree providing $92,964 in monetary relief and requiring the company to implement anti-discrimination policies and training.
2. **EEOC v. Mechanical Design Systems, Inc.**: Filed 2022 . An HVAC company was sued for paying female project managers less than their male counterparts. The case was resolved with a three-year consent decree providing $210,000 in monetary relief and requiring the company to enhance its compensation and discrimination policies.
3. **EEOC v. Dell, Inc.**: filed 2020 . Dell was sued for paying a female IT analyst $17,510 less than a male colleague performing the same work. The EEOC sought back pay, compensatory and punitive damages, and injunctive relief.
4. **EEOC v. United Airlines, Inc.**: filed 2025. United Airlines settled a federal lawsuit for $99,000 for a former Asian American employee subjected to a hostile work environment based on his race and national origin.
I agree with you that market forces are a powerful influence for decreasing discrimination. I agree that DEI does not contribute anything positive. However, when we get rid of DEI how are we going to do a better job of reducing irrational discrimination in our country?
I have been very patient with you. I want a Substack with plenty of discussion with readers, but that is only possible when everyone stays on topic.
You have added an extended series of comments that go far beyond "fingernail or an eyebrow." And I have done my best to reply even though I made clear that we were off topic.
This article is about DEI.
Again, this article is not about "reducing irrational discrimination in our country." Nor am I interested in the topic. You are welcome to write about that topic in your own Substack.
This article is not about my general theory of history. I address that here:
You are welcome to add comments about it at the bottom of the articles.
Yes, the EEOC sues many corporations and wins. The Biden administration is particularly aggressive. Those rulings are not evidence of discrimination.
Unfortunately, the federal court system and bureaucracy view "disparate impact" as evidence of discrimination, but this is incorrect, for all the reason that I listed above. My guess is that the entire concept of disparate impact will go away from our court system very soon.
If so, suddenly, those EEOC cases will go away because they are all based on unsound legal logic that was driven by ideological assumptions.
Please keep any further comments in this article to specifically about DEI.
You have presented what you called a general theory of history. Where and how can we discuss that in its fullness, rather than a tiny fragment of it?
One of the strengths of your theory is that it is a whole with interacting parts. I know of no other Realm of intellectual discourse where there is no place to discuss “the big picture.”
I think that your reluctance to entertain discussions of the big picture is a devastating weakness in introducing your ideas to the world. Those who seek to understand the world, want to freely discuss a large theory, What if Columbus came back from his first voyage and told everybody that he would only discuss the ocean currents that affected his outward voyage today? He would Drive everyone crazy
I suggest that a good compromise is to put out a post once a month where any and all forms of discussion are welcome.
This topic is near and dear, given my multiracial family. A few months ago I took my son to the library. One of the children's books on display looked interesting, so I picked it up. It was ostensibly a book on racism.
Yet within the first few pages, the book made it clear, in no uncertain terms, that race was a creation of white people and that all racism was the fault of the white race alone. This is troubling, to teach children that one race is the root of all problems, the root of all historical racism.
This book wasn't aiming to help children understand the errors of racism. It wasn't aimed at healing the sins of the past, but instead at reopening a wound, and pitting all races against one. It sought to reinforce the divisions of skin pigment, not move past them.
As a child, I was taught that race does not define you. Very simply, you should be judged by your character and your merit, not by something as shallow as skin pigment.
Yet somewhere along the line, this became a justification for banning "gifted programs," force-hiring, based largely on skin color, and which later expanded to include many new minority groups.
The result is not diversity, it's conformity. People are employed because while they look different in the end, they think similarly. DEI initiatives, like many government programs, became the very thing they were trying to eliminate.
The contradictions in this ideology are irreconcilable, especially for a family like mine which is forced to straddle both worlds where these contractions are laid bare.
We need to get your ideas to someone in the Trump inner circle.
I agree that for most bureaucracies and businesses that a war on DEI will have everyone running for cover. The left can and will try to roll it back, but large companies will get tired of the war and pursue a more reasonable middle ground of no discrimination (rather than discrimination in favor of leftists groups).
It would be nice if all personnel decisions were made on a merit basis. How do you how will we be able to know that they are? It's one thing to mandate nondiscrimination and another thing to bring it about. How will organizations prove they are nondiscriminatory? On the other hand, how will individuals be able to prove that organizations are discriminatory?
A few years back, I did the research that showed that 70 per cent of US senators were white men. Are white men that much more meritorious than other Americans? I would like to live a merit-based society, but I see a large amount of evidence that America is not a merit-based society. I agree that DEI is not the way to get there. What is the way to get there?
Kathleen, on a somewhat humorous note, I wouldn't consider the position of "Senator" to indicate any level of merit in the first place.
Electability maybe, but certainly not competence.
I agree with you. I was attempting to point out that our society is still making many important decisions that are not based on merit. My quest is figure out how to reduce such irrational decision making in our culture. I believe that Dr Magoon correctly identifies merit as the only possible rational base for decision making. How can we promote merit? I think it starts by relentlessly identifying non-merit based decisions. I think the 70 white male senators is a good indication there is still gender and racial bias in our country. I'm trying to figure out how to how to reduce the amount of irrational decision making in our country, and I will explore that problem till the day I die. Another interesting fact: the percentage of African American football players vastly exceeds the percentage of African American football coaches. Is that strictly merit based?
You never need to apologize for making a joke around me. I wish I could give everyone who makes me laugh 10 Bucks. What is your venmo account?
Going forward, any comment that you add to this article that does not directly relate to DEI will be deleted.
It is a commenting rule that I already told you about and virtually everyone else but you abide by. I do not care whether you like the rule or not.
I have warned you numerous times that it is a commenting rule to stay on topic.
If you do not have the self-discipline to stay on topic, that is not my problem.
Again, your arguments assume that disparate outcomes between groups are a sign of a lack of Merit or a sign of discrimination. This is categorically not true.
You have an ideology that is looking for a problem, so of course, you see the problem everywhere.
Until you come to terms with that fundamental incorrect assumption, you will never be able to understand the human condition or be able to make reform proposals to improve society in this domain.
Individual humans are genetically different from each other, and those differences are not equally distributed between groups. The differences in genes create differences in intelligence, desires, abilities, and preferences.
Genetics, intelligence, individual preferences, culture, life choices, geography, work effort, career choice, and other factors easily explain differences in outcomes between groups.
Because of the above, very large differences in outcomes between groups are inevitable in any complex society.
As for how to get more Merit, here are a few articles that I have already written:
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/the-merit-of-merit-part-1
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/the-merit-of-merit-part-2-of-2
And here are some more articles that I gave you before, that you apparently refused to read:
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/why-achieving-equality-is-an-impossible
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/social-mobility-vs-upward-mobility
Yes, there is officially no discrimination in the United States at this point. But plenty of decisions by millions of Individual people are still not merit based. Is that OK with you? Obviously, society would be better off if every decision was merit based—how do we get to that place? That is the question that I am asking and I will continue to ask.
I am in total agreement that individuals are genetically different from each other. However, I do not believe that white men are genetically better endowed to be football coaches than black men. I also don't believe that white men are genetically better endowed to be senators than the approximate 230 million Americans who are not white men. I am simply using these disparities to show that I think there is some irrational, non merit based decision making going on in our country. I am deeply convinced that you are interested in reducing the amount of non-merit based decision making in our country.
I agree with you that strengthening
I think behind your statements is the assumption that Merit-based decisions will lead to roughly equal outcomes between groups. And the assumption that a lack of discrimination will lead to equal outcomes between groups. That is simply not true. Nor are disparate outcomes a sign of discrimination.
Until you accept Inequality as a fact, you will not understand the problem.
Inequality is the human condition. We cannot undo it, and the Left has been trying to do it without success for more than 200 years.
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/why-achieving-equality-is-an-impossible
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/social-mobility-vs-upward-mobility
It is not a question of "being nice."
Every organization in American society that exists in a competitive environment has a strong incentive to make merit-based decisions in hiring, firing, and promotions. If they do not do so, they will lose customers, investors, and employees.
The main deviations from merit are due to government policy mandating racial and gender discrimination. Deliberate discrimination to undo discrimination does not work.
I never said "mandate nondiscrimination." I said that deliberate discrimination is against the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and deliberate discrimination is the only way DEI can be implemented.
Disparate outcomes between groups are not evidence of discrimination. Voters choose the US Senate. That is not racial or gender discrimination. If you are concerned about gender representation in the US Senate, then you should run for the Senate yourself.
As for your question, I just gave you a long list of actions to repeal deliberate discrimination by the federal government in this article.
Here are more:
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/the-merit-of-merit-part-1
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/the-merit-of-merit-part-2-of-2
I do not believe that nondiscrimination will lead to equal outcomes for groups. I think it is highly probable it will lead to less unequal outcomes for groups.
A hundred years ago it was believed that men were rational, and women were irrational., thus it made sense for men to go to college. The barriers for a woman to attend college were massive. Now, that that discrimination in this area is virtually nil, more women than men are graduating from college. Nondiscrimination has led to a great change in outcomes for these two groups.
We have no idea what the outcomes for any group will be until the barriers of discrimination are removed.
Yes, we do know the outcomes because the barriers of discrimination have already been removed, except for DEI.
We still live in inequality.
One hundred years ago very few people, men or women, went to university. Now far more men go to university. Is that because of anti-male discrimination in the past and strong federal legislation against anti-male discrimination?
No, more men applied for university. The barriers to women going to college were not massive. Very few women even applied because they did not want to attend. And no federal legislation changed university admissions policies related to gender.
My grandmother went to university in the 1930s and faced no discrimination. That is actually where she met my grandfather. She got into the best university in the state in her first application. She had many female friends in university.
In all your comments, you have not given one concrete example of actual discrimination. You just assume that it exists, and assume that it explains a great deal of the unequal outcomes for groups.
Humans are genetically different from each other, and those differences are not equally distributed between groups. Genetics, intelligence, individual preferences, culture, life choices, geography, work effort, career choice, and other factors easily explain differences in outcomes between groups.
I go into more detail here:
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/social-mobility-vs-upward-mobility
There is no evidence to assume that discrimination is a major cause of different outcomes. At the very least, there is not enough evidence to justify massive government interventions in institutions.
These are complex issues that you have thought about for years at whereas my attention has been elsewhere. So, I do not expect to be able to give you the best possible argument about these matters.
You are expecting that market forces will reduce irrational racial and gender discrimination. I am in basic agreement with that observation. But I must observe that those market forces existed in the antebellum South and they did not make a dent upon the discriminatory practice of slavery. African Americans were freed from profound irrational discrimination only by government intervention.
Thus, I think history tells us that market forces can be fruitfully augmented by some forms of government intervention., though definitely not the mandated discrimination of DEI. I am as stalwartly against DEI as you are.
One example of a successful government intervention was the Fair Housing Act. To enforce it, teams of investigators applied for leases at apartments. The black applicant got turned down with the excuse that no openings existed. A white applicant came along minutes later and was offered an apartment lease immediately. In this way. irrational racial discrimination has been vastly reduced in our society. One of the downstream benefits is that white people have gotten used to living alongside African Americans and found that their fears of sharing an apartment building with African Americans was exaggerated. Now Americans are generally much more at ease living alongside people of different ethnicities.
Another way in which the federal government intervened against irrational discrimination was the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. Lilly Ledbetter, who worked at Goodyear Tire, sued the company for gender discrimination, alleging that she had been consistently given lower pay raises compared to her male colleagues over her 19-year career. This is another way in which the federal government intervened to promote merit-based behavior in our society.
In these two interventions, the federal government has sought to eliminate irrational discrimination. Neither of them is a case of DEI, mandating irrational discrimination to atone for past discrimination. I think both of these laws have increased the amount of fairness in our society, not the amount of irrational discrimination which is what DEI aims for.
Of course, every government intervention of this kind has to be carefully evaluated to see that it is actually working against irrational discrimination efficiently and effectively.
Here is a third instance: when I was in high school, I was athletic and I went to the school principal and asked why we could not have interscholastic sports for girls, just as there were teams for boys. He just stared at me blankly. Fortunately, the federal government intervened in the form of title 9, and now girls have the opportunities that I was denied.
Were women supposed to wait until market forces resulted in equal pay for those successfully doing the same job as men?
I hope I have made it clear that I am against DEI, but I know that government intervention has been very effective in reducing the amount of irrational discrimination in our society.
Finally, if the Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlaws discrimination, is it incorrect to say that it mandates nondiscrimination? Every state has a law that outlaws murder, doesn't that mean that the law mandates not murdering?
What say you?
A commenting rule in this Substack is that you must stay on topic. This article is not about getting rid of whatever discrimination may or may not exist in society.
The article is about getting rid of the set of DEI policies based on systematic and deliberate discrimination. If you are opposed to that, then I am fine with that.
Just so that you know that I am not avoiding answering your questions:
1) Slavery in the South before the Civil War is nothing like modern-day America. It was not a market economy.
2) I have no idea how effective the Fair Housing Act actually was, nor is it the topic of this article. Passing legislation and getting results are two different things.
3) There is no evidence that I know of that Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act got rid of actual discrimination. You just assume the effect. Disparate pay is not evidence to discrimination, nor is lower pay differences evidence of lesser discrimination.
4) Blacks actually prospered more economically in the 20 years before the Civil Rights Act than in the 20 years after. It is not clear how much effect the act actually had outside of abolishing de jure segregation in the Deep South.
5) Women's opportunities since 1960 expanded for the simple reason that women simply applied to universities and corporations. They were pushing on an open door. There was no federal legislation involved.
The very reason why the Left obsesses over the impact of Title 9 in college sports is because that is about the only federal legislation that clearly had an impact. You cannot credit women's opportunities to government legislation.
I would be perfectly happy if colleges abolished athletic programs.
6) Most importantly, you have not given any evidence today of actual discrimination other than DEI. And, yes, you are clearly assuming it because of disparate impact.
Michael Magoon Dec 12
If you are interested in history, you might want to subscribe to my Substack. I present a general theory of history that you likely have not seen before.
Kathleen Weber Dec 12
done. Can you give me a link to the post I should read first?
Michael Magoon Dec 12
Thanks for the question!
It inspired me to write a “table of contents” article with an ordered list of links to all the related articles on this topic.
It will be published on Dec 19.
I hope that you find it useful.
https://substack.com/profile/35840567-michael-magoon/note/c-81244898
This is how YOU Invited me to begin reading your substack. You invited me to read your entire corpus and if I cannot comment on the whole corpus what is the point? Although I think you have many valuable ideas, I also think your work fails to address many important issues. Since your "general theory of history" Is a unified organism, it seems to quite pointless to be restricted to commenting on a fingernail or an eyebrow.
Of course, there is inequality in this world and there will continue to be inequality. But is that inequality solely due to variation in merit or is a significant part of it due to continuing ethnic, religious, and gender discrimination?
You challenged me to come up with evidence that employment discrimination still exists. Believe me, it's not just an “assumption" on my part. The EEOC continues to find cases of employment discrimination. For example:
1. **EEOC v. Lacey's Place LLC Series Midlothian**: Filed 2022 . This case involved a gaming parlor chain accused of pay discrimination and retaliation against female workers. The lawsuit was resolved with a four-year consent decree providing $92,964 in monetary relief and requiring the company to implement anti-discrimination policies and training.
2. **EEOC v. Mechanical Design Systems, Inc.**: Filed 2022 . An HVAC company was sued for paying female project managers less than their male counterparts. The case was resolved with a three-year consent decree providing $210,000 in monetary relief and requiring the company to enhance its compensation and discrimination policies.
3. **EEOC v. Dell, Inc.**: filed 2020 . Dell was sued for paying a female IT analyst $17,510 less than a male colleague performing the same work. The EEOC sought back pay, compensatory and punitive damages, and injunctive relief.
4. **EEOC v. United Airlines, Inc.**: filed 2025. United Airlines settled a federal lawsuit for $99,000 for a former Asian American employee subjected to a hostile work environment based on his race and national origin.
I agree with you that market forces are a powerful influence for decreasing discrimination. I agree that DEI does not contribute anything positive. However, when we get rid of DEI how are we going to do a better job of reducing irrational discrimination in our country?
I have been very patient with you. I want a Substack with plenty of discussion with readers, but that is only possible when everyone stays on topic.
You have added an extended series of comments that go far beyond "fingernail or an eyebrow." And I have done my best to reply even though I made clear that we were off topic.
This article is about DEI.
Again, this article is not about "reducing irrational discrimination in our country." Nor am I interested in the topic. You are welcome to write about that topic in your own Substack.
This article is not about my general theory of history. I address that here:
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/my-theory-of-human-history-a-series
You are welcome to add comments about it at the bottom of the articles.
Yes, the EEOC sues many corporations and wins. The Biden administration is particularly aggressive. Those rulings are not evidence of discrimination.
Unfortunately, the federal court system and bureaucracy view "disparate impact" as evidence of discrimination, but this is incorrect, for all the reason that I listed above. My guess is that the entire concept of disparate impact will go away from our court system very soon.
If so, suddenly, those EEOC cases will go away because they are all based on unsound legal logic that was driven by ideological assumptions.
Please keep any further comments in this article to specifically about DEI.
You have presented what you called a general theory of history. Where and how can we discuss that in its fullness, rather than a tiny fragment of it?
One of the strengths of your theory is that it is a whole with interacting parts. I know of no other Realm of intellectual discourse where there is no place to discuss “the big picture.”
I think that your reluctance to entertain discussions of the big picture is a devastating weakness in introducing your ideas to the world. Those who seek to understand the world, want to freely discuss a large theory, What if Columbus came back from his first voyage and told everybody that he would only discuss the ocean currents that affected his outward voyage today? He would Drive everyone crazy
I suggest that a good compromise is to put out a post once a month where any and all forms of discussion are welcome.