ONLY "EQUALITY" IS CORRECT

Sowell says (Excerpts): The reigning dogma of our time is equality -- and anything that seems to go against it creates an automatic response, much like the conditioned responses of Pavlov's dog....

It is an undeniable fact that different groups have different performances across a whole spectrum of activities. Does anyone seriously believe that whites usually play basketball just as well as blacks? Is anyone surprised when Asian American youngsters walk off with science prizes, year after year?...

Those who are politically correct may try to claim that these are all "stereotypes" or "perceptions" but hard data show the best selling beers in America to be those created by people of German ancestry. It is the same story on the other side of the world, where China's famed Tsingtao beer was also created by Germans.

What upsets some people is the inference that performance differences reflect innate differences in potential. But there are huge differences in all the things that turn potential into performance.

Back in the early 19th century, a Russian official reported that even the poorest Jews there somehow managed to have books in their homes and "their entire population studies," while books were virtually unknown among most of the surrounding population.....

Recognizing the equal humanity of all peoples, and a need to treat everyone with decency and compassion, is very different from insisting on a dogma that their performances are all equal.

It is not just a few readers but government agencies and the highest courts in the land that dogmatize against any recognition of differences in behavior or performances among groups. Statistical differences in outcomes automatically fall under suspicion of discrimination, as if the groups themselves could not possibly be any different in behavior or performance.

Any school that disciplines black boys much more frequently than Asian American girls can be risking a federal lawsuit, as if there could not possibly be any differences in behavior among the children themselves. Employers can be judged guilty of discrimination, even if no one can find a single person who was discriminated against, if their hiring and promotions data show differences among ethnic groups or between women and men.

The biggest losers from these dogmatic notions are people who very much need to change their behavior, but from whom that crucial knowledge is withheld by their "leaders" and "friends."