Disparate Impact Thinking Is Destroying Our Civilization

Heather Mac Donald

Manhattan Institute

Heather Mac Donald is the Thomas W. Smith Fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal. She earned a B.A. from Yale University, an M.A. in English from Cambridge University, and a J.D. from Stanford Law School. She writes for several newspapers and periodicals, including The Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and The New Criterion, and is the author of several books, including The War on Cops: How the New Attack on Law and Order Makes Everyone Less Safe and When Race Trumps Merit: How the Pursuit of Equity Sacrifices Excellence, Destroys Beauty, and Threatens Lives.

The following is adapted from a talk delivered on February 15, 2024, at a Hillsdale College National Leadership Seminar in Naples, Florida.

The most consequential falsehood in American public policy today is the idea that any racial disparity in any institution is by definition the result of racial discrimination.

If a cancer research lab, for example, does not have 13 percent black oncologists—the black share of the national population—it is by definition a racist lab that discriminates against competitively qualified black oncologists; if an airline company doesn’t have 13 percent black pilots, it is by definition a racist airline company that discriminates against competitively qualified black pilots; and if a prison population contains more than 13 percent black prisoners, our law enforcement system is racist.

The claim that racial disparities are proof of racial discrimination has been percolating in academia and the media for a long time. After the George Floyd race riots of 2020, however, it was adopted by America’s most elite institutions, from big law and big business to big finance. Even museums and orchestras took up the cry.

Many thought that STEM—the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics—would escape the diversity sledgehammer. They were wrong. The American Medical Association today insists that medicine is characterized by white supremacy. Nature magazine declares that science manifests one of “humankind’s worst excesses”: racism. The Smithsonian Institution announces that “emphasis on the scientific method” and an interest in “cause and effect relationships” are part of totalitarian whiteness.

As a result of this falsehood, we are eviscerating meritocratic and behavioral standards in accordance with what is known as “disparate impact analysis.”

Consider medicine. Step One of the medical licensing exam, taken during or after the second year of medical school, tests medical students’ knowledge of anatomy, physiology, and pathology. On average, black students score lower on the grading curve, making it harder for them to land their preferred residencies. Step One, in other words, has a “disparate impact” on black medical students. The solution, implemented last year, was to eliminate the Step One grading disparity by instituting a pass–fail system. Hospitals choosing residents can no longer distinguish between high and low achieving students—and that is precisely the point!

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“Let me tell you something New Yorkers, never in my life have I had a problem that I did not see an ending to — I don’t see an ending to this,” New York Mayor Eric Adams said Wednesday night in his opening remarks at a town hall-style gathering in Manhattan. “This issue will destroy New York City.”

The Mayor is right. What he does not seem to comprehend, however, is that that is the entire point of this administration’s immigration policies. It is to destroy America as we know it. This government is not run by individuals looking to serve the population of the United States and safeguard its citizens. It is, at the upper levels, run by radicals who despise this country and everything it stands for and are looking to radically restructure it along clearly Marxist lines.

This government’s official policy is not to control the border or the flow of migrants into this country. The official policy of this government is to guarantee “safe and orderly migration.”

“The Biden-Harris Administration is committed to safe, orderly, and humane migration around the world, including to the United States. We commit to working with other countries to enhance cooperation to manage migration in ways that are grounded in human rights, transparency, non-discrimination, responsibility-sharing, and State sovereignty.”

state.gov

The illegals from all over the planet that are destroying New York and so much of the rest of our country are not just somehow managing to find their way here. They are being moved across Central America on what amounts to a conveyor belt of camps, often linked by contract bus service, run by a wide range of non-profits. Much of the funding for all this comes from the U.S. Government.

You are paying to bring these people here. And, then you are paying to maintain them once they arrive. You are being replaced, and you are footing the bill for the entire operation.

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