If he wants hard-core evidence, there are two academic studies that I think have very understandable punchlines in the context of employment-related discrimination:
When researchers sent out a bunch of resumes with identical backgrounds and achievements, but randomly assigned African-American- or White-sounding names, White names received 50% more callbacks for interviews.
Bertrand, M., and S. Mullainathan. 2004. Are Emily and Greg More Employable Than Lakisha and Jamal? A Field Experiment on Labor Market Discrimination. American Economic Review 94 (4): 991–1013.
When jurisdictions adopted “ban the box” policies that prevented employers from asking about job applicants’ criminal records, the result was that young, low-skilled black men were less likely to be employed. Put bluntly, when employers were prohibited from asking individuals about their actual criminal records, employers just assumed that young black men were much more likely to have been a criminal, and discriminated against them accordingly.
Doleac, J. L., and B. Hansen. 2020. The Unintended Consequences of “Ban the Box”: Statistical Discrimination and Employment Outcomes When Criminal Histories Are Hidden. Journal of Labor Economics 38 (2): 321–374.
The reason I advocate openly discussing white supremacy and “free market” ideas is because they are the firmament that produces the Brett Kavanaugh’s and other “elite” conservatives. Such ideas should be methodically ripped to shreds at their roots.
On the other hand, maybe the job has already been done sufficiently, because it’s a lot harder to find Brett Kavanaugh’s than it used to be, and it’s a waste of everyone’s time to educate the lagging 15% of the conservative elite as to why their view of the world is so deeply wrongheaded.
This has already been said in this thread, but I feel the need to jump on the bandwagon.
I’m more or less on board philosophically with “Defund the Police”. We just need to rename that stat. It’s basically going to turn into Defund the Police = No Police = Anarchy = Trump Win.
The Democrat Party position is that cops should shoot people in the legs. I don’t think we have to worry about the platform being No Police. If you’re going to worry about what Trumpkins make out of what Dems say, well, it’s like Obamacare => … => Stalinist Russia no matter what is said.
Someone tell me if I need to add this to my Trump speech bingo card. I mean why would the greatest president since Lincoln giving a speech on race hesitate to condemn everything about this guy?
Because it doesn’t matter how easy it is. It will happen anyway. And the police should be defunded/abolished and people with that position put more pressure on the government to do something than people calling for blue ribbon commissions to study police violence.
It’s not fucking idiotic, because your median low info voter doesn’t really give a fuck about the accuracy of a jobs report. At least some might get spooked by “No Police”.
And even if it may happen anyway, the easy with which it happens and the efficacy with which it sticks will probably have some impact. Probably not a lot, but Trump won by some razor thin margins. No need to just give up EV.
You expect anyone - Biden, De Blassio, Cuomo, Garcetti - to defund the police when we aren’t even willing to ask for it? People go in the streets demanding another Warren Commission and they come back and say “I’ll do you one better, let’s defund the police”. ???
I just think it’s better to lose that particular battle by 50pts instead of 60pts. It’s a blowout either way, but it’s a bit less ground to make up in other areas.
