Daran over at Creative Destruction argues:
The other category is one of alledged positive benefits, such as enhanced educational and career opportunities. The argument usually goes that systemic racism/sexism tends to exclude women and POCs, whether directly (an equally capable and qualified woman etc., isn’t given the position because she’s discriminated against directly) or indirectly (she never becomes qualified, and/or she doesn’t apply for the job, etc). Therefore there are more places available for white men such as myself.
I accept the premise but not the conclusion. It seems to me that for this argument to be valid, there needs to be another premise – namely that the total available opportunity is fixed, or at least is not significantly diminished by the systemic racism/sexism. This I do not accept. I would argue that giving women and POCs, greater access to the productive economy would create more educational and career opportunities for everybody.
So far, so good. When feminists make this argument, it’s usually a response to the argument that feminists want to hurt men. Then:
If you agree that allowing immigrants etc., (mostly POCs if you so class Hispanics), access to the US productive economy would improve it to the net benefit of American citizens, then it is incoherent to simultaneously argue that allowing women and POCs., who are already citizens greater access to that economy would not benefit white men too. And if you allow that white men will benefit overall, then you abolish the second category of alledged benefit from systemic racism and sexism. These -isms do not give white men men greater educational and career prospects. They just give us a larger share of a much smaller cake.
You could apply this argument to every dominant group up to and including slaveowners in the deep South, although you might have a hard time doing it with as straight a face as Daran manages.
Why this is somehow a logical contradiction, I’m not sure. Daran is just talking about two different kinds of benefit. He’s gone from one example–a man benefitting from sexist hiring practices at his law firm–to another–that man and all other men being disadvantaged by the poor use of women’s talents in a shared economy. If I as your landlord steal your security deposit, I’ve just damaged an economy whose integrity is worth far more to me. That doesn’t mean I’m not ahead several hundred dollars of your money.
Few people argue that institutional discrimination is better than egalitarianism, or that it doesn’t impair that society’s ability to function in any way. Feminism, like any social justice movement, attempts to make people aware beyond the short term, and to impress upon them a moral obligation to discard selfish short-term perspectives. That’s because those limited benefits tend to be what people are most concerned with.
This “disbenefit” business allows Daran to pretend that current benefit is far less important than hypothetical benefit in evaluating relative status. It also allows him to pretend that men have no interest in maintaining the small-cake system, when the truth is that they do have that interest–it’s merely overwhelmed by a larger calculus they aren’t paying any attention to.