When Race Trumps Merit: How the Pursuit of Equity Sacrifices Excellence, Destroys Beauty, and Threatens Lives is the latest book by bestselling author Heather Mac Donald.
Anti-woke people like to define "equity" as "proportional representation" but I'd like to quibble with that. I teach at a community college in California, and therefore get to hear about equity constantly. Though rarely defined, what I've gathered from looking at our policies and talking with coworkers is that equity is better defined as a verb, or maybe a process with a specific goal.
Equity is THE PURSUIT of policies, processes, changes in outlook, and so on with the GOAL of proportional representation. This is what makes it so difficult to combat, because if you question its outcomes, you'll be accused of questioning its intent, regardless of whether the policies being pushed lead to the intended outcomes. I would argue, however, that even the PURSUIT is wrong, for reasons similar to was mentioned in the video.
Different organizations have different missions. As mentioned in the video, the purpose of medicine is to heal the sick. But no, now the purpose should be Social Justice. What about education? The purpose of education is the pursuit of knowledge/truth. No, no, the purpose of education is now Social Justice. Take any organization or discipline, and the woke are trying to shift its purpose to Social Justice. What is VERY often overlooked on the left in general (not just the woke left) is an assessment of the competence of people to carry out whatever grand vision they have in mind. Is there any reason to believe that a chemist, such as myself, would be a competent social worker? No? Then why am I diverting my time from what I'm good at (teaching chemistry) to something I have no training in?
Even if the pursuit is right, however, it should be noted that one cannot effectively pursue a goal without having checks along the way that they can use to assess whether they're reaching that goal. In my experience, there are only certain allowed ways to think about the pursuit of proportional representation, and those are the ways that are to be tried. If we try accepted strategy X and it doesn't give the desired results, we're never allowed to question whether X was a good strategy. Instead, the response is, "If we did X longer and harder then it would have worked", or "things would have been so much worse if we weren't pushing X". Either way, the follow-up is, "there is yet undiscovered unfairness that is keeping us from achieving the results X was meant to achieve". Under no circumstances can one wonder, "maybe X wasn't a good strategy?".
Excellent reply. As a logic instructor, I have observed a sea-change in the type of administrator employed in California community colleges. They use a vocabulary that is universally equivocal, ambiguous, euphemistic, and deceitful. They manage to speak and say nothing through the classical Sophist approach. They are intellectual clones and cowards perfectly suited to lockstep authoritarian leadership. According to a trusted former student who works close to top management, if a faculty member is persistently critical of management boondoggles, administrators look for ways to remove that faculty member. They enlist campus police to co-manage an investigation into the course content and classroom interactions. In some cases, they enroll students to directly agitate and report on faculty who do not comply with the new Social Justice agenda. The goal is to purge higher education of traditional liberal values. At the college in question, even STEM is now under pressure to lower standards in order to improve graduation rates.
Most Americans don't understand how the woke are using the word "equity." They think it means "fairness" as in the dictionary. But the woke are using equity to mean the current discrimination of some groups of people based on the past discrimination of other groups of people. And this does not stop since historically marginalized people are historically marginalized forever. Peter Boghossian has produced an excellent video defining the woke use of equity. The video has the best definition of equity I've seen. I have provided the Boghossian equity video and discussed it in my Substack titled "Woke Word Games" at https://2026.substack.com/p/woke-word-games
Excellent interview! Loved the idea of Peter being Mr Lefty--Heather’s responses were excellent in helping to frame thinking about these issues. I bought the book and have read the first few chapters but I confess that I have to wait a few days to finish it. It is SO deeply disturbing to me what has happened. It affects my mood drastically and I find I need to unplug for awhile to be a better mate, friend, and employee,etc. But, thank you Heather, so much for your work--it is truly appreciated by many, I am sure!
I don’t think Peter played a very good woke leftist in this roleplaying exercise. It seemed like his actual goal was to take what he believes they think and find the underlying basis for those ideas. It’s an important exercise to examine why one believes what they do, but it really doesn’t work unless you have a true believer articulating those ideas.
I would LOVE to see Peter engage with Vincent Lloyd, not as a debate but rather as an exploration of Lloyd’s ideas. Lloyd is one of the only woke people I’ve seen who has been willing to talk openly about this stuff from the perspective of someone who believes it.
Peter, I know you’re busy but if you truly do want to have a conversation with an actual woke leftist who is willing to talk, Lloyd is probably your best bet. He was on the Glenn show a month or two ago and it was fascinating. What brought him to the attention of Glenn and John was this article, which is also worth a read: https://compactmag.com/article/a-black-professor-trapped-in-anti-racist-hell
Thomas Sowell will agree: Darwinian principles of science always apply in the world of nature. We are now surviving on momentum that is disappearing. Those who understand and respect nature will understand Nietzsche's transcultural critique of nihilism and sustain their respect for knowledge, skill, and moral objectivism. The rest will perish. I hope we don't go down with them.
One of my logic students, Jessica M., commented: "There seem to be good reasons why the Democratic Party is symbolized by a donkey."
Yet another fascinating interview on this Substack. I like Peter's assessment that the basic need is to make the better argument. That, and the gratitude I have for courageous and intelligent and active people like Heather and Peter and crew, gave me some hope.
Anti-woke people like to define "equity" as "proportional representation" but I'd like to quibble with that. I teach at a community college in California, and therefore get to hear about equity constantly. Though rarely defined, what I've gathered from looking at our policies and talking with coworkers is that equity is better defined as a verb, or maybe a process with a specific goal.
Equity is THE PURSUIT of policies, processes, changes in outlook, and so on with the GOAL of proportional representation. This is what makes it so difficult to combat, because if you question its outcomes, you'll be accused of questioning its intent, regardless of whether the policies being pushed lead to the intended outcomes. I would argue, however, that even the PURSUIT is wrong, for reasons similar to was mentioned in the video.
Different organizations have different missions. As mentioned in the video, the purpose of medicine is to heal the sick. But no, now the purpose should be Social Justice. What about education? The purpose of education is the pursuit of knowledge/truth. No, no, the purpose of education is now Social Justice. Take any organization or discipline, and the woke are trying to shift its purpose to Social Justice. What is VERY often overlooked on the left in general (not just the woke left) is an assessment of the competence of people to carry out whatever grand vision they have in mind. Is there any reason to believe that a chemist, such as myself, would be a competent social worker? No? Then why am I diverting my time from what I'm good at (teaching chemistry) to something I have no training in?
Even if the pursuit is right, however, it should be noted that one cannot effectively pursue a goal without having checks along the way that they can use to assess whether they're reaching that goal. In my experience, there are only certain allowed ways to think about the pursuit of proportional representation, and those are the ways that are to be tried. If we try accepted strategy X and it doesn't give the desired results, we're never allowed to question whether X was a good strategy. Instead, the response is, "If we did X longer and harder then it would have worked", or "things would have been so much worse if we weren't pushing X". Either way, the follow-up is, "there is yet undiscovered unfairness that is keeping us from achieving the results X was meant to achieve". Under no circumstances can one wonder, "maybe X wasn't a good strategy?".
Excellent reply. As a logic instructor, I have observed a sea-change in the type of administrator employed in California community colleges. They use a vocabulary that is universally equivocal, ambiguous, euphemistic, and deceitful. They manage to speak and say nothing through the classical Sophist approach. They are intellectual clones and cowards perfectly suited to lockstep authoritarian leadership. According to a trusted former student who works close to top management, if a faculty member is persistently critical of management boondoggles, administrators look for ways to remove that faculty member. They enlist campus police to co-manage an investigation into the course content and classroom interactions. In some cases, they enroll students to directly agitate and report on faculty who do not comply with the new Social Justice agenda. The goal is to purge higher education of traditional liberal values. At the college in question, even STEM is now under pressure to lower standards in order to improve graduation rates.
Wow. This is chilling.
Thoughtful helpful comment
Most Americans don't understand how the woke are using the word "equity." They think it means "fairness" as in the dictionary. But the woke are using equity to mean the current discrimination of some groups of people based on the past discrimination of other groups of people. And this does not stop since historically marginalized people are historically marginalized forever. Peter Boghossian has produced an excellent video defining the woke use of equity. The video has the best definition of equity I've seen. I have provided the Boghossian equity video and discussed it in my Substack titled "Woke Word Games" at https://2026.substack.com/p/woke-word-games
Excellent interview! Loved the idea of Peter being Mr Lefty--Heather’s responses were excellent in helping to frame thinking about these issues. I bought the book and have read the first few chapters but I confess that I have to wait a few days to finish it. It is SO deeply disturbing to me what has happened. It affects my mood drastically and I find I need to unplug for awhile to be a better mate, friend, and employee,etc. But, thank you Heather, so much for your work--it is truly appreciated by many, I am sure!
I don’t think Peter played a very good woke leftist in this roleplaying exercise. It seemed like his actual goal was to take what he believes they think and find the underlying basis for those ideas. It’s an important exercise to examine why one believes what they do, but it really doesn’t work unless you have a true believer articulating those ideas.
I would LOVE to see Peter engage with Vincent Lloyd, not as a debate but rather as an exploration of Lloyd’s ideas. Lloyd is one of the only woke people I’ve seen who has been willing to talk openly about this stuff from the perspective of someone who believes it.
Peter, I know you’re busy but if you truly do want to have a conversation with an actual woke leftist who is willing to talk, Lloyd is probably your best bet. He was on the Glenn show a month or two ago and it was fascinating. What brought him to the attention of Glenn and John was this article, which is also worth a read: https://compactmag.com/article/a-black-professor-trapped-in-anti-racist-hell
Thomas Sowell will agree: Darwinian principles of science always apply in the world of nature. We are now surviving on momentum that is disappearing. Those who understand and respect nature will understand Nietzsche's transcultural critique of nihilism and sustain their respect for knowledge, skill, and moral objectivism. The rest will perish. I hope we don't go down with them.
One of my logic students, Jessica M., commented: "There seem to be good reasons why the Democratic Party is symbolized by a donkey."
Yet another fascinating interview on this Substack. I like Peter's assessment that the basic need is to make the better argument. That, and the gratitude I have for courageous and intelligent and active people like Heather and Peter and crew, gave me some hope.
Cheer me up?!?