Persistent, Institutionalized Inequality

I've commented before on the curious irony of conservatives complaining about their lack of representation in academia and the claim that it is due to a persistent, institutionalized bias in favor of liberals but to the detriment of conservatives. This puts conservatives in a rather difficult quandary.

As Kieran explains at Crooked Timber, either they must accept that conservatives just aren't good enough to make it in academia, or they must allow for the possibility of persistent, institutionalized bias against other groups - like racial minorities:

[Andrew Sullivan] raises and then dismisses the most parsimonious explanation for this inequality, namely that conservatives are just not as clever as liberals and so don't get hired. ... But why not? As a paid-up sociologist with a left-liberal outlook, I have no trouble believing, as a starting point for empirical enquiry, that entrenched inequalities based on social categories (Male/Female, White/Black, and so on) are to be found all over the place. Inequality gets institutionalized via many mechanisms - Chuck Tilly's book Durable Inequality provides a handy taxonomy - and there's a lot we don't understand about it.

But for a given case, by temperament I'm more inclined to believe that one of these mechanisms is at work rather than, say, the fair return to human capital secured by rational choices in an open market. The trouble is that conservatives, by and large, tend to believe that people get what they deserve in life and that labor markets - whether for food service workers, corporate consultants, assistant professors or any other occupation - shake out fairly. When confronted with evidence of systematic racial or gender inequality, for example, they'll go to considerable effort to argue that it's differences in natural talent, acquired skills or personal preferences that are driving the outcome.

If conservatives aren't getting the academic teaching jobs that they deserve, and there aren't any formal rules which bar the hiring of conservatives, then we must conclude that there are more subtle and quiet factors at work: personal bias that becomes entrenched, winks and nods about "our type of people" being preferable, claims that "personality clash" must be avoided, etc. Perhaps one might argue that while these things are experienced by educated conservatives, they never happen to women, minorities, gays, etc. - but that would be so transparently hypocritical that I doubt that many will offer it.

No, if conservatives wish to be seen as the victims of real but subtle discrimination, then they must allow that others are victims of the same. Next comes the question about what should be done. Is it better to simple let the situation go as it is, or should some positive... maybe affirmative steps be taken to reduce the bias that creeps into the hiring process?

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• Guide to Ethics and Morality