Why both the left and the right are wrong about "affirmative action" (a class-first leftist perspective)

     It is pretty much a fact that in the USA, as well as in most countries, if you treat people equally ("blindly") in their applications for certain positions (for example, college admissions), some ethnic groups will outperform the others, on average. For example, in most states in America, if you do not discriminate between races in college admissions, White and Asian Americans will hold a higher proportion of the places in good colleges, compared to their proportion in the general population, while other ethnicities such as Black Americans will hold a lower proportion of places in colleges compared to their proportion in the general population.

    If the admission tests are indeed fair, then this must imply something about the specific individuals applying for those positions. If certain minorities are, on average, with many exceptions, more likely to do worse on admission tests, then those minorities have a poorer ability, on average, with many exceptions, to do worse on the specific abilities that those tests measure. How do most western politicians respond to this problem?

    The very far-right/alt-right suggests that there is a biological predisposition of certain races to outperform other races in measures such as intelligence because of DNA or some other thing. This is clearly racist and has been debunked many times.

    The "mainstream right-wing" usually thinks that there is a socially constructed predisposition of certain groups of people to outperform other groups of people in measures such as intelligence, and that these are caused by the individuals themselves. For example, if Black people do worse on admission exams than White people, then Black people study less than White people, and it's their fault, and they should study more. The message of conservatives to minorities (or virtually everyone) regarding admission exams (or virtually anything) is: "stop being lazy and pull yourself up by the bootstraps".

    The mainstream left, like the democratic party of the US and most so-called "social democratic" or "socialist" parties of Western Europe suggest that if certain ethnic minorities do worse on admission exams, then those minorities should be given an advantage in their admission, such as to make their admission easier compared to other groups, until the outcome is the same. For the mainstream left, if Black people do worse than Asian people, on average, on admission exams, then it is perfectly okay to leave them just as uneducated, we just need to make their admission easier. Such is the infamous "bigotry of low expectations": if minorities are less capable than other groups, then we need to be easier on them.

    What virtually no one suggests is a purely class-based/economic-based solution to identity-based (race, etc.) problems, without sweeping these identity problems under the rug. This is why "class-first leftism" is not "class-only" but class first. If group 1 does worse than group 2, then they are more uneducated people in group 1, and maybe we should fix that? How about we give better education to group 1 without discriminating against group 2? The left does not like that, if group 1 does worse than group 2, then it's perfectly fine to leave them like that, and it's also perfectly fine to discriminate against group 2! The ideology of the mainstream left is: "when you are low in life, bring other people down to your level!".

    The mainstream right-wing conservatives (US Republicans, etc.) moved from being actually less explicitly racist than the mainstream left-wing in the past 10-15 years, which is actually honorable in of itself, but their proposed solution to the problem is not much better. If group 1 does worse than group 2, then conservatives think that it's mostly their fault and that we should not help group 1 lift themselves up to the level of group 2, they should not be helped by the government, they should help themselves.    

    For most mainstream conservatives, for instance, if Black people do worse on a lot of metrics compared to White people (ex: arrested by the police more), then it means that Black people willfully engage in undesirable behavior more (ex: they do more crime due to cultural/peer-pressure, etc.) and the problem is with them and they should stop. While it is honorable that they now became the party willing to end overt racial discrimination, they turn a complete blind eye to the fact that behavior in our own control only explains a part of the variation in outcome and not all of it, and that most of it is likely due to factors out of our control, such as economic conditions. By economic conditions I do not only mean "poverty" but everything from job opportunities in your area to the amount of people that can help you with networking in your social circle.

    Now if we sum this all up, the verdict is clear: neither the mainstream left nor the mainstream right want to fix any systemic issue (yet the former loves to flaunt labels like "systemic" racism/sexism/etc. with horrible solutions for it). The mainstream left thinks that if minorities are more uneducated, we should leave them like that and perhaps even discourage other ethnic groups from studying better because why try if someone's just gonna steal your place in college due to affirmative action? The mainstream right thinks that if minorities are more uneducated, partially or even mostly due to factors outside their control (economic conditions), then we should also leave them like that because it's their fault and they should pull themselves up by the bootstraps. How about we fix the education system such that such issues stop arriving in the first place?

    Variated outcomes between various groups are often a symptom of a deeper systemic issue*, not the issue in of itself. Mainstream leftism likes to ignore the systemic causes of varied outcomes and do a form of "symptom-control", as if you were to have a tooth infection and the left would prescribe you a painkiller and actively discourage you from an antibiotic. In the most ironical manner, they then claim to fight against "systemic racism" while exacerbating it. Mainstream conservatism likes to ignore both the causes and the symptoms of systemic issues. The message of both types of mainstream politicians is clear: "there is nothing deeper to see here!" and "we will not help you lift yourself up!".

    There is only one group of beneficiaries from such mainstream politics: big business, as addressing the economic conditions that cause identity politics would eventually end in some form of wealth-redistribution, and they want to keep their entire wealth. It is no surprise that they endorse "affirmative action", as this will keep the working class layman people fighting between themselves instead of going against them. It reminds me of that meme where the rich guy keeps 100 cookies to himself and gives 5 cookies to a white and a black man, and the black man is angry at the white man because the white man has 3 cookies while the black man only has 2.

    Mainstream neoliberal centre-left politicians do not want to address these issues, they seem to collectively suffer from a sort of pathological self-defeating masochism that psychoanalysis teaches us is inherent to most human beings to a certain extent: "I like solving problems, so in the absence of problems in my life I have to unconsciously create some so that I have what to solve". In the case of mainstream leftism: "I like solving racism, so in the absence of racism I have to create it. Even in the presence of racism, I am afraid that we might solve it too quickly so I have to (unintentionally?) create even more of it". This is why the formula of leftist identity politics is: "Help as little people off as possible while pissing off as many people off as possible". It teaches us to give almost nothing to people, but that almost nothing will be split unequally among the population in order to cause envy and division. This is not how you "solve" the alt-right, this is how you create the alt-right.

    How would an "economic solution" to identity politics look like? Well, if the war on drugs affects almost everyone badly, but disproportionately affects black people more, then fix the war on drugs and it will help everyone, but it will disproportionately help black people more, and whoever else was disproportionately affected by it. If the police system fucks everyone over, but black people disproportionately, then fix the police system and it will disproportionately help those affected by the previous one the most. If ethnicity 1 is, on average, poorer than ethnicity 2, then help poor people, and you will disproportionately help ethnicity 1 more than ethnicity 2, while also taking into account to not give money to the exceptions of rich people in the former and to give money to the exceptions of the poor people in the latter. 

    It's that simple. Class-first leftism doesn't mean ignoring issues such as racism, sexism or homophobia, it means solving them indirectly through economic policy, without any need for "affirmative action", "positive discrimination" or other euphemisms for revenge. But the identity politics advocates do not like this, they do not want equality, they want revenge.

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*: With an exception for when there is a biological difference between the groups, such as in sexual differences. If men and women perform differently in various metrics, that is one exception where different outcomes may or may not be an indicator of deeper systemic issues, since biological differences can explain either some or all of the variance in outcome.