OxBlog

# Posted 7:56 AM by Anonymous

RICHARD COHEN ARGUES that substantial racial inequality and anti-Semitism are over and that it's important to "insist" that different racial/ethnic/religious groups are not the same. Of course, he notes that equality before the law should be upheld. However, the examples he gives of different-ness all have to do with the law. (Blacks apparently are more likely to speed and those who pose a threat to airline security tend to be Muslim.) Still, despite Cohen's reassurance that he is not proposing doing away with the fourteenth amendment, his arguments are, to say the least, unsettling. I think we can all admit that certain racial, religious, cultural, etc. differences exist. What troubles me, however, is Cohen's call to "insist" on these differences. Sure many complain that they are tired of going out of their way to avoid offending others, and perhaps we can even all agree that admitting certain differences doesn't mean we have to throw affirmative action out the window, but I'm not quite sure what benefits an insistence on differences will bring. Assuming that questions of equality before the law are off the table, what form, exactly, would this "insistence" take? Cohen's examples of differences were, after all, both legal questions, essentially of racial/ethnic profiling. I think we can pretty much all agree that there are some differences between groups, however, I think that in light our spotty past, it's not really the worst thing in the world to stress that really, we're more the same than different.

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