Matters of Race, Matters of Mind (Glenn Loury & Sam Harris)

If you are getting great grades and you have great test scores and you're black, there is no door barred to you in this society ... You take the top 20% of any corner of culture—whether it's journalism, academia, science, media, Hollywood, any place that you'd want to be where high status would accrue to you for being there—it is easier, not harder, if you're black at this moment.

The world I think I want to live in is where race and other differences between groups has the moral and political status of hair color currently. We just simply don't have the data on how many blondes got into Harvard last year, and nor would anyone think to have that data. We don't want the data; nobody cares. How do we get there with respect to skin color?

I honestly don't know what I believe about affirmative action ... At one point, it was absolutely necessary, and it was obviously a lever that could be pulled to right a moral wrong and a social ill. But I think now we're at a point where it's creating its own negative effects. To name only one, it requires obvious racism against Asians at this moment to be enacted.

I do think we have to recognize that sectarianism, real sectarianism, in the 21st century doesn't make any intellectual or moral sense.

I don't see anyone arguing that we need more Jews in the 100-meter dash at the Olympics. And there are no Jews alleging anti-Semitism or the fact that Jews are not well represented on the podium at the Olympics.

The truth is I have as close to 0 interest in racial differences in anything as I think you can have. I'm just not interested in the topic.