Posner in The New Republic and me in VDARE.com had both scoffed at Gladwell's theory that the reason "car salesmen quote higher prices to otherwise identical black shoppers is because of unconscious discrimination. They don't realize what they are doing. But buried prejudices are changing their responses in the moment."
Posner and I had pointed out that auto dealers aren't tragic victims of their own hidden bigotry. Instead, they are relying on their years of experience at milking different kinds of customers for the highest possible price.
Thus, they make higher offers to blacks and women because they've found they can often manipulate them into paying more.
That's part of a comment by Steve Sailer (who' an idiot, but sometimes a clever one) on this thread.
Sailer agrees both that (a) car salesmen solicit higher prices from blacks and women, and (b) that they do this because their experience has taught them that they can get away with it. What I don't understand is how b is supposed to show that there's no bigotry, conscious or otherwise, at work.
His idea, I assume, is that even though the car salesmen have made a conscious decision to treat people differently on the basis of race and gender, this decision isn't evidence of bigotry because...
No, I just can't figure out how to finish that. I'm stumped.
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