Respectable Resentment

Assume for the purpose of this post that used car sales folks are exploitive and socially unproductive – they mainly trick buyers into spending more than they need. I don’t actually believe this, but I don’t want this post to be distracted by the issue of which professions are or are not socially productive.

So, imagine that you are competing to be a successful used car salesperson. But you find that you face real biases. Buyers are unfairly less willing to buy from you because you are female, or young, or the wrong ethnicity, or the wrong personality type. Or perhaps it is managers at used car sales firms who are biased against hiring your people. In any case, you have a legitimate complaint of bias, and you can legitimately resent that bias.

Even so, I don’t feel very sympathetic to your cause. Oh, on the margin I’d prefer that you win your battle against such biases. Its just that I don’t see it is as a high priority. Why? Because your cause is mostly selfish. Oh sure, the used car sales industry might be slightly more efficient if they weren’t unfairly biased against your sort. But by assumption what they’d get more efficient at is mostly exploiting ignorant buyers. Not a cause I can get behind.

Now imagine that you run a charity, and that while your charity is especially effective at its cause, e.g., reducing African poverty, it suffers from the bias that donors care more about using their donations to seem to help, than to actually help. You resent the fact that your charity doesn’t do so well because it isn’t as good at helping donors look caring. This time, I’m a huge supporter of your cause. Why? Because the bias you oppose is hurting us all, a lot.

So if you face gender bias getting hired as a cancer doctor, but for a type of cancer where doctors actually do little to help patients live longer, then I’m only mildly sympathetic. But If you suffer as a doctor because patients are biased to “do something,” and dislike your correctly telling them they are better off doing nothing, then I’m a huge fan and supporter.

If you suffer bias in academia because you are religious, but your chosen research area is mostly a pointless exercise in showing off math skills, I’m not going to get too worked up for you. But if your academic career suffers because your research is focused on a way to actually making important intellectual progress, which doesn’t happen to be a good way to show off math skills, I’ll shout your cause from the rooftops.

If you suffer from a bias based on the kind of person you are, you have a legitimate complaint. But it may not be an especially noble cause. However, if you suffer because of a common bias against doing a sort of thing that is especially useful, you may have a very noble cause. I can much more respect your resentment of a bias against doing good, than a bias against who you are.