An interesting exchange took place this week on Twitter between Mark Cuban, former owner of the Dallas Mavericks, and Christopher Rufo. The topic of their exchange was diversity, with Cuban claiming that diversity was our greatest strength and Rufo claiming that the diversity movement is un-American. Neither man put it exactly that way, but that is the simple summary. Cuban thinks diversity makes things better, while Rufo thinks the push to impose diversity makes everything worse.

The exchange was amusing for the simple reason that Cuban clearly does not understand the issue, beyond knowing the slogans which he spasmodically repeats when the topic is raised. At one point he seems to be saying that the three branches of government are the President, Congress, and the bureaucracy. Everyone had a good laugh at his expense, as it became clear in the thread that Mark Cuban is not the brightest bulb in the bunch, despite being a billionaire.

To some degree that is the point of these mini dramas. The hoi polloi gets to feel good seeing one of their champions best who they think is the enemy. Mark Cuban puts a lot of effort into insulting normal people, so normal people love it when he has his pants pulled down on Twitter or anywhere else. Rufo clearly understands the mechanics of the Diversity Industrial Complex, so he easily swats down the trite claims made by Cuban throughout the thread.

More important, these exchanges frame the debate in such a way that alternative points of view are systematically excluded. Strip away the drama and what we have here are two similar views on race. One side says that racial inequality is the result of racial exclusion by whites and therefore must be remedied by forcing whites to include nonwhites in their activities. The other side says it is immoral to notice race at all, so forcing people to be race-conscious in this way is immoral.

Despite appearing to be opposites, both sides are making the same moral claims with regards to race. Rufo thinks using race to make decisions is immoral, while Cuban thinks whites use race to make decisions, which is bad. In other words, both men agree that making general observations about race is immoral. The difference is that Cuban thinks whites do it all the time, while denying it, and Rufo thinks the diversity crowd is guilty of that which they accuse white people.

Both men are not disagreeing about ends, but about means. This is the model of politics that has prevailed in America since Gettysburg. Both sides agree on the ends but disagree on how best and how quickly to get there. As we see with the race issue, it is not always clear that they both agree on the ends, but once you strip away the rhetoric it is clear that at the minimum, they agree with one another as to the morality of each other’s goals with regards to race.

This is an important bit of conditioning that arises from the selection pressure within the American political dynamic. People approved to be on the stage are conditioned to first evaluate the goals of people seeking to get on stage. If their goals fall within the moral framework of the stage owners, they can debate them. Mark Cuban read portions of Rufo’s book, probably because people he knows read it. He knows Rufo is not advocating for things that are proscribed.

Of course, we know Rufo has put an enormous amount of effort into making it clear that he is not like those bad people who think race is a real thing. This is where you see the selection pressure. This is why he focuses on the goal of organizational success, rather than the details of race. He argues that diversity programs make colleges and corporations worse, by preventing them from hiring the best. You see, in a color-blind society we get a true meritocracy!

Interestingly, if both sides of this debate want to see organizations like Harvard maximize their potential, then they would have to support what is a subtle truth about how the sports world evaluates talent. If you are a white guy who plays cornerback in football, the evaluation of you will be much stricter than if you are black. Tall white guys find it much tougher to standout in basketball. Asian guys are assumed to be poor athletes, so they tend to be ignored.

What happens in sports is what the legendary quantitative blogger La Griffe du Lion described as the theory of differential cutoff. The extremely short version of that post is that those from groups that objectively underperform should be held to a higher standard than those from groups that objectively overperform. In other words, hiring a Jewish guy as your lawyer, even though he went to a state school, is a better bet than hiring the black guy from an elite law school.

Note that this reality lurks beneath the diversity arguments. Mark Cuban assumes people make these judgements about race, thus making it more difficult for qualified nonwhites to gain access to positions for which they are qualified. Put another way, an ancient truth is what haunts the diversity industry. They may not have the smarts to understand it, but they feel it. Note also that it haunts the arguments of people like Rufo, who also seek to banish this ancient truth.

The most important takeaway in all this is that both sides agree that you do not have the right of free association. Cuban thinks you should be required to hire a black guy to meet the demands of diversity, while Rufo thinks you should be required to hire the black guy as long as he meets the objective criteria for the job. Your subjective qualifications and individual preferences are not important. Both men wish to dictate your choice based on their version of reason.

Ultimately, that is the point of framing the debate this way. Nowhere in their exchange is a consideration of preference or free association. They are arguing about which version of reason should be imposed on you, when in reality they are debating whose clerics will decide your punishment for having unacceptable preferences. It is a good reminder that politics is never about facts and the reasonable conclusions from those facts, but about who will impose their morality on whom.

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