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I posted earlier about the social privileged theory versus the Functional theory concerning individual and (less significantly but more noticeably) group disparity and alluded to its relevance to politics.

I just noticed that the Brooking journal has a piece on Affirmative action, where they justified it as rectifying ongoing discrimination:

If we take seriously the promises of employment, education, and sustenance made in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the discrepancies in racial well-being in the United States noted by the United Nations report demand affirmative government attention. It seems implausible that such marked differences would occur with no discrimination lurking in the background.

This justification of Affirmative action and Diversity Quotas, contrasts quite nicely with the Functionalist view.

'Social Consequences of Group Differences in Cognitive Ability':
"Perhaps the biggest consequence of adhering to social privilege theory is that it has progressively radicalized the definition of discrimination. According to social privilege theory,there would be no racial inequality in a fair, non-discriminatory society. The continuing existence of racial inequality is therefore proof of continuing discrimination. The fact that racial inequality permeates nearly all aspects of American life means, then, that racial discrimination permeates nearly all aspects of American life. The fact that overtly discriminatory acts are rarely observed today means only that discrimination has become hidden from view. That seeminglySocial Consequences of Group Differences sincere, well-meaning whites deny being bigoted means only that their bigotry is unconscious and they refuse to admit it. That black students perform less well on average than their white class mates means that their teachers must be racist, and the latter seem to prove their guilt if theysuggest that their black students sometimes have more difficulty learning the curriculum. Thefact that some racial-ethnic groups disproportionately fail to meet objective race-neutral standards is proof of further insidious racism, namely, that these standards were established withthe intent to favor the dominant class while appearing to do otherwise. According to social privilege theory, high-achieving groups (at least European whites) are therefore automatically guilty of profiting from an oppressive social system, and low-achieving groups are being robbedof what is rightfully theirs. Every inequality becomes more evidence of entrenched evil. The talk of brotherhood 50 years ago is replaced by talk of reparations and retribution; the hope of mutual respect among the races by mutual resentment."
Gottfredson, 2004.

For whatever reason, differences show up quite a bit. How we look at them effect out interpretation and, potentially, the ways we think it proper to address them.

That said,

What do people think about the functionalist position. I keep going back and forth on it, not because I think it's wrong, but because it seems morally questionable -- though I can't decide if that sense is just politically correct dogma or something I should take seriously. For those interested, here is Mike Levin's 1997 defense of it.