Right, no need to complicate it with little things like, ‘implementation’, as in, ‘how do you accomplish it?’.
Ahhh, now you catch on grasshopper.
I am saying they do not, and that the “hidden, unintentional bias” theory is a very weak argument.
How, on a math exam, is there enough “hidden, unintentional bias” to account for the substantial difference in black/white/asian performance? How, on MCAT exams given 4 years on after college entrance exams to the same college, does this bias present itself? How, on post-medical school licensing exams given 4 years on again after 8 years of exactly similar exposure to material, is the “hidden, unintentional bias” a reasonable explanation? How, when you take wealthy blacks being outscored by poverty-stricken whites on the SAT, is there “hidden, unintentional bias” accounting for the difference?
The notion that equal opportunity produces equal results at a group cohort level across white/black/asian populations is a testable hypothesis. It has been tested and found wanting, and no effort anywhere in the world of which I am aware has demonstrated otherwise.
Over the years, various theories advancing every notion but the obvious one–fundamental differences between any two relatively self-grouping populations–has been suggested and clung to. None have held up to scrutiny.
There are those on this board–perhaps most of society–who would hold that the Inuit somehow cannot be fundamentally (genetically) different in potential from the Kalenjin, and that given the same opportunity, we would see equal representation on the Marathon podiums of the world. Nonsense. Well-trained Inuit given high opportunity would do better than poorly trained Inuit with low opportunity, and many Inuit would crush many Kalenjin, but on average, the Kalenjin have the Right Stuff for that skillset.
You are free to find it yourself: the NYTimes posted the full text of the test up here. But be rigorous about your claims - on the infamous “regatta” IQ test questions, black students actually performed worse after the supposedly culturally biased questions were removed.
You seem to think this is some sort of bizarre aberration; you are mistaken. This is actually a well-understood, and perfectly unbiased, statistical phenomenon. As you get further away from the mean, a small difference in the average of two populations gets magnified the farther you go out. For example, there is a moderate difference in average height between men and women. But if we screen for people over 6’3", you’re going to get vastly more men than women - a very “disparate” result!
And you imply that an individual can’t be discriminatory against his own group?
I’m not trying to be antagonistic here, in fact I agree with most of what you said; I don’t wish for there to be any policy that results or implies in the castration of any sort of responsibility of success (does that make any sense?). I agree with your assertion that the individual need to take some responsibility with his own success in this society, but I take issue with your negation that there are external factors that prevent personal success. The negative messages that society gives (this is a generalization, of course) do, in fact, have an effect as far as personal ambition and achievement goes.
While I agree that with you that claims of racial discrimination should NOT be used as an excuse for personal failure, I believe that this issue is far more complex than a simple “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” message.
It is vastly more complex than that, I agree.
Our human nature causes us to self-identify with groups. In the US–the world over, really–this self-identification falls along race cohorts historically, with other cohorts (gender, profession, income-level…) serving more as secondary groupings. Our primary groupings are our close relatives and our clan–those we see as extensions of our close relatives. I think this is an atavistic drive.
Amelioration of institutionalized racism does not suddenly remove the atavistic drive to associate with your clan simply because that particular cohort no longer suffers the same degree of discrimination. And so all of the innate disparities within a clan tend to be preserved as well as all its historic dysfunctions.
The confounding problem for AA is that it removes neither innate disparities nor cultural dysfunction. I find in ridiculous to find a way to work in “white guilt” as somehow part of the problem here; I don’t see the typical white individual walking around with a big complex. I do see white–and black–refusal to recognize that large cohorts are differently enabled as part of the problem.
If the premise that equal opportunity will produce equal results among all cohorts is wrong, all policies and predications based upon that premise are likely to be less effective as remedies for inequities. If we had a large cohort of Chief Pedants and we decided that they were under-represented in mathematical fields, no amount of money and effort would get that cohort its share of math PhDs. I cannot pull myself up by a mathematical bootstrap that does not exist.
At a societal level we must work to eliminate the dysfunctions of any cohort alongside efforts to make absolutely sure no barriers exist for those who are capable of achieving more. We have to work toward a society in which self-identification with color-based lines becomes less important than who we are, and what we are capable of, as individuals.
I think it’s the people who are saying, “It’s not that simple.”, that are oversimplifying.
The article linked in the OP was hardly a ‘pull yourself up by the bootstraps’ message. It was a message saying that the debate in the AA community needs to be related to personal responsibility and personal empowerment. That’s not the same as simply saying, “Pull yourself up by your bootstraps.”, but saying, “Ok, you’re here, now what?”
But there is no such thing as *exactly equal *opportunity in the real world; particularly when one group is discriminated against, and expected to do less well. More importantly, your theory is simply based on faith. You have little to no credible proof of what you claim except a sense of knowing, and stupid analogies about American sports.
This is simply false. Plenty of theories and explanations have held up. They, individually, don’t explain every situation, but, collectively, those theories are what shape the understanding of the issue in the mainstream scientific community. Despite your claims, people of all sorts have been trying to prove black people are genetically defective for far longer than sociologists and other scientists have been trying to find other explanations. So far, the scientists have have won.
How about instead of trying to proselytize, you actual present some evidence of your theory.
The problem here is that affirmative action doesn’t level the playing field. It doesn’t help people do better, it says, “Even though they can’t perform at a competitive level, lets pass them up the chain anyway.”
The worst thing is it sets em up for failure.
If I am a medicore math student, but because of AA, end up at a college where everybody else has a leg up math skill wise, at best I am going to be fighting harder just to keep up. At worst, I’ll fail out or drop out. And I’ll be surrounded by all these whities that ARE doing better than me, which would just make me think “hey, those white folks might be right”…or perhaps I just develop an oversensitivity to my relatively crappy math skills. And its gonna give the white racist another life experience to confirm their beliefs. It might even turn a few that werent racist mildy racist.
That aint helping no one.
IMO thats way worse than sending someone to a school/job that might not be as top notch, but the person has a chance of keeping up, or even ending up at the front of the pack.
Now, of course, invidual experiences will be all over the map, but from a statistical point of view this could be a real problem IMO.
Sigh. Cite?
My hunch is that if Affirmative Action produced dropout rates of 90% in colleges and universities, there wouldn’t be an outcry. Its a problem precisely because its working as intended. I think, deep down, it enrages whites that Sally Jenkins can get into Med School with a 25 MCAT score and become a doctor. No. I don’t think it enrages them. It ineffably infuriates them.
- Honesty
It’s going to take a lot more than a few generations before we have a Morlock/Eloi thing going. There is also regression to the mean. But even if what you say was true, there will always be smart people born into lower socio-economic strata, and the purpose of affirmative action is to find them and let them contribute up to their high level of ability. The alternative is to assume that smart but poor kids will somehow magically rise above their surroundings without help. It might happen, but I’d rather this kid becomes a smart judge than a smart dope dealer.
We already have affirmative action for the rich, where well to do kids who may not be as smart or competent as their parents get all the advantages, probably make more than they should, and even become President. 
It appears you don’t understand the difference between affirmative action and quotas. Democrats managed to increase the representation of minorities by the simple expedient of going out and looking for candidates outside the country club. Simple.
I’m not saying that the reason Republicans don’t have this representation is bias, though; it might be just their policies, and thus the relatively low number of candidates. In fact they do seem to be practicing affirmative action, unfortunately the best they can come up with are Keyes and Steele.
First, the population taking this test were already selected from the general population, in being firefighters. Second, do you think the test takers are far from the mean in test taking ability, or even intelligence. No slap at firefighters, but it is not a job geniuses go for. Well above the mean in strength and bravery, definitely.
The interesting question would be with regard to the test: what is the distribution of answers with respect to race. If black firefighters uniformly missed questions, then I’d agree there was no bias. If they missed a subset of questions, and did as well as white firefighters on others, then I think we’d have a problem.
I know enough about data mining to know you’d can’t find the answer by a quick glance at the test.
Let me get this straight: are you saying that intelligence differences between blacks and whites are of this order of magnitude? That if you plot the distributions you’d get similar separations? Obviously equal opportunity does not mean equal results: it is going to take a lot of time - and a lot of attention to the early environment, which is why I’m for socio-economic affirmative action.
This is not a test to become a fireman, but to become a fire officer, which is a managerial job and has higher returns to intelligence than your general fire grunt. And as you pointed out, firefighters are not particularly selected for intelligence, so the population taking the test is less likely to be pre-selected.
I’m also glad that once faced with the actual test, you agree that “biased testing” is a difficult position to prove. This implies that, as with other difficult-to-prove claims, we should not automatically assume that the tests must be biased.
My problem is this.
If nobody can point to how the test actually IS biased, what are we sopposed to do?
You cant fix it if you cant tell what the problem is.
Oh wait, we will just say “your group sucks at taking test, but yeah your just like everybody else” :rolleyes:
The only solution appears to me to be to apply quotas to the test results, which IMO is absurd, unfair, and ultimately counterproductive to even the people its supposed to help.
And it appears you don’t understand the concept of a smiley face.
That is the intent of affirmative action, and what affirmative action means literally. This resulted in job postings being put in minority oriented news papers (and being a major source of revenue for them). The problem is that like in the firefighters case, if your hiring did not reflect the same percntage as the race of the applicants, or you continued to have less minorities in your employ, then the onus was on you to show that you weren’t disciminatory. I used to do college recruiting for my company and we were told to mark any resume we got from a woman or African America with a special code so that they could be heavily recruited.
On the other hand, there were and still are tons of companies that really do actively discriminate.
I prefer the idea of basing affirmative action and other programs on income or other race-blind criteria. It is fairer, will have similar results, and will not pit poor white men against women and minorities. I think the latter is key. If you are an out-of-work white male, or a white male college student from a poor family, there is no one out there advocating for you.
You draw the conclusion that group performance on these tests, which are devoid of obvious bias and predict job performance well, may not always be the same. Then you evaluate candidates as individuals. Not hard, folks.