# Are you a racist? Warning signs **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [July 7, 2014, 8:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-a-racist-warning-signs/692519 "2014-07-07T08:12:08Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 60
**Author:** ![Chief\_Pedant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a6a055/32.png) [@Chief\_Pedant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chief_Pedant)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2014, 1:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-a-racist-warning-signs/692519/1181 "2014-08-02T13:31:12Z")
More on the score gap problem wrt to [Medicine, Business and Law:](http://www.jbhe.com/news_views/51_graduate_admissions_test.html) \*"If these institutions were to choose their students solely on test scores and college grades, it is clear that in the intense competition for places at medical schools in the United States, African Americans would be at a severe disadvantage in relation to the highest scoring whites. Under these circumstances no blacks would be admitted to the nation’s most selective schools of medicine. The latest JBHE survey shows that blacks make up about 5 percent of the students at the nation’s leading business schools. If affirmative action admissions programs were to be discontinued, African-American enrollments at these schools might drop by 75 percent. Even if we drop the scoring level to 165, a level equal to the mean score of students enrolling at law schools ranked in the top 10 nationwide but not at the very top, we still find very few blacks. There were 108 blacks scoring 165 or better on the LSAT in 2004. They made up 1 percent of all black test takers. For whites, there were 6,689 test takers who scored 165 or above. They made up 10.6 percent of all white students who took the LSAT examination. The nation’s top law schools could fill their classes exclusively with students who scored 165 or above on the LSAT. But if they were to do so, these law schools would have almost no black students."\* Since SES opportunity does not erase these disparities, those of you jumping on the Racist Racist Racist Nazi bandwagon to condemn those of us who accept there is an stubbornly persistent pattern driven by our gene pool differences are apparently competely clueless about what the consequence of an egalitarian position will be: A big hurt on the black middle class when race-based AA is replaced by an “equal opportunity” mantra, and no reason is left to preferentially admit the most capable black students into opportunity for higher education in the US. Idiots. Well-meaning; earnest; sweet. But idiots nonetheless. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2014, 2:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-a-racist-warning-signs/692519/1182 "2014-08-02T14:42:35Z")
> [@Chief\_Pedant](#): > > We observe an outcome difference in self-identified races, but since we can’t identify the exact gene, there is “zero evidence” the problem is genetic. Exactly. There is a wealth difference between self-identified Native Americans and whites, but since we have no data on the genes for wealth, there is zero evidence this wealth gap is due to genes. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2014, 2:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-a-racist-warning-signs/692519/1183 "2014-08-02T14:44:45Z")
> [@Chief\_Pedant](#): > > Since SES opportunity does not erase these disparities, those of you jumping on the Racist Racist Racist Nazi bandwagon to condemn those of us who accept there is an stubbornly persistent pattern driven by our gene pool differences are apparently competely clueless about what the consequence of an egalitarian position will be: > > A big hurt on the black middle class when race-based AA is replaced by an “equal opportunity” mantra, and no reason is left to preferentially admit the most capable black students into opportunity for higher education in the US. > > Idiots. Well-meaning; earnest; sweet. But idiots nonetheless. No, the idiotic view is the one that thinks “if we just went back to the popular views on black intelligence from the 19th century, things would be better for black people”. That’s just nuts. Crazy, crazy, batshit, outside-of-reality-or-even-common-sense, nuttery. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2014, 2:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-a-racist-warning-signs/692519/1184 "2014-08-02T14:53:56Z")
On the political and social implications of this issue (not the science), let me ask **CP** this: Do you believe that the common societal view of the 19th and early 20th century that black people were less intelligent than white people contributed to the discrimination, oppression, and exploitation of the time? ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2014, 3:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-a-racist-warning-signs/692519/1185 "2014-08-02T15:04:07Z")
> [@Chief\_Pedant](#): > > Since I’m having trouble getting the SES admission problem penetrated through your cranium, I’ll let the [JBHE explain it:](http://www.jbhe.com/news_views/56_income-based_action.html) > > \*"Income-Based Affirmative Action Will Do Almost Nothing to Produce Greater Racial Diversity in Public Schools or in Colleges and Universities > > … > > Hope this helps you figure out where science is marching. Oh it is helpful all right. Helpful in showing all that beside the Chief having trouble with humor, memory and being a crank he has also the typical “timeline syndrome” that I have observed in many conservatives many times before. The study he parrots comes from 2005 and it is likely that there are issues with it as the latest research shows, the one I looked at was pointed out by the JBHE too and it comes from 2011. In context it also shows that race alone was not what the JBHE points as the most likely reason for the disparity. > [@](#): > > Tying test scores to educational outcomes has a remarkable e¤ect. Whether we use years of education or the associated mean-log earnings, we …nd no evidence of a racial component in the evolution of the black-white test gap. As they progress from kindergarten through seventh grades, blacks, on average, perform about as well on achievement tests as predicted by their initial performance. Further, most if not all of the racial di¤erence in achievement can be explained by a modest number of socioeconomic controls. Our findings suggest that the skill gap after kindergarten does not evolve in a race-specific way and that the test score gap may be primarily a sociodemographic gap. > [@](#): > > The fact that two different interval scales yield the same results gives us some confidence that our results would be robust to other such metrics. Our results give a new and important perspective on the black-white achievement gap. > > When measured based on predicted future outcomes, there is no racial component in the evolution of the achievement gap through at least the first eight years of schooling. **Previous results that show otherwise are likely to have been due to arbitrary scaling, measurement error, or inconsistent skill measurements**. ---
**Author:** ![Chief\_Pedant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a6a055/32.png) [@Chief\_Pedant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chief_Pedant)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2014, 2:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-a-racist-warning-signs/692519/1186 "2014-08-04T14:48:25Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > Oh it is helpful all right. Helpful in showing all that beside the Chief having trouble with humor, memory and being a crank he has also the typical “timeline syndrome” that I have observed in many conservatives many times before. > > The study he parrots comes from 2005 and it is likely that there are issues with it as the latest research shows, the one I looked at was pointed out by the JBHE too and it comes from 2011. In context it also shows that race alone was not what the JBHE points as the most likely reason for the disparity. Your study, you numbskull, is looking at the correlation between parental education and income level on test scores (through about the year 2000, you idiot) for (among other things) blacks and whites. It comes to a conclusion that income is a powerful predictor of test scores. Duh. This is not (please reread carefully my above posts) the question at hand for genetically-driven differences. That question is, “IF the parents have equivalent education and income, THEN will the black white/asian score gap go away?” The answer, Mr March of Science turnip brain, is “No.” NO. N dot O. Nein Every study looking at SES tier breakdown for races continues to show exactly the same pattern. Within every SES tier, the rank order for the academic skillset is always asian/white/black (particularly for math); the difference is profound between the asian/white and the black groups, and it is so profound that even a very high SES black student scores barely on par with a low SES white student. This was true 40 years ago, twenty years ago, ten years ago, and today. When educational opportunity for blacks improved, their average score gap closed, but within a given SES tier, the gap has never changed (and for 15 or 20 years, even the overall average gap has not budged). But we are not talking about trying to determine averages, or trying to figure out what good predictors for a given score outcome is. We are trying to decide whether or not equalizing opportunity for educational achievement erases the outcome gap. IT. DOES. NOT. NOT. EVEN. CLOSE. NOT. EVEN. WHEN. RICH. BLACKS. WITH. EDUCATED. PARENTS. AND. HIGH. OPPORTUNITY. COMPETE. AGAINST. POOR. WHITES. AND. ASIANS. WITH. LOW. OPPORTUNITY. NOT. HERE. NOT. ANYWHERE. NOT. NOW. NOT. EVER. It is very annoying to continue to make the same point when you are just too stupid to understand what the point is, and are constantly sucked into wordsmithing and happy-talk studies that do everything but explain–and even attempt to study–any non SES hypothesis for this stubbornly persistent pattern. Your ability to march in step with science is crippled by the inability of your neurons to crawl, much less march. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2014, 2:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-a-racist-warning-signs/692519/1187 "2014-08-04T14:51:14Z")
As with “cockroach,” you should probably avoid saying “nein” and talking about marching. Not to mention all the shouting. Also: don’t grow a funny little mustache. I’m just saying, **Chief Pedant** , that if you are offended when people point out that you’re regurgitating of Nazi-approved race science, you should stop encouraging the resemblance. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2014, 3:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-a-racist-warning-signs/692519/1188 "2014-08-04T15:16:20Z")
> [@Chief\_Pedant](#): > > The answer, Mr March of Science turnip brain, is “No.” NO. N dot O. Nein Still cranky indeed. 😛 > [@Chief\_Pedant](#): > > Every study looking at SES tier breakdown for races continues to show exactly the same pattern. A clear lie as the study showed. "Further, most if not all of the racial difference in achievement can be explained by a modest number of socioeconomic controls. Our findings suggest that the skill gap after kindergarten does not evolve in a race-specific way and that the test score gap may be primarily a sociodemographic gap. " > [@Chief\_Pedant](#): > > It is very annoying to continue to make the same point when you are just too stupid to understand what the point is, and are constantly sucked into wordsmithing and happy-talk studies that do everything but explain–and even attempt to study–any non SES hypothesis for this stubbornly persistent pattern. “When measured based on predicted future outcomes, there is no racial component in the evolution of the achievement gap through at least the first eight years of schooling. Previous results that show otherwise are likely to have been due to arbitrary scaling, measurement error, or inconsistent skill measurements.” > [@Chief\_Pedant](#): > > Your ability to march in step with science is crippled by the inability of your neurons to crawl, much less march. Piffle, we already saw your lack of humor, lack of memory (hello reused to death tired point about being like Gore and forgetting that you indeed are prone to get stuck in the same old, same old), lack of looking at how new research does show that past studies have to be looked at and then your Crank Magnetism and Timeline syndrome are at very high levels. Being like a pseudo-Nazi is the \*\*least \*\*of your problems. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Economist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/c89c15/32.png) [@Evil\_Economist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Economist)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2014, 3:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-a-racist-warning-signs/692519/1189 "2014-08-04T15:30:27Z")
> [@Chief\_Pedant](#): > > Your study, you numbskull, is looking at the correlation between parental education and income level on test scores (through about the year 2000, you idiot) for (among other things) blacks and whites. It comes to a conclusion that income is a powerful predictor of test scores. Duh. > > This is not (please reread carefully my above posts) the question at hand for genetically-driven differences. > > That question is, “IF the parents have equivalent education and income, THEN will the black white/asian score gap go away?” > > The answer, Mr March of Science turnip brain, is “No.” NO. N dot O. Nein Yeah…there are more variables in the world than education and income. Also, your post left spittle flecks on my monitor–please apologize. ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2014, 3:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-a-racist-warning-signs/692519/1190 "2014-08-04T15:38:21Z")
> [@Marley23](#): > > As with “cockroach,” you should probably avoid saying “nein” and talking about marching. Not to mention all the shouting. Also: don’t grow a funny little mustache. I’m just saying, **Chief Pedant** , that if you are offended when people point out that you’re regurgitating of Nazi-approved race science, you should stop encouraging the resemblance. Have you heard of the “Hitler ate sugar, therefore it is wrong to eat sugar” fallacy? ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2014, 3:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-a-racist-warning-signs/692519/1191 "2014-08-04T15:42:20Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > Have you heard of the “Hitler ate sugar, therefore it is wrong to eat sugar” fallacy? Hitler believe in a pseudoscientific racial heirarchy for intelligence (and other traits), and this was pretty integral to the evil stuff he did. His sugar eating, on the other hand, had nothing to do with the Holocaust. So your point here is pretty silly. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2014, 4:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-a-racist-warning-signs/692519/1192 "2014-08-04T16:00:27Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > Have you heard of the “Hitler ate sugar, therefore it is wrong to eat sugar” fallacy? Have you ever learned that it is not always a fallacy? This not sugar what we are talking about, other evidence shows that the race ideas of the Nazis were wrong, hopelessly wrong and inhumanely wrong. ---
**Author:** ![Great\_Antibob](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47c2d/32.png) [@Great\_Antibob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Great_Antibob)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2014, 4:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-a-racist-warning-signs/692519/1193 "2014-08-04T16:01:15Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > Have you heard of the “Hitler ate sugar, therefore it is wrong to eat sugar” fallacy? Have you heard of the “if it quacks like a duck, looks like a duck, and has the DNA of a duck?” test? ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2014, 4:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-a-racist-warning-signs/692519/1194 "2014-08-04T16:20:45Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > Have you heard of the “Hitler ate sugar, therefore it is wrong to eat sugar” fallacy? I could recap the thread and explain this yet again, or you could go back and read it yourself. I’m lazy, so I prefer the second one. ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2014, 4:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-a-racist-warning-signs/692519/1195 "2014-08-04T16:23:35Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > Do you believe that the common societal view of the 19th and early 20th century that black people were less intelligent than white people contributed to the discrimination, oppression, and exploitation of the time? I’m sure it played a significant role. But this sounds like appeal-to-consequences: “If A is true, then it would lead to racism, which is unacceptable. Therefore A cannot be true.” ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2014, 4:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-a-racist-warning-signs/692519/1196 "2014-08-04T16:27:17Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > But this sounds like appeal-to-consequences: “If A is true, then it would lead to racism, which is unacceptable. Therefore A cannot be true.” This has _also_ been dealt with repeatedly in this thread. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2014, 4:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-a-racist-warning-signs/692519/1197 "2014-08-04T16:37:10Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > I’m sure it played a significant role. > But this sounds like appeal-to-consequences: “If A is true, then it would lead to racism, which is unacceptable. Therefore A cannot be true.” It’d be nice if you read the thread you’re commenting on. We are challenging the assertion that black people have inferior genes for intelligence on two counts – Firstly, it’s bad science and counter to the evidence, and secondly, it’s racist and would lead to bad things for people. ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2014, 4:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-a-racist-warning-signs/692519/1198 "2014-08-04T16:42:26Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > It’d be nice if you read the thread you’re commenting on. **We are challenging the assertion that black people have inferior genes for intelligence** on two counts – Firstly, it’s bad science and counter to the evidence, and **secondly, it’s racist and would lead to bad things for people.** The second count, bolded, is the very definition of appeal to consequences. > **[Appeal to consequences](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_consequences)** > > Appeal to consequences, also known as argumentum ad consequentiam (Latin for "argument to the consequence"), is an argument that concludes a hypothesis (typically a belief) to be either true or false based on whether the premise leads to desirable or undesirable consequences. This is based on an appeal to emotion and is a type of informal fallacy, since the desirability of a premise's consequence does not make the premise true. Moreover, in categorizing consequences as either desirable or unde In... ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2014, 4:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-a-racist-warning-signs/692519/1199 "2014-08-04T16:43:55Z")
This is how a thread gets to 24 pages. ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2014, 4:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-a-racist-warning-signs/692519/1200 "2014-08-04T16:45:30Z")
> [@Marley23](#): > > This is how a thread gets to 24 pages. And unless people get emotion out of the way, it may well go to 48. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-a-racist-warning-signs/692519.md?page=59) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-a-racist-warning-signs/692519.md?page=61)