Is this all just another roundabout way to say that black people don’t value education? If so just explicitly say it.
That isn’t really the point but they don’t. What is needing to be done about it?
The point is that expecting outcomes to equate or closely resemble opportunities is a pipe dream.
I’m all for pre-k stuff- it does help. But like you say, you can’t actually force equality of opportunity. Different parents expect different things from their families, and those things may or may not make sense or contribute to success. Or some parents may not even expect much from their children at all, I suppose.
The best we can do is take some point- say… kindergarten, and try to even everyone out before they reach that point. But that is just trying to get everyone to the same starting line when the gun sounds. What happens during the actual race is highly dependent on your actual car (your innate traits), your pit crew (your parents/family/friends), and the track itself (the overall community you live in). Most of those can’t really be controlled or modified by anyone external. For example, nobody can make you smarter, or change the values your community or family holds.
So what are we to do? Should we do something? I mean, if a family doesn’t value education, there’s little that the school district or anyone else can do to change that- those children are unfortunately primed for a life of underachievement. Similarly, families that highly prioritize education are going to do better overall, regardless of what the school district does or doesn’t do. And it’s kind of not anyone else’s business either.
If there is evidence of racial discrimination then we ought to address the racial discrimination rather than cancel a program if we otherwise think the program is favorable.
Let’s say there is evidence that promotion within the special forces of the military is heavily influenced by racial discrimination, I think we should probably root out that racism rather than get rid of the special forces.
As an asian I see the anti-asian bias in the gifted programs where teacher recommendations are important. Some teachers see asian students as an invasive element in their suburban teaching environment. I see principals who on the one hand like the fact that their school performance is improving but feel pressure from the white parents whose kids would have made it into the GT programs but for the crowding out effect that asians present.
This is exactly what the OP article is about. The selection process is open to everyone. But one group is dominating the admissions process. Poor asian kids have crowded out mostly white students over the past 40 years and now they want to change the process. Blacks and hispanics were always underrepresented at these schools but now whites are under-represented as well. It’s funny how the political will to change admissions standards doesn’t materialize until white kids become underrepresented.
Stuyvesant used to be 75% white, 20% black/hispanic and 5% asian. Now it is 80% asian, 15% white, and 5% black/hispanic. The ratio between white students and black/hispanic students has not really changed. What has changed is that they now collectively only account for 20% of the school instead of 95% of the school. The black/hispanic population didn’t drop by 66%, the non-asian population dropped by 75%. The vast majority of seats taken by asians were taken from white kids.
If graduation were the primary criteria, we could pretty much just open up Harvard law school to half the kids that take the LSAT and Johns Hopkins medical school to half the kids that take the LSAT. I have no doubt that they could reach graduation with passing grades in large numbers. But if you have to select who to invest those limited educational resources, you should in fact look at who is most likely to do the most with those degrees and that training.
How would you decide who goes to Stanford Law School and who goes to Catholic Law School? I suspect if you took the entering class at Catholic law school, the overwhelming majority of them would be able to pass every class and get a degree.
And how would you evaluate students for a limited number of seats?
Can you take a moment to watch the video attached to that article?
Test performance is related to a lot more than performance on tests. There is no scientific doubt that tests actually measure something that is useful to measure. There is about as much scientific doubt on that as there is on global warming.
You can argue that you are not particularly interested in the thing that is being measured but you can’t really argue that test scores only measure the ability to score well on tests.
That’s an interesting way of putting it. Particularly as you ref the LSAT. Since lawyers often get to choose the area of law they specialize in, can you imagine any potential benefit to having people of diverse backgrounds and experiences pursuing legal careers? Might, say, someone who has “lived experience” with discrimination have some value to add that may actually make them a much more valuable addition to a law school class than a child of privilege (in every possible sense) who scored a point or two… or even five higher on the LSAT?
Sure and part of it may also be difference in culture.
You have seen studies that show that asian students study harder than white students. Why does it surprise us that asian students do better academically than white students? Why do we try to equalize results when there is not a equality in effort and sacrifice?
You might very well say that the difference between whites and hispanics is the result of white privilege, a white centric society, or even outright discrimination and racism. But when comparing a poor asian immigrant student whose parents don’t speak english with a poor hispanic immigrant student whose parents don’t speak english, what unfair advantage does that poor asian immigrant’s child have over the poor hispanic immigrant’s child that would justify taking a seat away from the poor asian kid to give it to the poor hispanic kid?
You need more than equality of opportunity, you need equality of input to get equality of output.
It is disingeuous to entirely ignore the effects of culture too.
I mean, why can’t it be a result of both?
Sure we should do what we can to eliminate discrimination
Sure we should try to eliminate the effects of poverty
But we should not be equalizing result to eliminate the effects of effort and sacrifice
We should not be eliminating the effect of discrimination and poverty for some races but not for others just because other members of that race are “doing just fine without the help” that is small comfort to the poor asian kid that keeps getting the shit end of the stick because middle class asian kids are doing pretty well for themselves.
Of course they would (over large populations), but this is not the only possible source of inequalities in outcome.
But it would not be preposterous to expect those with less initial capital to outperform those with more capital if those with less capital exerted more effort researching and analyzing the stock market.
Asians are 6% of the population. There are about half as many asians as blacks in this country. We may be inconvenient to some narratives but are not an exception to some otherwise universal truth. If your theories cannot explain asians then your theory is incomplete, flawed or both.
Noone is blaming blacks and hispanics for not making the painful sacrifices and exerting the herculean efforts of asians in pursuit of education. You can only judge a culture by its own history. Chopstick asians come from cultures that sometimes have millenia of history where education was the primary vehicle for social mobility. This makes it a lot easier for asian communities to make investments in education that almost seem like leaps of faith. One difference I see between asian cultures and the mainstream culture here is the notion that academic ability is just as easy to develop as athletic ability. I have run into a lot of white folks who seem to think that math ability is something you have to be born with like left handedness. These same folks will teach their kids to throw lefty and switch hit because they believe those things are malleable. This is just anecdotal but there is a noticable difference in culture.
I don’t believe that poor blacks work any less than poor whites but we still see a pronounced difference in outcomes. So yes, there is something else at play and that is probably the result of societal racism. But asians are not outperforming whites because of racism.
Just as there is significant science behind the fact that testing measures a real thing that is worth measuring, we also have a fairly high degree of confidence that stereotype threat is a real thing. The above article is not denying that racism exists only that racism is not what helped asians excel academically. The article is saying that while you may have issues with the imperfections of meritocracy, there is no better system.
That’s the whole point. You would be putting kids in a better situation. Whether by ending the drug war and proactive policing and changing rules for housing that would allow a father to stay in the home, or increasing wages/ UBI and transit so that a parent (single parent or two) can spend more time in the home, and less at a MW job and in transit. That would put the kids in a better situation without stripping parents of their rights or taking the kids from them.
Also, as I said, increasing the availability of school to be a place to go to study, socialize, eat, and maybe even sleep.
And you haven’t established your thesis that there is a differing culture that values poverty over success.
Maybe we should actually try to even out opportunity before writing people off as a lost cause.
But why would a family not value education?
It is not because they value poverty, it is that they have not seen or experienced the benefits of an education. They have been told that they are not good enough to qualify and succeed, so they may as well not even try.
Is this life of underachievement due to the inability of this child to achieve, resulting from a long term impact of undervalued high school education on their core abilities? Or, is it due to this child being ranked as a low status student, placing them into a… track… of lesser opportunity?
For some reason, the Catholic Law student won’t get as many lucrative job offers as the Stanford Law student, despite being every bit as able to pass the classes and get the degree. I suggest that being able to pass the classes and get the degree should be at the very core of the concept of meritocracy.
Because they don’t want to be seen as acting white.
The difference between stanford and touro are not 5 points on the lsat.
On a scale that goes from 120 to 180 (a range of 60), the average touro lsat score is 148, the average stanford lsat score is 171.
And yes, there is an advantage to having diversity in law, and the police and medicine. But you don’t have to go to stanford to be a lawyer. You don’t have to go to stanford to be a district attorney or a judge.
Meritocracy does not stop at meeting some minimum standard. A first year lawyer fresh out of law school makes about $190K per year at the top firms. Others are effectively unemployed. Just getting a law degree is not that meaningful in law. Medicine is different but the admissions criteria is also much higher for medical school. Almost anyone can go to law school.
That paper doesn’t say what I think you wanted it to say. I’m wondering if you just googled “acting white”, and went with the first academic looking thing that you found, as there are other studies that do much more directly address the concept of stereotype threat, and that actually relate to the black community, rather than a paper about the latino community and tangentially touches on it as a comparison between ethnic groups.
As to your contention that stereotype threat is a significant part of “black culture”, that is something that is often claimed, but is never actually established.
When I was in school, the over achievers were made fun of as nerds or as suck-ups or teacher’s pets. And I went to a pretty much all white school.
What you call out as a cultural thing is just how pretty much anyone acts when jealous of the success of others.
If it is over represented in the black community, (which is not established, only asserted) it is because so many have access to fewer opportunities, and so there are more who are jealous of those who are succeeding.
I don’t know about culture but I think stereotype threat seems to be a real thing. Black students perform better when tests are disguised as something other than tests and they do worse when they think their test results will be compared to test results of white kids. It’s almost like academic morale and confidence.
In other countries the most popular kids in school are the ones with the highest GPA. Culture matters.
Is that code for “did you even read it” .
- I am almost done with any discussion with you when every time we discuss anything you try and twist or put words in my mouth. I searched, “do different cultures value education differently” if you must know, but instead you want to debase and make shit up so you can feel superior?
The papers focus was actually on Latino with some sidebars.
There was plenty of research, not much in the do cultures view education differently that weren’t trying to find excuses as to why they do because testing and graduation rates certainly provide information that they do. But I am open to the fact that other factors also have influence, like poverty.
Except along come other minorities who perform well DESPITE poverty. Which just gets me back to it being a choice.
No, that was actually stating that I didn’t think that you read it. Nothing so passive aggressive, just an observation.
I didn’t debase or make up anything. I pointed out that the paper didn’t back up your assertion. I put no words in your mouth, I only answered the words that you did put out there.
But, by all means, if you are going to take any disagreement or criticism of your arguments or sources this personally, then I am not making you read or respond to my posts. You are free to do as you wish.
And that gets back to the issues of the intersectionality of poverty and racism.
As has been stated many times on these boards, and probably in this thread immigrants are a self selected group who chose to leave things behind and try for a better life. They are excited by the prospect of the “american dream” and will work hard and push their kids hard to have a better life.
It is a bit different for those who have received a different treatment since before the founding of our country.
The immigrant has left everything behind. They are starting new. The black person growing up in a poor environment is getting baggage at each step that they have to carry along with them.
If you want to call it “culture”, then have at. But as I said, that’s like calling someone’s PTSD part of their personality.
I don’t want you to accuse me of “putting words in your mouth” so I am going to make sure that what you said here is actually what you meant.
My understanding is that you are saying that people are choosing poverty, and that this is due to being black.
Not choosing poverty, that is your mental gymnastics. Education, parents of some folks do not place a high enough value upon education and that helps keep them in poverty.
No one chooses poverty. If you gave everyone a choice, they would all choose to be astronauts, and doctors, or lawyers, or some other vaunted field that pays well.
What different cultures do value is the actual work and/or sacrifice it takes to prioritize that education. But they place different valuations on it.
I think that everyone performs better on tests when they are disguised as something else. Most people learn better when the education is disguised as something else.
Note the multibillion dollar industry on educational shows and games. Those are not just marketed towards black people.
Now we are talking about different countries altogether. And i would agree that other countries put a higher standard on education than we do in the US. What are we now, ranked in the upper 20’s lower 30’s on education?
It is little wonder that someone coming from a country that highly values education would bring that value along, and outperform in a country that doesn’t.
But the discussion here has been largely related to whether black communities have poorer educational experiences due to their choice, or due to factors that are beyond the control of any individual.