I am not following why you think it has to be? Why do you think schools are ONLY interested in SES? The poor assumptions here are on your part. Why do you assume they are using race only as a means of achieving socioeconomic diversity and not for its own sake?
It’s a large part of the basic problem. You seem to think your views on race exists in some vacuum. That you can personally think that Black people are dumber on average, and make decisions or advocate positions based on that assumption, yet not introduce any negative consequences to other people’s lives. When lots people think Black people are genetically inferior, they are less likely to be treated with respect, and less likely to be offered opportunities regardless of their actual competence, wealth, or background. It doesn’t matter if you are from money if people throw out your resume because you have an ethnic name. Or if people assume you are stupid or lazy because of the color of your skin. Your outlook is a huge chunk of the problem because it makes equalizing opportunities practically impossible because that myopia closes doors in real life.
The problem is often not the studies, it’s the conclusion you draw because you assume that all other factors are equal. They are not all equal, and they are less likely to ever be equal so long as people live by the racist garbage you spout here on a regular basis. Nobody is arguing that Blacks currently score higher on exams and tests when compared to Asians. What is in question is whether those differences are due to inherent inferiority or some other factor we can more readily control. There is very little evidence to support the conclusions you draw, and the fact that you continually argue the opposite in the face of all that evidence only serves to exacerbate the problem minorities face. People are social animals who often live up or down to expectations. The fact that people hold Black people in such low esteem directly contributes to the problem.
The even more galling part of all this is that in a thread about AA, you and others have chosen to focus on minorities (specifically Blacks), when we are not the primary beneficiaries of those policies. It’s very telling that you claim to be all about the facts and data, yet the focus of your analysis is not on those taking the most advantage of AA programs.
Egalitarians huh? Is that another word for the vast majority of the legitimate scientific community? Listen, we have done this before and I think it’s clear where you stand, so I will just link to the appropriate thread where you can continue your proselytizing.
In short you have not got a single shred of data.
Not a single study.
Not an iota of evidence or analysis showing that black applicants from privileged backgrounds can perform on par even if other SIRE groups are from less privileged backgrounds.
Don’t feel bad. No one else has any such data either, because there isn’t any.
This thread is not about whether or not this situation exists because the difference is genetic. It’s about whether or not race-based AA is required to ensure proportionate representation for blacks. It is.
Call me whatever you like. Continue to search for some secret unidentified reason you hope to control for, and bring us all into an egalitarian nirvana. I do not disagree that there is a larger social issue which may be exacerbated by exposing uncomfortable facts. That this is so does not make them less correct, and it does not make a remedy less necessary.
That remedy is race-based AA. Not because race is a proxy for SES, but because normalizing SES does not close the performance gap.
WRT law schools, less competent students (based on the LSAT, which is shown to be a good predictor of success; see above) are admitted by schools because it is important that all SIRE groups get a chance to at least try. Within that group, “those helped by (SIRE-based) AA” are the overwhelming majority.
This is the whole point of race-based AA. We are trying to find a way to give every SIRE group a chance, even if it means that a much greater percentage of students admitted under race-based AA will not succeed. Many of them do succeed.
The vast majority (85%) of black law school matriculants have LSAT scores below the mean. Of these, 25% never pass the bar exam. This failure rate is over 4 times the 5.6% of under-mean whites who never pass the bar exam.
What this data means is that schools do “knowingly admit incompetent people” but do not do so “regardless of race.” They do so because of race, and because we cannot always perfectly predict in advance which exact individual is going to be “incompetent.”
We must continue to allow schools to take a chance on poorer-performing black applicants regardless of their SES. Only by taking a chance on a broad group can we get at least some improvement in the proportional representation of that group within a profession.
When, next summer, SCOTUS strikes down race-only AA in Fisher, the current system is going to be dealt a terrible blow. All of the Even Svens and brickbacons glibly spouting that the only problem is opportunity–and not race–will have given SCOTUS justification to say, “OK, then; lets make race-based AA unconstitutional and permit only SES to be an adjustment factor.”
It is at that point we will begin to unwind all of the progress we’ve made as a society in promoting a more proportionate representation for SIRE groups in professional fields and advanced education. From there we will slowly unwind similar progress all the way down to blue collar jobs. * Ricci *exemplifies the day to day performance-difference problems in the blue collar world; Fisher is going to be a coffin-nail for race-based AA.
And all because of a false–albeit well-meaning–premise that all SIRE groups are created equal, now hoist on its own petard.