You think that showing an racial imbalance in such a specific profession that it only employs perhaps 425 people is not a problem is a good analogy to show that racial imbalance in millions of jobs is not a problem?
Apparently, I do. Asking a question doesn’t constitute refuting an argument.
Actually, according the BLS there are about 500k practicing lawyers in the US, not millions. And if you want to up the numbers, lets include NCAA basketball, too. But, it’s not about the numbers.
What I was trying to point out is that just looking at the results (ie, % of X racial group in Y profession) doesn’t tell you if there is a problem or not. You have to determine if there is actually some kind of descrimination going on. You seem to be assuming that all races should be represented equally in all professions, which is exactly a type of “liberal bias” that **Bricker ** was talking about earlier.
I am not talking about just lawyers. I am talking about Engineers, Doctors, Professors, Scientists and other professional educated careers. The point is that you are talking about a very specific and very uncommon profession while I am talking about relatively common and highly sought after jobs.
Are you saying we should not expect a relatively equal distribution of races throughout all professions? The color of a persons skin and physical appearance has no effect on them being a lawyer, engineer or doctor. Given that assumption we would expect that approximately 1/4 of the applicants would be black. The actual number is 2.6% of our expectation. That is stunning low. If I agree to buy your car for $10,000 and then only bring $260, I have brought a stunningly low amount of money. Honestly, this is what is being offered as evidence of a bias?
If you’ll note, I specifically mentioned that I don’t think affirmative action is the answer.
Once again:
Less than 1% of the qualified applicants of law schools are African American.
Less than 3% are Hispanic.
So, are all the blacks who are otherwise qualified for law school playing in the NBA or is it maybe that blacks aren’t qualifying for law school? If so, why not? Whatever the reason, how do we assist without changing the admission standards for law school? Or should “we”? By that, I mean, does the government, using our tax dollars, have any responsibility to address the issue or should it be left to private organizations (which is, let’s face it, simply indirect taxation, since the people who donate to those organization will simply deduct that amount from the taxes they pay, right Bricker?)?
Blacks make up about 12% of the population, btw, not 25%. I don’t know where you are getting your numbers from…
I don’t have any expectations of racial percentages in different occupations. I do have an expectation that public institutions shouldn’t discriminate on race. I don’t consider different percentages to be de facto proof of discrimination. It might be an indication, but it isn’t proof. If you can determine that Blacks are being purposely excluded from those professions, lets see the proof.
I am not claiming that Blacks weren’t discriminated against in the past. In fact, this discrimination was often institutionalized as part of the legal system. But we’re a generation or two away from that now, and it’s entirely unclear that more action in the political sphere is going to make a difference one way or the other.
I stopped reading too soon :smack:
Let me ask you this, do you feel there is an inherent flaw in black people that hinders them in becoming qualified for law school or an inherent attribute in white people that makes them more able to become qualified for law school? If the answer is no then we expect that the number of qualified applicants should be similar for both races.
I never said that stunningly low percentages proved discrimination rather that the number of black applicants in this case is stunningly low.
Perhaps but I don’t see what that has to do with NPR’s bias.
No and no.
I don’t.
Why? Do you find the number of Jewish applicants to law or medical school stunningly high?
Do you expect them to be different?
I don’t know what those numbers are.
Given the numbers she gave in the piece which you have been avoiding, I’d think the “not enough” part is pretty well covered. And again, simply needing a couple of extra words for qualification is pretty poor proof of bias at NPR.
Ah fun, more proof of bias in as few words as possible. Personally, I think the numbers are stunning. I’m not sure what adjective you would prefer. I’m going to guess off hand that you are a “whimsical” kind of guy.
As for “stunning”, here’s what the folks at Mirriam Webster have to say.
I’ll go with door number three here. YMMV
Before you get in a huff about this Bricker, I do understand where you are coming from. In a perfect world the hotly debated adjective would not be there. Again, if this is the best proof of liberal bias other than assuming you know the beliefs of the reporter in question, then you got problems with your theory.
Seems like I’m too late on the huff part. I assume I will be welcome to find a poorly edited quote taken from all context and slanted to serve a predetermined outcome much in the way that you did. I will also assume that I won’t need to find multiple pieces of evidence, just one cruddy one where I can point out three words as proof and then get cranky when noone believes that three words out of one report is indicitive of bias.
One more thought before I put this post to bed. Before anyone goes writing me off as another liberal who is incapable of seeing biased, I want to say that I would welcome proof of liberal bias. I would love to see it. I’ve asked in a couple of threads now for proof and I’ve not gotten it yet. In this thread for example, all we have is three words (not enough, stunning) and the repeated assertion that media without bias is impossible. Intelligent design has more proof than that.
I am more than willing to entertain the notion that I am biased and am not hearing the bias in the media, but for me to believe that I need credible evidence of bias.
And John Mace, your comparison of basketball to lawyering is silly, if only because a white man (from Canada no less) won the MVP award this year. 
What about those numbers? They indicate an overwhelming pool of non-minority applicants. How does that compel “not enough” as a conclusion?
Suppose there were NO minority applicants. Zero. How would that imply “not enough?”
“Not enough” says that we need to change the results so that there ARE enough.
How, precisely, do those numbers – how would even a ZERO number for minority applicants – be fairly described as “not enough?”
Is there an inherent flaw in white people that hinders them in becoming qualified for the NBA, or an inherent attribute in black people that makes them more able to become qualified for the NBA? If the answer is no then we expect that the number of qualified NBA players should be similar for both races.
I propose that NPR is biased in favor of the Right, as this morning I heard a very favorable story on Bill Frist.
Bricker your arguments are ridiculous. There are hundreds of stories on NPR every single week, and you have literally picked a single word (“stunningly”) out of a story years old and pointed to it as evidence of bias. Then you have the absolute nerve to accuse others here of weak arguments.
If this is the best you can do, than I’m pretty sure that I can firmly attest to the lack of bias in NPR broadcasts.
You’re right, we should. Except that the “inherent flaw” in white people is actually a simple lack of dedication and practice. For many black kids, basketball is one of the few recreational activities they have regular access to. So they play it. A lot. Unsurprisingly, given lots of practice they get better at it than kids who play it every once in a while in gym. There is also a greater drive to get better since sports are seen as one of the few valid ways out of the situation (I don’t agree with this by the way, but it is the perception).
To carry this back to the discussion about affirmative action:
Emphasis added. I think it’s fair to summarize the bold phrase as “qualified”.
So it appears that quote focused on qualified applicants. They didn’t say that only 1% of the applicants were black, in fact the quote says nothing about the total number of applicants, black or white. So we have to make some assumptions. One of mine is that the percentage of black applicants (qualified and not) out of the total pool of applicants (qualified and not) was greater than 1% which means that a greater percentage of applicants who are black were unqualified versus their white counterparts. Please feel free to argue with this assumption.
So the “not enough” quote could be read as:
“The hard cold fact of academic life today, though, is that there are not enough [qualified] minorities applying to college and graduate school and even fewer with the very highest academic credentials.”
In what way does this demonstrate bias? All other things being equal one would expect that the % of qualified black applicants out of the total pool of black applicants would be identical to the same % measured for white applicants. Of course, all other things aren’t equal and everybody knows it, but it shouldn’t be indicative of right or left bias to point it out.
That’s an interesting bit of folk wisdom…
But the flaw in that argument is this: Yes, the poverty rate among Blacks is higher than Whites, but there are still more Whites in poverty due to the higher overall number of Whites in this country. Why is basketball not “one of the few recreational activities they (poor White kids) have regular access to?”
But let’s say your folk wisdon is true. That would show a cultural difference between the Black and White community which channels Black kids into certain professions rather than others. Why wouldn’t that not be equally valid when looking at the profession of law?
I don’t expect anything. I’m not biased. 
I’m doing a little research on my folk wisdom, but my guess would be that more poor white kids live in rural areas than in urban areas and that has something to do with it. It is also undoubtedly cultural. Black kids have black basketball player role models and they try to emulate them.
Now, to your question. Please read carefully, I’m getting a little tired of explaining this. I don’t care how many black applicants there are! I’m not saying that the % of applicants who are black should be any number (1%, 12%, 100% - doesn’t matter). What I’m saying is that of the black kids who chose to apply the same % should be qualified as for any other grouping.
As an example, if there are 1000 applicants are looked at:
800 are right-handed
200 are left-handed
Of the 800 right-handed applicants 400 are qualified.
Of the 200 left-handed applicants 195 are qualified.
Is this something that should be looked at and, if possible and necessary, addressed in a corrective fashion?
Of course that begs the question: how did Blacks enter the NBA without role modlels in the first place?
Please read this carefully, because I’m getting tired of asking: WHY?
Why not? Qualification for law school is a measure of preparedness. Why would one group be less prepared than another when measured as a group? It should work for any number of groupings: handedness, random sampling, etc.
It’s easy to say that you have no preconceptions about the result, but now we have the result. Are you suggesting that we should just ignore it?
Applying does not equal being qualified.
Here’s the problem. If I took all college graduates, put their names in a hat, and pulled out two groups large enough to be a representative sample (empasis on this last part), I would expect both groups to contain an equal number of qualified applicants (within the sampling margin of error).
For your example of handedness, one might expect the same result. Handedness is pretty random, although there might be some cultural bias-- ie, some cultures might be more or less inclined to force natural lefties to become righties. Generally, though, left handedness cuts across all groups equally-- racial, gender, socio-economic, cultural, etc. n.b: I am assuming this to be true, but if it isn’t, then a different result might be expected. For example, I have to admit I’m not sure that left handness occurs equally in males and females.
The key is that you need to be sure you have a random variable if you are expecting similar results.
Race, in America, is not a random variable. As you yourself admitted, cultural biases enter into career choice and likely enters into preparedness. Additionally, Affirmative Action programs make efforts to cast a wider net for minority applicants, so one might expect to catch more unqualified applicants in that wider net. At any rate, there are a number of factors that come into play regarding race, and those factors could easily make race not a random variable in many instances.
Brought in? I thought President Clinton appointed Tomlinson to the CPB board, and that the CPB elected him as Chairman. Yep, that’s right.