Racism in standardized testing

"The Inequality Taboo," by Charles Murray, Commentary, September 2005

The Harvard geneticist Richard Lewontin originated the idea of race as a social construct in 1972, arguing that the genetic differences across races were so trivial that no scientist working exclusively with genetic data would sort people into blacks, whites, or Asians. In his words, "racial classification is now seen to be of virtually no genetic or taxonomic significance."

Lewontin's position, which quickly became a tenet of political correctness, carried with it a potential means of being falsified. If he was correct, then a statistical analysis of genetic markers would not produce clusters corresponding to common racial labels.

In the last few years, that test has become feasible, and now we know that Lewontin was wrong. Several analyses have confirmed the genetic reality of group identities going under the label of race or ethnicity.

In the most recent, published this year, all but five of the 3,636 subjects fell into the cluster of genetic markers corresponding to their self identified ethnic group. When a statistical procedure, blind to physical characteristics and working exclusively with genetic information, classifies 99.9 percent of the individuals in a large sample in the same way they classify themselves, it is hard to argue that race is imaginary.

http://www.iapsych.com/wj3ewok/LinkedDocuments/Murray2005.pdf

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Once we acknowledge that race is an important biological category it becomes legitimate to see how the races differ in average intelligence, as well as in rates of crime and illegitimacy.

Light skin does not cause higher intelligence. It correlates with it because cold climates select genetically for light skin and intelligence.

 

Crime in the U.S. • 2011 • Crime in the U.S. 2011 • Offenses Known to Law Enforcement, United States Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation

Of the offenders for whom race was known, 52.4 percent were black, 45.2 percent were white, and 2.4 percent were of other races.

https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u....w-enforcement/expanded/expanded-homicide-data

 

I am not a white supremacist. Although I am white myself I acknowledge that East Asians have higher IQ averages than those of my race, and lower rates of crime and illegitimacy. Pointing this out gets me banned from white supremacist websites.

I am a race realist. Race realists recognize that races exist, that the races differ in qualities important to civilization, and that these are average intelligence, and rates of crime and illegitimacy.

The reason people of your persuasion are not interested in debating with people of my persuasion is because our opinions are fact based and rational, and your opinions are based on wishful thinking. Moreover, your opinions are substantiated by your ability to get people of my persuasion fired from our jobs.

 

I think your figure may say something not about the intelligence of blacks but about the suitability of the normal IQ tests to their culture. The Stanford-Benet test has been criticized for that problem. Society can't fix how kids are raised. It can separate problem students from the rest and deal with their problems individually. That is expensive and difficult but probably a better investment than most of the money government spends. I also think it would be appropriate for public schools to adopt some disciplinary policies more like those of private schools. When a student misbehaved in my high school, he went into a room with the principal and a paddle. It did more good than harm. Teaching is difficult without discipline.

 

I don't think the teachers should try to be parents at all. But the system could do things like install policies designed to provide discipline. Bad apples in the classroom make it hard to teach everyone else. They need to deal with bad apples. If the parents don't like it they can home school. I remember one bad apple I had in one of my classes who constantly tried to interrupt by making bad jokes. I threw an eraser at him and hit him in the chest. I was punished for doing it but it worked. It did more good than harm.

 

I'm not sure the public even knows what white supremacism is and I include white supremacists in that. While racism is a bad thing, talking about race is fine and useful. Asians do have higher IQs on average than whites. That is true. They have better discipline which makes them better students and that helps them increase their IQ. I think personal discipline is at the bottom of it.

 

DEAFENING SILENCE now from the main proponents of the claim that standardized tests produce no useful or accurate results. Considering how accurately predictive and insightful such tests have been for many decades, all this anti-test 'virtue-signalling' agit-prop merely reveals its own asinitity.

 

Actually, if that were true, that would be pretty powerful evidence that they ARE culturally biased.

 

I have said no such thing. Remember: whenever you want to comment about something you don't agree with... QUOTE it!

There is no need to quote the whole post. But there IS need to quote what you respond to so you and I (especially YOU) know what the hell you're talking about.

 

How do you figure that? IQ tests were originally designed for whites of European origins.

 

I don't have a viewpoint. I only have science. But I can see your point implying that anything that argues contrarily to scientific fact must be "racist nonsense".

It only takes a quick search that this is a white supremacist who lectured for white supremacist audiences, and has NEVER written a peer-reviewed study, but whose commentary "papers" (not the same as studies) have been rejected by most serious publications.

There is no such thing as "peer-review over some topics". Peer-review is peer-review. However, this is all you needed to say. If you are going to declare yourself a science denialist, you can go ahead and say it from the start. No need to hide it in the middle of a post. It saves us ALL a lot of time. I even had to click one of your links to see if there was anything serious. Fortunately, all we needed was to see the name of a well-known white supremacist at the top to understand how you were fooled.

 

Oh! I see. Well you're in the wrong thread. This one is about standardized tests. If you want to debate systemic racism, there are threads about that topic.

Here are a couple I just happened to have open
http://www.politicalforum.com/index.php?threads/what-does-critical-race-theory-teach.589535/
http://www.politicalforum.com/index...what-it-means-and-what-it-doesnt-mean.587769/

I don't mean to dismiss your arguments. Even though there is an element of systemic racism in so-called standardized tests, that is just not the topic. Systemic racism is not the ONLY reason why these tests are biased. It's just the easiest to illustrate and explain.

There might be some usefulness in so-called "standaridized tests", but one thing they are not is standardized.

 

Yep! That's culture. Both the mindset in which black kids are raised and the mindset in which white kids are raised to think about black kids is culture. And standardized tests don't account for cultural differences. Therefore, they are not "standardized"

So we agree and the rest of your post has nothing to do with this thread.

Maybe the thread you are looking for is one of these...
http://www.politicalforum.com/index.php?threads/what-does-critical-race-theory-teach.589535/
http://www.politicalforum.com/index...what-it-means-and-what-it-doesnt-mean.587769/

 

While I do reject all of your reactionary viewpoint (and "viewpoint' is exactly what it is) as being uncritical, highly-subjective, unscientific twaddle, I am nonetheless curious -- what kind of testing do you think would be useful and accurate in assessing the status of a person's mentality, their mental proclivities, or their intelligence quotient?

And, if you can, please offer some kind of alternative field of study to replace genetics, since you obviously reject the research, discoveries, and findings within it over the many years of research in this settled-science, which have been in continuous development since the formal beginning of its study in 1865.

Suggest whatever you think a viable alternative field of scholastic research should be, but please, have the discipline to draw upon some candidate-field that's found in a School of Natural Sciences.... After all, having studied in as many different colleges and universities as you seem to have, you surely would appreciate the difference between serious scientific venues and those of some questionably meandering 'Liberal Arts' program.

 

You said there is no such thing as race- thus, racism can't exist. There can be various kind of prejudice but if you say race doesn't exist- then neither does racism; the prejudice is about something else. That's like saying oranges don't exist, but orange juice does.

 

Standard and typical are different things. There is no standard in cultures but degrees of typical factors. The typical condition isn't an absolute controller but does have a great deal of influence.
That is particularly true when the examples encourage the "easy" choices and emotional choices rather than the responsible ones.

 

"...evolution is politically correct...".... I don't even know what that means.

Oh, is that what you mean? No. I don't "assume" anything. Evolution has absolutely NOTHING to do with this topic. Your concept of "evolution" was very popular in the 1940s, especially in Germany. It was been utterly debunked not too long after that. Today it's not even seriously considered by anybody except white supremacits.

 

Biology has absolutely REJECTED the concept of "race". It was once very popular. You are very likely to find old science books and papers making reference to it. But once the human genome was mapped and analyzed thoroughly, the concept was quickly debunked and abandoned. It took some time for some scientists to get used to the concept. But today you will not find any serious biologists making references to "race".

Once biology got rid of it, other fields like Anthropology experimented a paradigm shift. Now the concept only exists in the minds of white supremacists and in some outdated forms.

 

I never said you were. White supremacist propaganda is very powerful and can fool many people.

There is no such thing as race. And there is no evidence that any ethnic group of humans has higher IQ than any other.

 

You are in the WRONG thread.

Not sure what your point is. Black criminals are DEFTINITELY stopped, frisked, arrested and convicted more often than white criminals.
http://www.politicalforum.com/index.php?threads/what-does-critical-race-theory-teach.589535/

Oh... and BTW... Maybe I forgot to mention this before, but there is no such thing as "race" except maybe in old outdated government forms that have not been adapted to the current state of sciences like biology and genetics.

 

You're saying IQ tests designed FOR white Europeans are not biased?

You're making ZERO sense.

 

I'm only referring to questions that are intended to assess IQ. There is no way to properly do that right now across different ethnic groups. Not sure there will ever be a way but... who knows...

 

I have already documented that blacks have a murder rate that is nearly eight times the white rate. Here is that data again.

https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/htus8008.pdf

The murder rate of a demographic is a good estimate of the entire crime rate of that demographic, because murders are more likely to come to the attention of the police.

Now because blacks have a much higher murder rate than whites, it makes sense for them to be stopped and frisked more than frequently than whites. It also makes sense that they will be arrested more frequently.

I am white. I have been stopped and frisked by the police a few times. Because I was not carrying a weapon or stolen goods I was not arrested.

 

See what happens when you actually TRY to quote me? Please DO that from now on. Don't quote the whole post. I KNOW what I wrote. Just the part you are responding to. Quote it without taking it out of context.

Of course racism most certainly does! Just like UFOlogists exist, even though there is no such thing as UFOs (in the pseudoscientific sense of the term)

 

Maybe. But that has nothing to do with this thread.