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I don't see how a question on a standardized test (SAT,GMAT,GRE,etc) could be racially biased
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Red Irish
Guest
As a linguist, I have to point out that you have no idea what you are talking about. Dialects have their own rules and are as valid as the "Proper English" you refer to, unless you are judging them on the basis of questions that have nothing to do with their linguistic worth. Incidentally, "proper English" is merely another dialect.
seemingly random
Diamond Member
Some kind of pasta?
smack Down
Diamond Member
The white kid who knows wtf a regatta is and calculates that the speed is 60 mph knows that answer is BS. The black kid who calculates a speed of 60 mph think that is a valid answer.
smack Down
Diamond Member
Well by definition for a test to be racially biased some races must do well. If everyone failed it wouldn't be biased. Kind of like the old joke "I'm not racist I just hate everyone."
Dumac
Diamond Member
This has been proven false by many studies. The idea that some people are just naturally stupider than others due to their "race" is ridiculous. Go read up on the subject. From the natives of New Zealand to suburban white kids in America, all "races" have a great potential for learning. The sad part is, not all races have the same resources.
0roo0roo
No Lifer
because blacks are less racist, they have trouble telling the difference between white and black bubbles i guess😛
but seriously, that was bs, and obama choosing a justice that would condone such bs lowers my opinion of him significantly. i'm sick and tired of the media parroting obamas talking point about judicial empathy. does he remember a court filled with men ..white men gave women reproductive rights and blacks their rights as well.
but seriously, that was bs, and obama choosing a justice that would condone such bs lowers my opinion of him significantly. i'm sick and tired of the media parroting obamas talking point about judicial empathy. does he remember a court filled with men ..white men gave women reproductive rights and blacks their rights as well.
You're wrong about this. This seems to be more about you throwing out all studies that disagree with your preconceived notion and accepting logically flawed studies that agree with it.
I believe that when discussing a subject that you must approach it with an open mind. Emotion can be no part of the process. You need to be willing to accept your findings even if that means that your findings disagree with what your previously believed or even with what you want to believe.
The ability (or lack thereof) to set your emotions aside and objectively analyze the subject relying on science is what separates logical thinkers from emotional thinkers.
Diversity can be good, sure. But throwing out the results of tests because the crowd that got the highest scores wasn't "diverse" enough is just plain racism.
With all this talk about racism and this fire test, I still haven't seen one shred of evidence that suggests that the test itself was racist. Which questions were racially biased?
Or are they just making the assumption that since blacks didn't score as high as the whites or Hispanics that the test itself must be racist?
Preface: I appreciatd the summons, and my first draft written at the time is below. I'm not that satisfied with it, and waited to post it, not sure how clear a point it makes.
But for better or worse, I'll post it.
I'm flattered, and don't mind the monicker; I am against unjust inequality. Just inequality is another matter.
A lot of injust uinequality comes down to practical matter, IMO. Who doesn't turn a blind eye, to, even pursue, some unjust inequality if it favors them? I don't mean black and white, look the person you are wronging in the eye wrongs, but rather the kind you can rationalize. If you're in a position to get one of those 'legacy admissions' for your kids who have failed to earn them to top schools, are you going to turn it down on the principle of merit being better than - let's caoll it straight - corrupt priviliege? Probably not.
You are probably going to rationalize why it's ok.
And ther's a practical issue there to how concentrated wealth and power works, it perpetuates itself, which is why human history's norm is for societies to be oligarchical.
Because one guy can't own everything and get everyone else to go along with that, but a small group can do just that, and they do, usually.
So getting back to test inequality - a lot of it is about practical matters; that there's a real 'who cares about the poor anyway' issue. That the inequality is 'ok'. If it's not from these tests, it's from something else; and yet there are not a few people who actually do want 'fairness' in the tests, even if much of the public doesn't care, as the posts in this thread shows, with the usual hodge podge of 'hate the poor' commentary.
But one of the 'pactical problems' is that it's not easy to separate 'cultural bias' from 'legitimate bias' in many cases. Colbert and Stewart both had comedy bits on this rcently with silly, funny examples, that I can't recall other than Stewart's example of 'questions about the Osmonds', but take the example above of a poster bing familiar with "shrew". How do you evaluate that - is there a cultural bias involved in black children not being taught Shakespeare nearly as much as white children? This poster appears to know this because he read, and so he *deserves* to get the question right when others get it wrong, if ithe purpose is to find kids who read - but what if the purpose of the test is something else and he doesn't deserve that advantage? And how do you separate some kids not getting the question for 'culture' reasons (whether Shakespeare or the Osmonds) against the kids who deserve it for reading Shakespeare?
Ultimate there are 'big challenges' here that really go more back to things like the inequality in the education system - and yes, the culture - that largely coe about from the hundreds of years of discrimnation first as slaves and then a century of racist policies. Whites generally have little appreciation of those effects, IMO. Given the unlikely event in the 60's of JFK and LBJ passing the civil rights bill to end a century of racist laws, whites often want the issue to 'just be gone, it's annoying', as if that's all there is to it.
See all the posts in this thread that the're just tired of the issue'. Bsically, they have some vagues awareness of continuing ineuality, and they'd rather it didn't exist because it's annoying, but they don't want to expend any time to get informed and so they tend to just make up 'blame the victim' ideology and ignore the issue. And to be fair, it's very difficult as an issue because it is a mix of the effects of centures of racism so hard for whites to understand, but with 'individual responsbility being a big, legitimate issue mixed in.
This is where experts often have some very useful insights about what really works - but are met with hostility by suspicious whites, and lack the resources to do much about it.
And there's aa problem - our society sort of needs an underclass, those toilets dont' clean themselves, those trucks don't drive themselves. So why rock the boat, when some inequality so conveniently helps to fit the need? Not many actually look at it that way, but it's a pressure, IMO.
Faced with the frustration peopel who care about equality have when faced with the terribly unequal situation with things lke the percent of black versys white kids who graduate, probably everyone shifts the issue of things like 'test cultural bias', which can be a scapegoat for the underlying problems so hard to solve of income inequality, bad schools for blacks with the lower property tax base, etc, in the direction that makes their points - blacks exaggerating discrimnation, and whites exagerrating its role as an 'excuse'.
The 'real' issue of cultural bias in tests is really secondary to the bigger bias issues, the ones that lead different races to score differently.
The bottom line is that whites are constantly sent a message they don't want to state, but are influenced by, that blacks are somehow just 'less able' on average than they are, becuase the news just doesn't change for decades. Lacking much appreciation for the generational harms to blacks, bombarded with statistics that show blacks not doing well, unwillng to get informed, they have to make up some explanations on their own, and 'it's their own famn fault' works pretty well for that.
And in the mix of thing, there's a grain of truth to it. Black culture was not improved by the centuries of discriniation. It doesn't mean at all that there's anything 'wrong with blacks', as many blacks show all the times when they get 'equal opportunity' (most senior black leaders received some form of 'affirmative action' today to help overcome those legacy effects, which is why most praise the programs, understanding how they are 'fair' in overcoming some effects of past wrongs.
It means there are different cultures which *to an extent* are still broken down by the long history of race-based discrimination.
Frankly, my view of test cultural bias is that it's mostly a distraction - we have experts who can do ver well at making the tests fair, but the real issues are the underlying problems of why blacks might not be as prepared - the inequalities that are in large part, not entirely, effects today that are harmful from a century of discrimination denying their families the growth in school, forcing them into low end work. If George W. Bush's father had his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather all denied much education and forced to be laborers, forcedto live ni a segregated commmunity the nation was bigoted towards, I'd say there's at least some small chance he might not have become the President, or his amily very wealthy, no matter howmuch you want to tak about their bootstraps and how they can pul themselves up.
And whites generaly have benfitted from the racism, and often fail to appreciate that inequality. Their ancestors did nothave to do a lot of the labor that minorities had to do. Those whites whose ancestors did do manual labor still tended to have various advantages, not the least of which were access to better schools and living situations and a lack of bigotry.
So what to do do about all this? IN my view, on the cultural bias on tests, stop the exaggeration by both sides, and just support the experts keeping them fair.
But learn about the issue of legacy effects of racism, and support improvement for the bigger issues why blacks are less prepared on average for such testing.
Don''t just say "well I'm against racist laws, but the rest is up to them", instead say "I know that the races are equal and that there are still a lot of people harmed by the history of racism, and I want to see everyone have equal opportunity, and I understand that that will mean some special efforts for a while to helpundo some of those past effects still hurting people now, and that's ok to get us to the point of the 'color blind society' we all want. And I can insist on personal responsbility as part of the plan. Fairness doesn't mean equal outcome- but it does mean that unequal outcome needs to be for the right reason, and common sense and statistics say that you should not rationalize away big groups with unequal results with 'blame the ctim ignroance'.
Before we get too self-satisfied with those rationalizations, we should recall how easy it is to turn a blind eye, as our forefathers did for a century in perpetulating racism.
The bottom line is that there is big inequality now, and action and change needed now. It's just in bigger challenges than cultural bias in testing - and has little poliitical support.
It's a sort of new 'quiet tyranny' to jut not worry about the issue and leave the problems in place, all the while denying any racist intent.
There are leaders who understnad and want to improve things, and leaders who want to pander to the lazy white crowd and offer them rationalizations for doing nothing.
Hopefully, we'll choose the former.
The good news is how far we've come, at least, in that the debate has pretty much no one actually disagreeing that fair tests are a good goal, explicitly advocating racism.
There were times when people would have defended blacks being denied the very right to take the tests at all, much less taking any claim of discriination seriously.
And we should note again, that some of the allegations of test bias *are* exagerrated - there are two sides to the issue today. Exaggeration may have surpassed real bias now.
But on bigger issues than test bias, the issues are real - and the indifference as well.
Dumac
Diamond Member
The bolded statement is exactly what I had to say about your uncalled for theory that intelligence is inherently a product of "race". There have been many, many studies, professors, and research that refutes this idea, yet you still choose to believe it.
The unnecessary lecture in your personal philosophy on logic was uncalled for. Do I need to remind you that liquids are fluid? No. Therefore, don't remind me that logical thinkers objectively analyze. It is common sense.
SunSamurai
Diamond Member
Fuck Craig234, learn to fucking summarize. Youre the reason TLDR was invented.
The "trend" on this test is definitely NOT unique to certain geographic locations. Can you show me a geographic location where blacks score higher on average than whites on tests?
Time and time again this issue pops up and people who'd rather be politically correct rather than factually correct come up with excuses why x group did worse than y group, even if those results seem to be consistent across the board.
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