Pronouncing "Be equal" without producing valid means for folks to "become equal" is a severe injustice which only makes the sayer feel s/he has done their job.
At the risk of offending those who disregard, even chringe, at Bibical wisdom; here's a parrallel from James 2:15-16
"If a brother or sister is without clothing and in need of daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and be filled,” and yet you do not give them what is necessary for their body, what use is that?"
I am weary of inequalitie being explained by "racism." Yes, social racism is a deep concern. But, it will not yield to endless name-calling. Inequality must be met with equality of access and resources. And, to that end I will continue a deep-dive into what-works-and-what-doesn't in public education while volunteer tutoring inner-city elementary kiddos on how to read well.
Ibram X. Kendi is a nobody. The only reason anybody has even heard the name is that television propaganda keeps bringing him up. Constantly his stupid book is brought up and for some reason it's in every library, undoubtedly donated by some NGO.
Here: it's a book written for profoundly retarded children. You can read it in 5 minutes and forget it forever:
"Antiracist Baby is BRED, not born" - yeah, like they are cattle or something. Not human beings.
There is literally no content in the book. It's 100% forgettable. It's not going to make anybody change their life after an epiphany. Stop talking about a socially promoted nobody who none of us would have know about if he didn't have a unique name, and wasn't black.
I'm genuinely surprised that the "news" media isn't obsessively talking about some flip book from Dr. Shenanay Sheniqua Transformer. It's just a matter of time.
I don't get that so many people don't get that once they utter the word "racist" they are no longer considered serious people. Rather they are looked upon as people to be managed. At best to be humored or patronized, but simply avoided if possible. If there is something to be learned from them we'll never know because it isn't worth the risk to engage with them in order to find out.
I dont think Kendi, et al hate whites....i think he/they just love sanctimony, and are willing to use that sanctimony, along with hefty servings of guilt, rhetoric, and outright bullshit, to justify what is clearly an attempt to gain unjustified power. Which makes him exponentially more vile than a person exhibiting bigotry and prejudice.
I moved and was looking for a new medical group. One company touted they were "antiracist" and devoted to "equity"so I knew they were NOT focused at all on merit and competence. The other group just touted their medical care. Of course I chose the second one. I'm a person of color and have no time for Kendi and ilk.
Love and admire you guys. Kendi is fortunate to be popular in a time of relative prosperity and businesses and society can carry those (white, black, other) who are not the absolute best. But this won’t last and when the shock comes there will be catastrophic consequences to the under qualified. The desire to survive and minimize loss of standard of living will result in ruthlessness we haven’t seen since WWII or Depression.
On a related note, Philly black on black shootings now over 1,500 year to date; maybe Kendi should tackle that catastrophe.
Black parents need to do a much better job in preparing their children to understand the moral and social of education. Too many parents do not give their children the cultural and intellectual stimulation that is necessary during their formative years of moral development. Taking children to the library, museum, plays or lectures will be much more conducive to learning and appreciate the value of and importance of education as a requisite of informed and engaged citizenship. We cannot expect teachers to engage in the arduous task of character formation that lies within the province of parental concern and involvement
Isn't the real issue how well the test predicts job performance for blacks and whites? If it predicts equally well, it's not biased. If blacks with lower scores perform as well as whites with higher scores it is biased and different screens should be used for blacks and whites.
If we were all Kendi, we could blame the utter catastrophic failure of ultraorthodox Jewish communities to educate their children on RACISM when, in fact, it's obviously disproportionately impacted by culture and priorities--even if, duh, racism still exists. You simply couldn't ask for a better experiment and control. Will we now suggest that it's time to reduce standards in the Jewish orthodox community or raise them? Will we suggest they're lazy or their DNA is to blame? I think we all know the answers.
If one can reduce one of the most successful ethnic groups in the world to such abysmal failure, anything is possible!
Does anyone in this debate care whether the specific test in question is a valuable or worthwhile element of the social worker licensing process? It’s disappointing to see an economist gloss over the impact of the proliferation of professional licensing requirements in creating barriers to entry, reducing availability of services, increasing costs and protecting incumbents. There is a shortage of mental health providers in this country, and we should be looking critically at whether licensing requirements serve a valid purpose.
In reading the petition itself the initial point is that this is not a worthwhile exam, in that it has little connection to the skills necessary to be an effective social worker. Yes, there is also a lot of text on the racial disparities in results, but the argument in the petition isn’t simply “it’s a bad test because it’s racist” but that it is a bad test, period. And if it is not a worthwhile test then yes, it can also matter whether a test that arguably does not have a strong connection to ability to perform a job is locking out, or favoring, candidates of particular backgrounds.
Are they right about this? I have no expertise in social work so I can’t assess the value of the test questions myself, but was surprised to see that they are based on surveys of practicing social workers, rather than an objective body of relevant knowledge of psychology, welfare law, etc. It’s also worth considering the petition’s point about requiring an exam level of English fluency when there is a recognized shortage of Spanish speaking mental health providers to provider therapy services.
Isn’t a knee-jerk defense of licensing requirements just because someone says they are racist and bad, instead of just saying they are bad, part of the problem with policy discourse today?
Am reading Cornel West’s “Keeping Faith”, his 1993 volume of essays addressing issues of racism, philosophy and the Black intellectual project. In his chapter on the dilemma of the Black intellectual he states; “The predicament of the black intellectual need not be grim and dismal. Despite the pervasive racism of American society and anti-intellectualism of the black community, critical space and insurgent activity can be expanded. This expansion will occur more readily when black intellectuals take a more candid look at themselves, the historical and social forces that shape them, and the limited though significant resources of the community whence they came.”
While published way back in 1993, West’s arguments hold today. The objective is greater intellectual development and seriousness not less. Having listened to West’s interview with Prof Loury recently, I understand him to be consistent in this area.
I am sorry I was rude. If Marcy Wheeler and Glenn Greenwald had gotten into yet another fight I would NOT have said that on either of their social media sites.
I love this discussion. It strikes at the core of not a race thing, but human nature thing. Some people are not good at “test”. Doesn’t mean they can’t do the job, just means they aren’t good at the test. Also does not mean the test is bad. Tests are what they are, it’s how a person responds to them. I was horrible at tests. But I’ve succeeded in life and business. Not because I was given things, but because I can think strategically, I can trouble shoot...step outside the box. If people could step out side the current trend of not only “scores” and current day red herrings, they might find that a lot of folks are very good at what they looking for, just not “standardized”. It’s unfortunate John and glen get attacked for this discussions. They’re sooo important for all of us at large...no matter how we are
And conversely, some are bad at classes and excel at tests. I was one of those kids who, back in the 1970s-80s crushed the standardized tests 98-99% every damn time but didn’t always show that with my grades. Absolutely a human nature thing.
I’ll never forgive or forget being told by the director of our department to read IXK’s book in order to become better (white) people, replete with its black and white thinking, pun intended. Everyone then started waving their Kendi books to the beat of a Mao clock that waves the red book along with the seconds.
I still can’t wrap my brain around buying that narcissistic crap for even a minute much less insisting that reading it would improve my (white) character.
You have to think of it more like a crucifix or Che shirt or some other tribal and social signifier: no one buys the book for its words or banal ideas, the entire purpose of owning and displaying the book is to let other people know that "you get it" and "you're on the right side of history" ie. it's a neurotic shriek of I'M NOT RACIST, pls dont mistake me for those other mean and evil whites over there.
If you look at the recent careers and bank statements of obvious frauds like Kendi and NHJ, as well as those BLM people who've pocketed millions (not to mention the freshly minted army of Diversicrats), you can see that White Guilt is an enormously fertile and lucrative field, and guilty white liberals of the NYT/NPR class will do, say, buy and donate almost anything if they feel it will give them absolution.
I had also heard before that Henry Rogers' score on the SAT was only in the low 1000s, which as Glenn noted is around the median of test takers. Another blogger estimated Mr. Rogers' IQ to be around a 103 based on his reported SAT score given that there's some degree of self selection among the SAT test taking population. To be fair this would imply that he's at around the 58th percentile of IQ among whites and is in fact smarter than the majority of white people. Given that Rogers is 40 years old I assume that he took his SATs around the year 2000. Not sure about the median, but I looked at the numbers from back then and the average Black score on the SAT was around an 860.
If Henry in fact cracked a 1000 on the SAT in those days he would've been slightly above average among SAT test takers overall and decently above average compared to Black test takers. I think it's reasonable to conclude that he's smarter than a lot of Americans both Black and white and to imply that he's an idiot is therefore unfair if for no other reason than that it downplays the even greater level of idiocy among the general population. He might be underwhelming by the standards of a public academic with well-known accolades, but Henry Rogers certainly isn't a dumb person in the sense of being below average in intelligence.
I'm not a huge fan of Henry's general style of argumentation and I agree with John that in this specific instance Mr. Rogers would come across as more convincing if he could in fact demonstrate concretely how standardized tests were biased. That being said, I actually don't think it's necessarily an invalid form of reasoning to assert the existence of something without providing direct evidence of it. I'm not a math person but my understanding is that in mathematics there are constructive proofs that demonstrate the existence of an object by directly showing how to construct that object and non-constructive proofs that demonstrate the existence of an object indirectly. When utilizing proof by contradiction, these non-constructive proofs assert the existence of an object by showing that to deny its existence would result in a logical contradiction.
I feel like this is how Henry Rogers is arguing for the existence of bias in standardized testing. Since according to Henry we all know that there are no group differences among test takers and given that there are disparate outcomes on these tests by group, to deny the existence of biased questions on the tests is to engender a logical contradiction of the thorniest sort. QED
John, you might be selling Mr. Rogers a bit short here. Despite his far from perfect reasoning, I do see glimmers of an intuitive or folk mathematics at work haha.
And just what kind of fuzzy mathematics was John McWhorter employing in his NYT piece? I couldn't make heads nor tails of his fanciful "explanations" of WHY black test performance was at odds with that of other racial/ethnic groups. All I see everywhere I look is mountains of evidence showing near perfectly standard distributions for these various groups, though centered on different means. Exactly what one would expect when evaluating populations.
Pronouncing "Be equal" without producing valid means for folks to "become equal" is a severe injustice which only makes the sayer feel s/he has done their job.
At the risk of offending those who disregard, even chringe, at Bibical wisdom; here's a parrallel from James 2:15-16
"If a brother or sister is without clothing and in need of daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and be filled,” and yet you do not give them what is necessary for their body, what use is that?"
I am weary of inequalitie being explained by "racism." Yes, social racism is a deep concern. But, it will not yield to endless name-calling. Inequality must be met with equality of access and resources. And, to that end I will continue a deep-dive into what-works-and-what-doesn't in public education while volunteer tutoring inner-city elementary kiddos on how to read well.
Ibram X. Kendi is a nobody. The only reason anybody has even heard the name is that television propaganda keeps bringing him up. Constantly his stupid book is brought up and for some reason it's in every library, undoubtedly donated by some NGO.
Here: it's a book written for profoundly retarded children. You can read it in 5 minutes and forget it forever:
https://fliphtml5.com/ycdaf/zcju/basic
The first line is so hilarious:
"Antiracist Baby is BRED, not born" - yeah, like they are cattle or something. Not human beings.
There is literally no content in the book. It's 100% forgettable. It's not going to make anybody change their life after an epiphany. Stop talking about a socially promoted nobody who none of us would have know about if he didn't have a unique name, and wasn't black.
I'm genuinely surprised that the "news" media isn't obsessively talking about some flip book from Dr. Shenanay Sheniqua Transformer. It's just a matter of time.
I don't get that so many people don't get that once they utter the word "racist" they are no longer considered serious people. Rather they are looked upon as people to be managed. At best to be humored or patronized, but simply avoided if possible. If there is something to be learned from them we'll never know because it isn't worth the risk to engage with them in order to find out.
Kendi is the Grand Kleagal of The KKKlan with a Tan... He just builds a career out of telling fools that hating white people is a moral virtue.
I dont think Kendi, et al hate whites....i think he/they just love sanctimony, and are willing to use that sanctimony, along with hefty servings of guilt, rhetoric, and outright bullshit, to justify what is clearly an attempt to gain unjustified power. Which makes him exponentially more vile than a person exhibiting bigotry and prejudice.
I moved and was looking for a new medical group. One company touted they were "antiracist" and devoted to "equity"so I knew they were NOT focused at all on merit and competence. The other group just touted their medical care. Of course I chose the second one. I'm a person of color and have no time for Kendi and ilk.
Love and admire you guys. Kendi is fortunate to be popular in a time of relative prosperity and businesses and society can carry those (white, black, other) who are not the absolute best. But this won’t last and when the shock comes there will be catastrophic consequences to the under qualified. The desire to survive and minimize loss of standard of living will result in ruthlessness we haven’t seen since WWII or Depression.
On a related note, Philly black on black shootings now over 1,500 year to date; maybe Kendi should tackle that catastrophe.
White pedophiles? 😂🤣😅😆😁😄😃😀
Black parents need to do a much better job in preparing their children to understand the moral and social of education. Too many parents do not give their children the cultural and intellectual stimulation that is necessary during their formative years of moral development. Taking children to the library, museum, plays or lectures will be much more conducive to learning and appreciate the value of and importance of education as a requisite of informed and engaged citizenship. We cannot expect teachers to engage in the arduous task of character formation that lies within the province of parental concern and involvement
Anti racist is dem-speak for flaming, hate mongering racist!...and that would be all democrats.
Isn't the real issue how well the test predicts job performance for blacks and whites? If it predicts equally well, it's not biased. If blacks with lower scores perform as well as whites with higher scores it is biased and different screens should be used for blacks and whites.
If we were all Kendi, we could blame the utter catastrophic failure of ultraorthodox Jewish communities to educate their children on RACISM when, in fact, it's obviously disproportionately impacted by culture and priorities--even if, duh, racism still exists. You simply couldn't ask for a better experiment and control. Will we now suggest that it's time to reduce standards in the Jewish orthodox community or raise them? Will we suggest they're lazy or their DNA is to blame? I think we all know the answers.
If one can reduce one of the most successful ethnic groups in the world to such abysmal failure, anything is possible!
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/11/nyregion/hasidic-yeshivas-schools-new-york.html
Does anyone in this debate care whether the specific test in question is a valuable or worthwhile element of the social worker licensing process? It’s disappointing to see an economist gloss over the impact of the proliferation of professional licensing requirements in creating barriers to entry, reducing availability of services, increasing costs and protecting incumbents. There is a shortage of mental health providers in this country, and we should be looking critically at whether licensing requirements serve a valid purpose.
In reading the petition itself the initial point is that this is not a worthwhile exam, in that it has little connection to the skills necessary to be an effective social worker. Yes, there is also a lot of text on the racial disparities in results, but the argument in the petition isn’t simply “it’s a bad test because it’s racist” but that it is a bad test, period. And if it is not a worthwhile test then yes, it can also matter whether a test that arguably does not have a strong connection to ability to perform a job is locking out, or favoring, candidates of particular backgrounds.
Are they right about this? I have no expertise in social work so I can’t assess the value of the test questions myself, but was surprised to see that they are based on surveys of practicing social workers, rather than an objective body of relevant knowledge of psychology, welfare law, etc. It’s also worth considering the petition’s point about requiring an exam level of English fluency when there is a recognized shortage of Spanish speaking mental health providers to provider therapy services.
Isn’t a knee-jerk defense of licensing requirements just because someone says they are racist and bad, instead of just saying they are bad, part of the problem with policy discourse today?
Am reading Cornel West’s “Keeping Faith”, his 1993 volume of essays addressing issues of racism, philosophy and the Black intellectual project. In his chapter on the dilemma of the Black intellectual he states; “The predicament of the black intellectual need not be grim and dismal. Despite the pervasive racism of American society and anti-intellectualism of the black community, critical space and insurgent activity can be expanded. This expansion will occur more readily when black intellectuals take a more candid look at themselves, the historical and social forces that shape them, and the limited though significant resources of the community whence they came.”
While published way back in 1993, West’s arguments hold today. The objective is greater intellectual development and seriousness not less. Having listened to West’s interview with Prof Loury recently, I understand him to be consistent in this area.
I am sorry I was rude. If Marcy Wheeler and Glenn Greenwald had gotten into yet another fight I would NOT have said that on either of their social media sites.
I love this discussion. It strikes at the core of not a race thing, but human nature thing. Some people are not good at “test”. Doesn’t mean they can’t do the job, just means they aren’t good at the test. Also does not mean the test is bad. Tests are what they are, it’s how a person responds to them. I was horrible at tests. But I’ve succeeded in life and business. Not because I was given things, but because I can think strategically, I can trouble shoot...step outside the box. If people could step out side the current trend of not only “scores” and current day red herrings, they might find that a lot of folks are very good at what they looking for, just not “standardized”. It’s unfortunate John and glen get attacked for this discussions. They’re sooo important for all of us at large...no matter how we are
And conversely, some are bad at classes and excel at tests. I was one of those kids who, back in the 1970s-80s crushed the standardized tests 98-99% every damn time but didn’t always show that with my grades. Absolutely a human nature thing.
I’ll never forgive or forget being told by the director of our department to read IXK’s book in order to become better (white) people, replete with its black and white thinking, pun intended. Everyone then started waving their Kendi books to the beat of a Mao clock that waves the red book along with the seconds.
I still can’t wrap my brain around buying that narcissistic crap for even a minute much less insisting that reading it would improve my (white) character.
You have to think of it more like a crucifix or Che shirt or some other tribal and social signifier: no one buys the book for its words or banal ideas, the entire purpose of owning and displaying the book is to let other people know that "you get it" and "you're on the right side of history" ie. it's a neurotic shriek of I'M NOT RACIST, pls dont mistake me for those other mean and evil whites over there.
If you look at the recent careers and bank statements of obvious frauds like Kendi and NHJ, as well as those BLM people who've pocketed millions (not to mention the freshly minted army of Diversicrats), you can see that White Guilt is an enormously fertile and lucrative field, and guilty white liberals of the NYT/NPR class will do, say, buy and donate almost anything if they feel it will give them absolution.
I had also heard before that Henry Rogers' score on the SAT was only in the low 1000s, which as Glenn noted is around the median of test takers. Another blogger estimated Mr. Rogers' IQ to be around a 103 based on his reported SAT score given that there's some degree of self selection among the SAT test taking population. To be fair this would imply that he's at around the 58th percentile of IQ among whites and is in fact smarter than the majority of white people. Given that Rogers is 40 years old I assume that he took his SATs around the year 2000. Not sure about the median, but I looked at the numbers from back then and the average Black score on the SAT was around an 860.
https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2005/nativetrends/ShowTable.asp?table=tables/table_4_9a.asp&indicator=4.9&excel=xls/table_4_9a.xls&excelsize=18
If Henry in fact cracked a 1000 on the SAT in those days he would've been slightly above average among SAT test takers overall and decently above average compared to Black test takers. I think it's reasonable to conclude that he's smarter than a lot of Americans both Black and white and to imply that he's an idiot is therefore unfair if for no other reason than that it downplays the even greater level of idiocy among the general population. He might be underwhelming by the standards of a public academic with well-known accolades, but Henry Rogers certainly isn't a dumb person in the sense of being below average in intelligence.
I'm not a huge fan of Henry's general style of argumentation and I agree with John that in this specific instance Mr. Rogers would come across as more convincing if he could in fact demonstrate concretely how standardized tests were biased. That being said, I actually don't think it's necessarily an invalid form of reasoning to assert the existence of something without providing direct evidence of it. I'm not a math person but my understanding is that in mathematics there are constructive proofs that demonstrate the existence of an object by directly showing how to construct that object and non-constructive proofs that demonstrate the existence of an object indirectly. When utilizing proof by contradiction, these non-constructive proofs assert the existence of an object by showing that to deny its existence would result in a logical contradiction.
I feel like this is how Henry Rogers is arguing for the existence of bias in standardized testing. Since according to Henry we all know that there are no group differences among test takers and given that there are disparate outcomes on these tests by group, to deny the existence of biased questions on the tests is to engender a logical contradiction of the thorniest sort. QED
John, you might be selling Mr. Rogers a bit short here. Despite his far from perfect reasoning, I do see glimmers of an intuitive or folk mathematics at work haha.
And just what kind of fuzzy mathematics was John McWhorter employing in his NYT piece? I couldn't make heads nor tails of his fanciful "explanations" of WHY black test performance was at odds with that of other racial/ethnic groups. All I see everywhere I look is mountains of evidence showing near perfectly standard distributions for these various groups, though centered on different means. Exactly what one would expect when evaluating populations.