Yes, the problem does remain, and it seems like the way I understand the origins of the racial gap In the SAT would also apply to the ACT.

(December 25, 2018 at 5:19 am)bennyboy Wrote: Well, it's a clusterfuck, isnt' it?  Drug use, incarceration, single parents, low educational achievement, low test scores, bad health care, bad diet, and teachers who are likely to be poor in at least some of those same categories.  There's very little light at the end of the tunnel, unless all those problems are aggressively addressed.

All of which also prevalent in the white demo...but, you know..don't let that get in the way of pushing racist tropes.  The fact of the matter is that these same issues above do not lead to the same outcomes between the two demographics. It's almost...almost...as if there's Something Else™.

Quote:And yes, a big part of it is cultural.  Black kids have access to jazz, blues, and a lot of the greatest music and art that currently exists.  But they're listening to rap, wearing their pants at their knees, and working for street cred like it matters.

White kids are the ones greasing the money making gears of the rap industry.

Quote:This is the essence of the problem

Not to put too fine a point on it, but you, and the nonsense above..is the essence of the problem.

Quote:  But they're listening to rap, wearing their pants at their knees, and working for street cred like it matters.

Holy shit .....

(December 26, 2018 at 1:32 am)Gae Bolga Wrote: Not to put too fine a point on it, but you, and the nonsense above..is the essence of the problem.

No, it isn't. The essence of the problem is that black kids don't do well on tests or in school, and therefore have a hard time getting into a quality post-secondary institution. It's not a problem that can be solved at the Harvard application point-- it has to start from the ground up.

But it's not just resources-- there's a psychology there. Take a poor Chinese family who's just immigrated. How long is it likely to be before they field a kid getting straight A scores. One generation? Maybe two? Do you think that teachers are trickily marking test answers wrong, but only for black students? Or giving excellently written essays an "F" just for kicks?

As I said before, the perception problem is universal-- WITHIN the black communities. How do you tell some kid who feels like a piece of shit, and whose school is falling apart, that he is a person of value? And if he doesn't feel like a person of valuable, how likely is he to act as though he is one?

Kids need an environment where they are taught, and actually made to believe, that they are as good as, or possibly even better than, white kids. And incentives need to be in place for excellent teachers, excellent students, and so on.

And herein lies the rub-- you can't conflate moral value with academic achievement. You can't, in a university entrance exam, say, "His test scores are very low, but he's been up against it-- go ahead and put him in medical school so we can have more black surgeons!" No. You have to put in place an environment where all people involved have a fair chance at REAL SUCCESS, not an "also participated" trophy. And then you reward success with goddamn ticker tape parades, money, praise, every possible way to establish that sense of worth.

That's the PC problem-- it's all based on fluff. You need substance-- some concrete methods that might actually make a real difference in people's lives. "Wahhhh it's racism, it's not faiiiirrrr" might feel good to say, but it does very little actually to turn failed communities into successful ones.

The "pc solution" appears to include affirmative action.  It's kindof silly to complain that folks don't have a solution to a problem..... while you're complaining about that solution to the problem.

(December 26, 2018 at 3:38 am)Gae Bolga Wrote: The "pc solution" appears to include affirmative action.  It's kindof silly to complain that folks don't have a solution to a problem..... while you're complaining about that solution to the problem.

It's the wrong solution for the wrong problem.

(December 26, 2018 at 8:45 am)bennyboy Wrote:

(December 26, 2018 at 3:38 am)Gae Bolga Wrote: The "pc solution" appears to include affirmative action.  It's kindof silly to complain that folks don't have a solution to a problem..... while you're complaining about that solution to the problem.

It's the wrong solution for the wrong problem.

It's one thing to point out that one solution to a problem can end up being counterproductive in the long run. It's one thing to point out that perhaps the problem is so big that there might not even be a good solution. But it's another thing entirely to ignore crucial elements of a huge problem in such a way that it renders them impossible to understand (as I've said before, it's impossible to grasp the reasons why black people still have to deal with shitty education and horrible economic inequality without at least even trying to reckon with the long history of racism in America [whether it's the overt, Jim Crow type, or the more unconscious type more in common use today]). And it's worse to keep couching it in language that treats this as a good thing. A tragic inevitability perhaps (but only if the social problems and injustices that kept the black man down really are too big to really fix), but a good thing?

I don't think racism is a good thing at all. There are, for sure, black people out there whose natural capacity is undeveloped due to limitations with the American system, and this is a serious problem for the ability of the US to compete in a world market with China and Russia-- and God forbid that one of THOSE countries replace the US as the dominant superpower in the world. With a better infrastructure, some black kid might grow up to cure cancer instead of ending up in prison. Or some dad who gets released from an unduly harsh prison sentence, with financial incentives for non-offending, might provide inspiration for his children and community, contributing to a psychological culture which will produce that next black Einstein in a generation or two.

The PC-minded see me as racist because I look at statistics and attempt to incorporate them into real solutions. I don't shy away from negative statistics, like low IQ scores, crime rates, and so on. But that's not because I want to justify keeping black people down. It's because I believe you need to correctly identify the problem in order to effectively address it.

It's known that IQ, race, and income are correlated. Saying it's all racism is one thing, but my response is-- Okay, instead of blaming the test, what would we need to do to actually get those IQ scores up? And the answer, which I've stated many times, is that affirmative action-- the excusing of IQ, SAT (or ACT) test scores on the basis of bias, is the wrong path to take. The answer is to generate black kids who CAN compete on equal footing, through the economic incentives and support systems that I've outlined here.

The PC questions are all wrong-- How can we get more money into the hands of black workers? How can we get more black kids into university? They are not based on bringing kids through a system that generates REAL value, instead of using cultural diversity as a euphemistic substitute.

The right questions are-- how can we start getting good academic results in black communities? How can we keep families together? How can we reduce incarceration rates in black communities? How can we better support single moms and their kids, so that they can maintain esteem and hold a vision of a future that is real enough to work for?

My issue with PC is that while there's a lot of talk at the end-point (say an application to university), virtue signalling is far more common than real boots-on-the-ground solutions that might actually work.

Such is the victory of modern white supremacy, it's got people who don't think racism is a good thing singing it's tune word for word.

: tips the hat :

(December 26, 2018 at 7:12 pm)bennyboy Wrote: How can we keep families together?  How can we reduce incarceration rates in black communities?

Ending the war on drugs would be a good start; they're a HUGE part of why America has the highest incarceration rate on Earth. And, of course, there's still a disproportionately higher amount of black people sent to jail for the same crime that white people are more likely to be given a slap on the wrist for. As a good example, in the 1980s, crack had higher penalties than regular cocaine (despite being the exact same chemically) for no discernible reason except it was a cheaper form that, consequently, had a higher use among poor blacks than the obscenely rich people who used cocaine in the 1970s. And even now, black people are likely to serve harsher sentences than white people for the same exact drug-related crime.