White Privilege

That was actually a very interesting and insightful anecdote to help elucidate the issue. Okay, so let's flesh it out a little. That was a great example of a question that was unfair to ask of people not as familiar with the culture as a native would. Clearly not intended, but unfair nevertheless.What kinds of questions might exist that would reasonably give an unfair disadvantage towards African-Americans but would give unfair advantage towards Anglo-Americans?

I'm at work at the moment, so I can't spend long, but I'm guessing there are some examples in the study genomicus referenced. I can't remember if they were linked to anything online though ?

No. I would not agree.Those questions favored kids familiar with English culture. Much like I am sure the math questions favored kids familiar with numbers, or the history questions favored kids familiar with important dates.Your example is just another of many lame attempts in this thread to see racism everywhere it might not exist, even when it requires you to confuse very distinct things like race and culture.Culture and race are not the same thing. And there is nothing preventing British Asians from learning nursery rhymes.

Ok, let's start with the understanding that your use of "Englsih" and "British" are interchangeable in this context. (Fair enough, they are for these purposes).On the one hand, you acknowledge the identity of "British Asians", and on the other, you reference as "English culture" something which does not belong to them.So they're technically British, but not properly or fully so ?

I did not use English and British interchangeably in my post.When I said English culture, I literally meant the culture of the English language. English culture belongs to everyone who speaks the language. How the fuck should I know if they're "technically British" or not? That's for you and your government to decide what qualifies someone as a British citizen. It's not up to me and it doesn't even matter for your example.

But more so for those who were born into it.

You would agree than there are subcultures, some quite significant, including an African-American culture?I don't know about nursery rhymes, but I expect there may be some differences in the kinds of songs, poems, rhymes etc they grow up learning compared with European-Americans.You and I speak English, but I once took an test from an American school when I was about 13 years old and I failed miserably.English schools didn't diagram sentences, so I simply couldn't attempt this stuff.
I had no idea what a dime or a nickel was worth (I knew one was 5 and the other 10 but it was just guess work).To name two things that I remember on that test.

According only to you.

In a general sense, sure.But now we're straying from the topic.

I fail to see how agreeing that European-American and African-American culture have differences is offtopic when you were trying to claim homogenousness. We all agree black people are not doing worse because of the colour of their skin, but the claim by Freedle is that the different experiences of African-American children in general provides them with a slightly different toolset than the European-American and that this contributes to their poor test performance.Take verbal tests, based on spelling and grammar. A student who speaks African American Vernacular English in a school of people speaking African American Vernacular English may make errors in grammar and spelling that European-American English speakers would be much less likely to.If this is true, we could say that being white maximizes ones chances of not speaking African American Vernacular English while being black maximizes your chance of speaking African American Vernacular English. Therefore being white affords you an unearned privilege in relation to certain tests.Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

When was this? No. We do not all agree on that. Despite it's name, AAVE is not unique to African Americans nor do all African Americans speak it.Edited by Jon, : No reason given.

I'm going to take a brief detour from the discussion regarding police brutality and focus on the issue of SAT tests and whether there exists a racial bias in this test which favors whites and disadvantages blacks and other minorities.While Freedle's 1999 argument is still very relevant, here I will more deeply examine the evidence accumulated by Kidder and Rosner, 2002, published in the Santa Clara Law Review ("How the SAT Creates Built-In Headwinds: An Educational and Legal Analysis of Disparate Impact").With that preamble out of the way, let me circle back to this question: Have a look at the below two questions.I doubt anyone could answer the question posed without consulting the 2002 paper. It turns out that the question on the right was correctly answered by a greater percentage of African-Americans than whites on pre-tests. On the other hand, the question on the left was correctly answered by a higher percentage of whites than African-Americans. Guess which one was chosen for inclusion in the SAT?The question on the left -- where a greater percentage of whites than blacks answered the question correctly -- was chosen for use on the SAT. The other question was rejected. Yet both are perfectly legitimate mathematics questions for America's high school juniors and seniors.Why did African-Americans find it easier to correctly answer the question on the right, and why did whites find it harder? This is an interesting question worth considering when formulating SAT questions; there may be subtle cultural and economic factors at work that escape our intuitions. But regardless of the reason, is it fair to choose questions for inclusion on the SAT -- over and over again -- based on the superior performance of white test-takers? Absolutely not.As Kidder and Rosner note:"Would it shortchange America's high school seniors if items like that on the right appeared on the scored SAT in addition to or instead of items like that on the left? While the content of both items is ostensibly neutral, can it be said that the SAT is truly unbiased if, time and time again, the test construction process tends to prefer (for statistical reasons) items like the one on the left (that favors Whites) and rejects items like the one on the right (that favors African Americans)?"One might, at first blush, think that this is not as significant an issue as I am making it out to be. Yet the entire design methodology behind selecting which questions make it on the SAT consistently chooses items where whites outperform blacks. As Rosner states:"My considered hypothesis is that every question chosen to appear on every SAT in the past ten years has favored whites over blacks. The same pattern holds true on the LSAT and the other popular admissions tests, since they are developed similarly. The SAT question selection process has never, to my knowledge, been examined from this perspective. And the deeper one looks, the worse things get. For example, while all the questions on the October 1998 SAT favored whites over blacks, approximately one-fifth showed huge, 20 percent gaps favoring whites."If all questions on the October 1998 SAT favored whites over blacks -- by design -- then you can imagine how many black seniors faced disadvantages during the college admissions process, while their white peers took full-ride scholarships largely due not to their talent but to a flawed test construction methodology.The SAT test is categorically not race-neutral. This is not a conspiracy on the part of the test-makers; rather, this reveals how those in positions of privilege are very often the most blind to their privilege.Rosner and Kidder (2002) suggested ways to improve the neutrality of the SAT (and the LSAT, GRE, etc. -- all of which suffer from this fatal flaw which advantages whites to the detriment of their black peers), so it's not like this is a "necessary problem." It's not necessary at all, and only serves to cement the existing privileges of the dominant racial group in the United State.I could delve into this even deeper, but before anyone initiates a knee-jerk attempt at an argument, I strongly advise all 83 pages of the Rosner and Kidder study be read. You can find an online PDF for free.

I'm not seeing how the results might be any different than comparing the Southern United States with the Northern United States. The Northern states probably test better on average. The inverse might be the case in England, where the North might do more poorly overall to the South. Would that indicate racism as the culprit or might that be indicative of a difference in cultural identities? Are you referring to Ebonics? Except that proper English is taught in all schools, so it's hardly relevant either way. Living in Texas might maximize one's chance of using the improper conjunction of ya'll versus you'll. Are Texans "underprivileged" therefore because they have modes of speech specific to their region? Should SAT's make special accommodations for Texans or is it irrelevant since schools teach the proper conjunction?

I'm not going to read all 83 pages, but assuming that everything stated is factual, what was the reason why the two answers yielded different results?And what are test-makers supposed to do beforehand to prevent these purported racially biased tests? What is the control?

Then I am sure you will have no problem providing independent, statistically significant evidence that the reason behind Asian-American achievement in academia is because of cultural values of "hard work" and stuff. I consistently support my position with research from the peer-reviewed literature, so I expect you can attempt the same instead of making mere assertions. Yeah, but:1. I didn't mention internment camps. I said "labor unions."2. The racism of labor unions extended beyond the 1940s.There have been many other factors at play behind Asian-American success in academia -- factors which were not present for African-Americans. And that question has been answered in a copious volume of research. That (1) African-Americans are discriminated in the job market and that (2) this has a significant role in explaining the present socioeconomic divide between whites and blacks has been well-established. For starters, see here, here, here, here, and here. You evidently do not appreciate the extent to which racism is embedded in our society's institutions -- political, educational, corporate, and social. Racism in the United States is more than the desire of some Southerners to fly the Confederate flag from state government buildings; it is a fabric that is weaved with many intersecting threads of socioeconomic and political realities. Racism is much more pervasive than you think precisely because present-day racism manifests itself in ways that are not so obvious to privileged individuals who otherwise consider themselves not to be prejudiced. But the effects are very real, and they are deeply entrenched in society, so electing a black president doesn't suddenly -- like a specter in the fog -- make this structural racism vanish. You didn't cite any sources here, but anyways, you are committing a grave logical error. There are a multiplicity of factors that go into determining SAT scores; race is one of them, and so is economic status. That African and Caribbean blacks emigrating to the United States also score higher than that of native African-Americans proves exactly nothing regarding the lack of racial bias in the SAT. Consider that immigrants to the U.S. are often rather well-educated, and the education of one's parents plays a predictive role in shaping SAT scores. So that could rather easily explain the above phenomenon and in no way refutes my central thesis: that SAT tests structurally favor whites. And year after year they use the exact same design methodology which produces questions that favor whites. See Kidder and Rosner, 2002, and my discussion of that paper. Which, again, has a long history of racism. See Stephen J. Gould's excellent exploration of IQ and race in his The Mismeasure of Man. You have literally cited no evidence that counters my thesis; to the contrary, I have cited a considerable body of evidence to support my position -- evidence which you have only made a vague attempt to refute. Right. But you specifically cited "gangster rap" as self-destructive behavior, when I see that as a white guy with only a surface level understanding of African-American struggle and culture having an opinion on a cultural phenomenon with no supporting evidence. This isn't about "excuses." The disparity in school grades can be very well explained by socioeconomic conditions. What's your explanation for the disparity in school grades? Black kids aren't trying hard enough? Yeah, right. It's a prediction of the hypothesis that blacks are discriminated against in the job market because of negative racial stereotypes. The results of that study match nicely with the predictions. That's the way evidence works. If molecular phylogenies show a consistent branching pattern, in line with the predictions of common descent, then what does that mean? It means that common descent is a robust explanation for the observed pattern.