The same is true for academic achievement. Intelligent people have an advantage in their ability to do well academically but that advantage can very easily be swamped by boredom, especially in pre-university education where the pace is geared to the slowest students.
There are many skeptics of any trend to equate IQ and worth. (And far, far fewer people who would equate the two). For example:
> "We agree emphatically with Howard Gardner, however, that the concept of intelligence has taken on a much higher place in the pantheon of human virtues than it deserves."
> "Many people conclude that if they see someone who is sensitive, humorous, and talks fluently, the person must surely have an above-average IQ. This identification of IQ with attractive human qualities in general is unfortunate and wrong"
> "All of this is another way of making a point so important that we will italicize it now and repeat elsewhere: _Measures of intelligence have reliable statistical relationships with important social phenomena, but they are a limited tool for deciding what to make of any given individual._ Repeat it we must, for one of the problems of writing about intelligence is how to remind readers often enough how little an IQ score tells about whether the human being next to you is someone whom you will admire or cherish. This thing we know as IQ is important but not a synonym for human excellence." - The Bell Curve, p21
By contrast, it will be hard to find a quote from any widely read author which defends equating IQ with human worth, but I'd be glad to have a reference if you can find one. Pending some of those, I'm questioning whether "society equates IQ with human worth" is a strawman, being a concept widely rejected by society and rarely supported.
Now, saying that being cognitively skilled and able is a useful talent in today's society would generally not be controversial, because being honest or kind or reliable or intuitive or nurturing or fast or strong are also useful talents. To say that cognitive ability is valued is true, to say that IQ is equated with worth would not be, any more than being a skilled carpenter or outrageously funny is equated with human worth.
Hmm. Reflecting, I cannot think of a single time when I have experienced society equating IQ with my value as a person, nor observing that happening to others around me. I have never gotten or been refused a job or membership on the basis of IQ tests (perhaps luckily I never applied to Mensa). Nobody has been romantically attracted or repelled by my IQ tests. I haven't been given or refused any services on the basis of IQ scores.
In fact, I have never in my life been even asked what my IQ is, and I don't know it.
I'm having trouble picturing that society is defining my worth by an unknown IQ *at all* (since I don't know mine and have thus never disclosed it anybody), much less relying on it "to the exclusion of every other factor" in your words.
But that's my life experience. Could you give some personal examples of times when society has equated your worth as a human being with your IQ tests, to the exclusion of every other factor?
So maybe there isn't any "fight to keep having"? With virtually nobody asserting the other side.
"Hmm. Reflecting, I cannot think of a single time when I have experienced society equating IQ with my value as a person"
I think this is an extremely important point. As I said in a reply to Chris above, even if we had categorical proof of "racial" IQ differences, what difference would it actually make to the way we run society? I struggle to think of any.
I think the only reason that some persist on this point is that they want to justify, for example in Murray's case, the idea that racial disparities exist not because of racism but because of black people's "faultiness." Murray hasn't been coy about admitting that this is his motivation. Peyton Gendron used the same idea to justify his mass shooting of African Americans in Buffalo. So yes, some people are asserting the other side. Some of them extremely dangerous.
But I can also say from my life experience that I've had numerous people assume I wasn't intelligent until I "proved" that I was. I studied a specialised maths and physics course at university, and my lecturer was visibly surprised when I walked in the door for the first time. Without even asking my name, he told me I must be in the wrong class. I'm pretty confident he wouldn't have said that to a white student.
Many black people I know have had similar experineces of being assumed to be unintelligent. I know anecdotes aren't data, but I strongly believe it's stuff like the idea of racialised IQ and the widespread conflation of IQ and intelligence, that keeps the idea swirling in the public subconscious.
Mostly agreeing. Some fine tuning follows however.
> "As I said in a reply to Chris above, even if we had categorical proof of "racial" IQ differences, what difference would it actually make to the way we run society?"
Let's take the problematic concept of "race" out of it, and say more carefully:
> Even if we have objective measurements of statistical differences in IQ scores between population groups, what difference would it make to the way we run society?
That's asking one of the right questions!
And I have two answers. One is that it should make zero difference to our understanding of an individual person. Their ability to do something (or not) is specific to them, and even a fact which is statistically correlated with one of the population groups to which they belong, has no relevance to the individual, who may be typical or atypical (this assertion if much broader than cognitive abillity). Men may on average be taller than women, but that doesn't say anything about a particular man. Einstein may have been German and Jewish, but his brilliance says nothing about all Germans or all Jews. I think we are all agreed on that here, so it's not controversial.
However, one facet of society is it's self analysis, which brings up a second point. If somebody asserts that in the US, Blacks have a statistically lower average income than Asians (again: that says nothing about any individual person who is Black or Asian), we can be pretty sure they did not do a genetic assessment of every Black or Asian person included in those statistics, and so trying to invalidate that assertion based on an argument like "race is not a discrete variable (ie: with countable distinct states and no gradients)" would be rightly dismissed as sophistry. The categories for income stats are not based on genetic tests, but upon self-identification. If somebody else noted that Asians as a group also score higher than Blacks (and other "races") on IQ tests, this should be evaluated in the same way - it says nothing about any individual, but is an assertion based measurements of self-identified population groups. And so a rational society could neutrally consider evidence for and against causative factors linking sets of statistics, within population groups which are defined the same way for the different statistics.
That is, when an analysis being evaluated uses statistics categorized by self-identified population group, it is fair and reasonable to bring into the discussion other salient statistics which use *that same self-identification* - apples to apples. If self-identification defines the first statistics, it's equally valid for comparison with the second statistics. If the stats being added to the discussion are not based on genetically defined populations, it's unreasonable to discount them on a basis which they never claimed to have (genetic categories).
Does self-identification corelate with genetic background, or with culture, or both? At the moment, who cares? That's a different question with complex answers. As long as the population groups in two sets of statistics are both defined by self-identification, genetic factors are at best irrelevant and a distraction, whether due to good faith confusion, or a bad faith attempt to derail the discussion. (Rule of thumb: try to assume good faith as long as possible, and then sometimes beyond that).
In short, the second effect on running society (the first being *no effect* on assessing individuals), would be to allow a less ideologically constrained analysis of the dynamics within the society, when scientifically valid, with the goal of finding interventions which are effective in the real world, for implementing the (hopefully liberal) values we have. It's hard to fix real things if we are not allowed to understand their true dynamics but must instead hew to an ideology which disparages objective reality.
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PS: I too have the experience of being assumed not to belong in an advanced class, based on first impressions. In my case it probably had go do with SEC or undiagnosed ADD or related quirks. Yes it sucks when it happens. And yes I'm glad that I later demonstrated by performance that I had been properly placed, as I imagine you did - and I'm glad that my teacher was reality based rather than ideology based and so accepted the real world feedback rather than clinging to a false narrative based on superficial impressions.
"In short, the second effect on running society (the first being *no effect* on assessing individuals), would be to allow a less ideologically constrained analysis of the dynamics within the society, when scientifically valid, with the goal of finding interventions which are effective in the real world, for implementing the (hopefully liberal) values we have."
I think what you're very, very cautiously trying to say here is that if black people turned out to be inherently less intelligent than Asians, we shouldn't be surprised if they end up having lower incomes and shouldn't ascribe the difference to racism. This is essentially Charles Murray's argument too.
In principle it's perfectly reasonable. For example, we do have population groups in society whose disparities we blame on genetic issues. People with Down's syndrome, for example, have notable cognitive deficits and we're therefore not surprised when they don't dominate high income fields.
The thing is, this issue affects all people with Down's synrome, whereas even the most avowed racist would have to admit that at least some black people are as capable as their white peers. And even if we make the mistake of assuming that IQ is a meaningful measure of overall intelligence and ability, no study has found that the racial IQ gap is significant enough to lead to disparities of the size that we see.
So then, what else could be causing the disparities?
A history of racial oppression? In some cases, certainly. Racial wealth (as opposed to income) disparities in America are around 10:1. White Americans obviously had significant advantage when it comes to wealth acquisition. And wealth is a strong predictor of all kinds of poisitve academic and life outcomes.
Cultural differences? In some cases, certainly. Studies have found that some black children spend less than a third the time doing homework as their Asian peers. Higher single-parenthood rates and lower average incomes are also strong predictors of all kinds of negative academic and life outcomes.
Racial bias? In some cases, certainly. Unconscious bias has been found in several studies on employment and job application. Perhaps most famously the study that found a white felon received job callbacks at a slightly higher rate than a black man of similar age and skill wiith no criminal record.
All of these and more need to be considered carefully in any serious analysis of racial disparities in America. But until the issues affecting the black community from without are addressed, there will always be those who refuse to admit the possibility that there are also problems from within.
What we see from people like Murray is the opposite problem; somebody who refuses to see that there are problems that affect the black community from without, and so twists the data to support the pre-determined conclusion that racial disparity is due to some inherent flaw of "blackness".
Maybe I'm reading you wrong, but it sometimes feels as if you think I don't take cultural issues seriously when it comes to racial disparities, and that I blame disparities entirely on past or present racism in America. I'm sure you'll have spoken to some black people who do this. I do not.
I agree with you completely that an honest understanding of the dynamics between and within population groups is essential for addressing any problems/disparities between them. I dont think I've ever written anything that suggests otherwise. I may not spell it out in every repky, but I assume the readers here know my views well enough to take it for granted.
> "I agree with you completely that an honest understanding of the dynamics between and within population groups is essential for addressing any problems/disparities between them. "
And I agree with you. I agree about the many possibilities that need to be considered as hypotheses when trying to understand the observed dynamics. It was certainly never in my mind to narrow the hypotheses to be considered (like assuming that any one factor must explain all differences!).
One thing which I think might get missed, is that my primary interest in the IQ gap is in using it as one (of many) metrics to see if we are achieving our goals of underlying equality. When the gap is shrinking, then we may be doing something right. One value of this is that waiting for the downstream effects could take decades to generations, so it's hard to close the loop and use the feedback to improve current programs.
Imagine a magical intervention which entirely closed any gap for anybody coming to adulthood in or after 2023. Whatever influence that intervention has on income, say, will gradually increase
over the following 50+ years, as the post-intervention cohort gradually becomes a larger portion of the population, perhaps reading 50% by the 2060's. There is no magical intervention so stark, so the signal of a successful set of policies may be delayed even longer. But a decrease in the IQ gap (or lack thereof) might give us some much quicker feedback about successful interventions to change the environmental factors behind much of any such gap. (I have far less interest in any genetic factors, because they offer us no handles for improvement of society).
My bottom line is that I want to mitigate the disparities of power and money and status, but I'm convinced that we need to evaluate proposed strategies from a very rational viewpoint, rather than getting caught up in ideology and belief system which dogmatize certain strategies as sacred cows - including ineffective or counter-productive strategies.
> "I'm sure you'll have spoken to some black people who do this. I do not."
I see you as an independent and thoughtful individual, Steve. Your care about trying to be clear in your thinking and writing sets you apart from the average. I don't know what position you will take on things, because it's not cookie-cutter conformance to any party line, and I value that. So let me assure you that I am not assuming that you share sentiments with other people, of any race; to the best of my ability, I perceive you based on what YOU say. I do not assume that you will agree with other Black people I've interacted with, nor any other population group. This is how I prefer to be treated, and I strive to do the same for others.
"One thing which I think might get missed, is that my primary interest in the IQ gap is in using it as one (of many) metrics to see if we are achieving our goals of underlying equality. When the gap is shrinking, then we may be doing something right."
I read your entire comment but kept getting stuck on my uncertainty about which gap you're referring to here. When you say, "when the gap is shrinking..." do you mean the IQ gap? Or do you mean other gaps or disparities (income, wealth, representation, etc.)?
If we could magically close the IQ gap, I don't think much would change. Or rather, I don't think the *rate* of change would alter significantly. We'd still see the same cultural, historical and prejudicial issues that affect black people today. I don't believe that the IQ gap is a key factor in racial disparities. Not least because the IQ gap isn't large enough that you could detect it in a conversation, for example. For most jobs, a few points gap in IQ is meaningless.
If you mean the test score gap, this would be huge. But I think less because of any intelligence gains it would imply, and more because it would imply that the cultural issues that affected black outcomes had largely been fixed. It would mean black kids were studying more, were less likely to see education as "white" and that their home environments had improved. If gaps in employment and income persisted, it would be pretty definitive evidence of racial discrimination.
If we could magically close the gap in all other disparities, reaching Kendi's dream of equity, I think we'd fall somewhere between the two other possibilities. The boost in wealth, employment security, etc, would almost certainly improve outcomes for black children. But the cultural issues would remain, meaning that those children still wouldn't maximise the potential granted by those boosts.
Again, I agree with you about the need to be rational rather than getting caught up in ideology. And thanks for the clarification about perceiving me based specifically on what I say. But then, it begs the question, have I said something irrational or ideological in your opinion? If not why do you keep reminding me that we need to be rational and not ideological?
If I repeatedly pointed out in our discussions that it was important not to assume that black people are genetically inferior, even though you've never claimed that they are, or that some people can't talk about race without falling back on racist tropes, even though you hadn't, wouldn't you wonder why I felt the need to do so?
> "If we could magically close the IQ gap, I don't think much would change."
I was unclear, in using the word "magic". I meant to refer to real world interventions into the environmental influences on IQ, so successfully as to completely eliminate any IQ gap. Having 100% success in changing the environment, or 100% success in outcome, is the unreachable perfection I was calling "magic", posited only as part of a thought experiment. I did NOT mean "magic" like waving a wand and magically changing *just* IQ scores while nothing else in the environment changed, but I can see how one could interpret it so. My apologies if that wording caused a sidetrack.
Suppose that 100 or 200 years from now in the US, we've reached Kendi's anti-racist goals, and there are no remaining significant racial differences in education, employment, income, wealth, or imprisonment, and proportional representation in professions, business, media, and government. And let's further posit that this equality has been earned, not bestowed. That is, in this future time, every population group actively sustains their equal outcomes entirely through equal skill, effort, and contribution - without need for subsidy or preferential treatment.
My contention, however, is that the IQ gap would likely disappear earlier than some of the slower moving metrics which require integration over time. And I contend that we don't factually know which interventions will best produce the all-equal outcome described above. I am suggesting that environmental interventions which show a short to medium term improvement in testable IQ will be more likely to lead to the ultimate long term goal, so the former can be an early indicator of being on the right path.
I do see general intelligence as one intermediary factor on the path towards (deeper) equal opportunity. It's not an end goal, but it could be part of the mechanism of change. While skill at abstract thinking doesn't make one a more worthwhile person, and doesn't control outcomes, it does help with success in an increasingly technological world.
I noted in another comment that I do not know what my own IQ is, and I've never been asked for it - to determine whether I got admitted or hired, or to set my wages. That doesn't mean that my general intelligence has had no effect on my life.
Our society does not reward IQ. It rewards effective ability to accomplish things, or contributions - doing more or better or faster or more accurate or more interesting, etc. And IQ is a significant (but far from the only) factor which feeds into how much one can contribute to a company or organization - along with education, other talents, skills and traits. Persistance, for example, may in some cases matter more than any form of intelligence.
So if an intervention improves average ability for abstract thinking, as measured reasonably well via IQ, it's going to tend to improve other outcomes.
Obviously, this is just one influence on outcomes. A significant degree of discrimination could be another influence, and money or resources is yet another.
However, I don't really believe that we can get to the equality state described above, without reducing any gaps in the average skill at abstract thinking as ONE of the important factors.
As I mentioned, I would like to take the genetic questions off the table as not very interesting. They don't provide any opportunities for intervention or change, and I'm extremely uninterested in any questions of "inherent superiority/inferiority". What I'm interested in, is the environmental influences (the "nuture" side of nature vs nuture) on many of the traits needed for equal participation, IQ being one significant one.
I'm suggesting that IQ test averages could serve as a reverse canary in a coal mine - showing sooner than some other measures whether a program is likely to eventually produce the promised outcomes, so it can be expanded or revised or abandoned. Not the only metric, but one potentially useful one.
And that's just my suggestion, my hypothesis. I could be wrong. I'm not wedded to it, I have no interest in defending it to the death. I may change my mind later. Collaborative pushback is welcome. My goal is truth, not being more right than others.
My intention is to support rational evaluation of proposed or ongoing interventions, rather than ideological evaluations.
Steve, if you cannot avoid taking the following personally as being about you, please stop reading here. The rest is a vent about the state of the society, not a grievance against you personally.
I find it somewhat frustrating when some people tend to stop considering the core question - what rational intellectual tools do we have to better understand and improve society through wise interventions - and instead want to push my points into some kind of racial competition, or some kind of justification for ignoring disadvantages (which they can oppose). They darkly imagine what I must be driving out (within the deep worn grooves of their mind) and stop listening to what I'm actually saying. They don't hear what I am saying, but imagine that I must obviously be pushing some narrative they find abhorrent. I can say "Tool X might help us rationally evaluate the effectiveness of interventions aimed a reducing inequalities", and what they hear is "Tool X allows us to ignore inequalities and make no interventions" - perhaps because they have heard somebody else make that argument, and are so triggered their rational side is suspended. I am not making that argument, and I wish people were not so easily diverted onto hot button topics I'm not raising, and do not care about.
If you are still reading, Steve, I am not accusing you of this, but this frustration with the state of intellectual discourse today is part of the background, and I needed to vent.
"Steve, if you cannot avoid taking the following personally as being about you, please stop reading here."
Okay, we're going to sort this out now. Because I find this almost unbelievably rude and condescending. I'm not sure why it's happened, I think there was one conversation in particular when we really couldn't stop misinterpreting/talking past each other, and it seems to have coloured our interactions ever since, but this is as far down the slope as we're going to go.
Let me say right up front that I'm not claiming I'm blameless here, more on that at the end, but there are a couple of things I want to make very clear.
A) You are a guest here. A very welcome and valued guest. But a guest. I don't expect or want deference. I welcome thoughtful pushback. I do as little policing of people's expression as possible, but I do expect a very basic degree of respect. If you think you're about to write something I don't want you to write here, don't write it, or at least think carefully about how best to write it. It's not your place to tell me to stop reading and just write it anyway.
I'm not a child, I have difficult conversations for a living and generally navigate them just fine. I'm quite good at judging intent. But if you're aware, as you obviously are, that the way you phrase things leads to potential misunderstandings or offence, stop phrasing them that way. Unless you're physicaly unable to stop your fingers from moving, every word you type is a choice.
B) As for your frustration that some people "push your points into justification for disadvantages," please seriously consider the possibility that you may have some responsibility for their reaction. Or, in fact, that your biases might be, in part, creating the "racial competition" they're responding to. Your arguments are pretty much unfailingly biased towards questioning the influence or significance of racism.
A commenter mentions, as an aside, that they believe the African slave trade may have been the most brutal form of slavery, and it's a multi-day debate simply because I believe, with no real conviction, that it's possible that that's true.
People like Charles Murray and Nicholas Wade speak in obviously race essentialist terms, and we're quibbling about the exact wording of a sentence as if we can't understand context.
I state the well known fact that affirmative action has benefitted white women more than any other demographic (https://time.com/4884132/affirmative-action-civil-rights-white-women/), and you ask me, as you do irritatingly often, if I'm just blindly repeating what I've heard somebody else say instead of confirming it for myself (you understand that I have thousands of people critiquing what I say on a regular basis, right? I'm not in the habit of saying things I haven't verified).
And in each of these cases, I'm pretty sure (and in some cases have seen evidence), that you wouldn't have the same quibbles in the reverse case. If somebody claimed that the Atlantic Slave trade *wasn't* the most brutal form of slavery, I'm pretty sure you wouldn't feel the need to debate their assertion for days on end or at all.
If somebody said that the accusations of racial bias levelled at Chales Murray were baseless, I'm not convinced you'd offer any pushback at all, and I'm pretty sure it wouldn't be the same degree (this despite the critiques of many good-faith, well educated, people who have read his work carefully and work in his field).
If somebody said affirmative action benefitted black people more than any other demographic, even though there are no studies that support this, I'm pretty sure you wouldn't have asked for one.
To be clear, other than it being a bit exhausting at times, I don't particularly mind this. As a writer, it's valuable to have people keeping me on my toes. I don't want you not to ask me for verifcation of my claims if they're new to you (although a quick Google search of your own might be in order first). And as my bias is more towards the idea that racism is still a meaningful problem in many ways, it's good to have pushback. I'd be disappointed (and bored) if everybody here thought the same way I do.
But instead of telling people not to react to the things you write, maybe consider modifying the way you write. Consider that biases often come across even if you don't intend them to and even if you aren't aware of them. I'm not saying this to suggest I'm perfect in this regard, I'm certainly not. But if you're repeatedly getting this feedback from people's reactions, it's probably going to get you further to look within than to criticise what keeps happening from without.
As I said up top, I'm not pretending I'm blameless with regards to the friction and misunderstandings we're finding in our interactions. I've definitely allowed past irritation to influence later conversations, and I apologise. I'm going to do my very best to reset. It will be enormously helpful for me to do that if you stop caveating about emotionality or telling me what you're "not accusing me of but..." But regardless, I'll make a conscious effort to err on the side of assuming the best of intentions and to be polite and generous in my future responses.
OK, let's do our very best to reset as you say. I'm enthusiastically agreeing. I will try to stop caveating, and we will both make a conscious effort to err on the side of assuming best intentions and being polite and generous - and we'll both attempt to avoid seeming condescending, OK?
Practice topic: Are white women the primary beneficiaries of Affirmative Action? Let's do our best. I choose this in part because, as I said previously, "I don't have any vested interest in either answer, I have no position to defend on this one." Let's have a civil and productive discussion.
SQJ> "As a writer, it's valuable to have people keeping me on my toes."
My purpose in writing is to seek the truth about the issue (including to be kept on my own toes, if my assertions go beyond the data), but if this discussion helps you in that manner I would be pleased to so contribute.
SQJ> "I'm not in the habit of saying things I haven't verified"
SQJ> "I state the well known fact that affirmative action has benefitted white women more than any other demographic"
I used to accept that as likely true myself, because I had seen it asserted *many* times, though I had not investigated for myself. However, when I eventually looked into that for myself, I found that most of the popular sources were from blogs or journalists of questionable neutrality, who did not appear to be, for example, considering confounding factors which might run the risk of disconfirming their intended point. They were not surveys of differing opinions on the matter, so much as polemics.
One might as well survey the mainstream press about the question: "Was George Floyd's killing a hate crime". Easy to discover the popular consensus, but not much depth of examination.
Seeking something more substantial, I did find a peer reviewed article in the Journal of Social Sciences which examined the question scientifically - complete with academic bibliography, references, methodology, statistics and analysis. I cited it, summarized it's conclusions, and directly quoted four paragraphs from it. I welcome your reading it and discussing it's strengths and weaknesses with me, in the context of other studies.
The core conclusion was that while white women have had more gains over the time period, those gains were not linked to affirmative action, because they entered the workforce with greater skills and experience and thus on the whole did not need AA to get jobs in an growing market needing their labor. (Separately, one might argue that this greater preparation on their part was in substantial part due to the effects of past racial discrimination, but that's not the question under discussion - ie: how much they were benefitted by Affirmative Action specifically).
Often blogs and the popular press fail to consider such confounding factors. They often conflate "women advanced" and "women advanced based on AA" as if they are one and the same. Science needs to be more precise than that.
One article does not definitively answer the question. I put that out as one meaningful datapoint for starting a discussion; perhaps you were influenced by more comprehensive analyses; as you said above, you tend to verify before speaking.
So I said "I would be very interested in some links to the sources you found best analyzed and most persuasive."
And I'm still interested. I am *very* persuadable on this, by evidence and analysis. My first view was that it was probably true. That shifted after some preliminary investigation I'm somewhat leaning the other way, but only slightly; mostly it's not conclusively answered in my opinion. There is enough doubt that I would no longer repeat that assertion myself, because I'm unsure that it's true after early research. Going back to believing it true is not a big shift for me; I just need the evidence and decent analysis.
It should be obvious from my comment that I have already done some searching. But if you have already verified for yourself that the assertion is indeed a fact, it's not unreasonable to politely ask which sources you found most persuasive so I can read them as well.
Thank you for responding, with your link to an article from the popular press, which in turns cites, for example, a blog entry in the Chronical of Higher Education, and other sources.
At this time, I do not find them as persuasive as the peer review scientific article I cited. They do not refute it's assertions, so much as embody the problems it cites with naive analysis. For example, the Chronical blog argues:
> "After IBM established its own affirmative-action program, the numbers of women in management positions more than tripled in less than 10 years. Data from subsequent years show that the number of executives of color at IBM also grew, but not nearly at the same rate."
Notice that this makes no attempt to distinguish (as the scientific journal article does) between advancing, and advancing due to AA. That's exactly the kind of fuzzy thinking (or "motivated reasoning" that the scientific article is trying to avoid.
Please note that I have *never* asserted that it's a "fact" that white women did NOT receive more benefit. I've explicitly said that the question seems not yet conclusively answered in my mind (with a small and reversible leaning towards disconfirmation based on the *science* I have seen to date.) Since it's not yet clear to me what the truth is, I was asking for links to more evidence (from a writer who generally verifies their asserted facts).
I've done some quick research which caused me to no longer believe (at this point in time) that the factuality of the assertion (that white women are the largest beneficiaries of AA) has been objectively proven factual; and since you are convinced that it is indeed factual, I asked for your best sources so I could consider them as well and perhaps be persuaded as well.
As I say, I have no agenda in this except to seek the truth. I would not be upset in the least, whichever way the evidence leads. I was not uncomfortable when I tenatively believed it, I did not research it for years because I assumed it was true. I am assuming that you also have no pre-set conclusion or agenda other than the truth, and that you have been persuaded of the factuality of that statement through your previoius review of the science. I'm asking in good faith for links to that science. Given how science works, I assume there are (almost) always published counter-arguments to consider - but rather than start from scratch, I'm asking what analysis *you* found most convincing. I trust your judgement far more than I trust the average journalist or activist, Steve.
I appreciate the journalistic piece you link in Time, but I would guess that you have based your opinion of factuality on something more solid than that for "verification". If I'm wrong, in that guess, just say so. No harm, no foul. I'll drop it for now, but perhaps if someone else I respect makes the same assertion a year from now, I'll ask them what convinced them.
Side issue: I have tried to be respectful, and to make my own "conscious effort to err on the side of assuming the best of intentions and to be polite and generous" in this response. I've avoided caveats, and condescension, as best I can perceive. If I have failed in that, please help me improve; I will listen. I honestly look forward to the scientific evidence upon which you based your assertion of factuality, to be presented and received in that same spirit. Thank you.
"One might as well survey the mainstream press about the question: "Was George Floyd's killing a hate crime"."
Yeah, this is the problem with the press in general. But it's also a problem with our own biases. I saw this problem absolutely everywhere during COVID (although it's worth pointing out that AA and white women is a statistical claim whilst claims about George Floyd are purely subjective).
There were "data" to confirm whatever you might want to believe about vaccines and masks and myocarditis during the height of COVID. So it is with all research. There will always be that one study that casts doubt upon the consensus. There is simply no sociological data that you can't look at and say, "sure, but what if you control for X variable on Thursday evenings?"
Don't get me wrong, skepticism is vital. But if you spend all of your time on skepticism, simply because a conclusion doesn't quite fit your preexisting biases, if you spend all your time "proving" everything beyond any possibility of doubt or objection, you don't leave any time to actually do anything about the problem. Toni Morrison expressed this well years ago:
"The function, the very serious function of racism is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being.
Somebody says you have no language and you spend twenty years proving that you do. Somebody says your head isn't shaped properly so you have scientists working on the fact that it is. Somebody says you have no art, so you dredge that up. Somebody says you have no kingdoms, so you dredge that up. None of this is necessary. There will always be one more thing."
Some people get this balance very wrong. A single piece of data hinting in the direction they want to go and the matter is settled as far as they're concerned. But in the case of affirmative action, if the worry is that we've not completely verified whether these women advanced as a result of AA or not, why are we not equally worried about whether African Americans advanced as a result of AA or not? Implicit in the question is the assumption that white women likely advanced on their merits but African Americans didn't, no?
As for the conclusion of the study you linked, the conclusion seems to assume that we live in a meritocracy where AA was only about making sure the people with the best grades got the best jobs. An extraordinarily naive reading, no? From the paper:
"So why havenтАЩt white women been helped by affirmative action? The success of white female workers suggests they need no help. White women, compared with most blacks and Latinos, have greater education credentials and higher levels of required job skills, both of which make them more qualified in todayтАЩs job market"
Well, black people did need help! Not necessarily because they were less qualified, but because study after study shows that some employers will take a mediocre white person over a good black person. I have no problem believing that the average white woman was better educated than the average black person back then (in fact, I believe that's still true today).
But even the most well educated black people would have had comparative difficulty being hired over their white peers. AA incentivised employers to hire black people in defiance of this bias. And was only partly successful. Unfortunately, it was extremely successful in planting the idea in people's heads (including Charles Murray's head) that black people only succeeded because of AA and white women succeeded on merit. Murray was magnanimous enough to be "extremely pleased" when black people "proved" they were competent of course...
When I research a topic, I do so to a degree that allows me to talk about it intelligently. If I spent all of my time researching every nuance of every piece of data, I'd never actually write anything. Or, more to the point, I'd be a social scientist.
So if the entire lynchpin of an article was that white women had benefitted more from affirmative action than black people, I'd certainly dig into as much nuance as I could, carefully presenting the data for and against and explaining why I considered one more reliable than the other. But this was just an aside to a reader about Charles Murray's pretty blatant racial bias.
So yes, the data that I'm basing my claim on is the research detailing the relative rise in employment, income, managerial positions etc between white women and black people over the years of affirmative action. And the paper you linked doesn't attempt to prove that the claim is incorrect, it simply casts the possibility of doubt as a complete causative explanation (I tend to assume no one factor is a complete causative explanation of anything). But there is absolutely no statistical or scientific evidence for the inverse claim that black people benefitted more from affirmative action than white women. Even though it's widely assumed. If there were, and it were relevant to something I was writing about, I'd look at it with an open mind. I'm always interested first and foremost in the truth.
"OK, let's do our very best to reset as you say. I'm enthusiastically agreeing. I will try to stop caveating, and we will both make a conscious effort to err on the side of assuming best intentions and being polite and generous - and we'll both attempt to avoid seeming condescending, OK?
Practice topic: Are white women the primary beneficiaries of Affirmative Action? Let's do our best." And later "Let's have a civil and productive conversation."
I'm smiling as I write this, I'm not annoyed at all, and I certainly don't think you're doing this on purpose, but the above is a great example of the tone I'm talking about. Do you see how this might read as:
"Let me reassert that we'll both attempt to do the thing you've already said you were going to do. OK?"
Or:
"Let's have a civil and productive discussion. Even though you've just said that you're going to attempt do that in future."
This is one aspect of the caveating I'm talking about. Comments like these feel as if I'm being gently guided by the hand by an encouraging parent because I can't handle a civil discussion without that guidance. Which doesn't feel so great coming from a stranger on the internet when you're an adult. As I said, I'm going to do my best to ignore this in future, but I'm trying to point out that you might be contributing to the reactions that are frustrating you.
Can you try to understand this from my perspective as well?
I hear that I have tended to overly caveat my statements because of past interactions. From now on, I will review any post I make here, looking for anything which might be interpreted as condescending. I plead guilty for not having done that well enough, for letting my reactivity shape my tone too much. I will strive to do better. I will strive to be less affected by (my perception of) your tone. And you are welcome to say "Hey, that last post slipped a bit into the territory we've agreed to avoid, let's be more mindful". I will hear that.
Let's reset, and let's practice the new approach starting with the issue of affirmative action. In another post.
Thank you for engaging constructively. I hear and respect your underlying positive intention.
And rather than our similarities making us more oversensitive towards each other, perhaps they can help us cut each other the same slack that we want for ourselves.
The same is true for academic achievement. Intelligent people have an advantage in their ability to do well academically but that advantage can very easily be swamped by boredom, especially in pre-university education where the pace is geared to the slowest students.
There are many skeptics of any trend to equate IQ and worth. (And far, far fewer people who would equate the two). For example:
> "We agree emphatically with Howard Gardner, however, that the concept of intelligence has taken on a much higher place in the pantheon of human virtues than it deserves."
> "Many people conclude that if they see someone who is sensitive, humorous, and talks fluently, the person must surely have an above-average IQ. This identification of IQ with attractive human qualities in general is unfortunate and wrong"
> "All of this is another way of making a point so important that we will italicize it now and repeat elsewhere: _Measures of intelligence have reliable statistical relationships with important social phenomena, but they are a limited tool for deciding what to make of any given individual._ Repeat it we must, for one of the problems of writing about intelligence is how to remind readers often enough how little an IQ score tells about whether the human being next to you is someone whom you will admire or cherish. This thing we know as IQ is important but not a synonym for human excellence." - The Bell Curve, p21
By contrast, it will be hard to find a quote from any widely read author which defends equating IQ with human worth, but I'd be glad to have a reference if you can find one. Pending some of those, I'm questioning whether "society equates IQ with human worth" is a strawman, being a concept widely rejected by society and rarely supported.
Now, saying that being cognitively skilled and able is a useful talent in today's society would generally not be controversial, because being honest or kind or reliable or intuitive or nurturing or fast or strong are also useful talents. To say that cognitive ability is valued is true, to say that IQ is equated with worth would not be, any more than being a skilled carpenter or outrageously funny is equated with human worth.
Hmm. Reflecting, I cannot think of a single time when I have experienced society equating IQ with my value as a person, nor observing that happening to others around me. I have never gotten or been refused a job or membership on the basis of IQ tests (perhaps luckily I never applied to Mensa). Nobody has been romantically attracted or repelled by my IQ tests. I haven't been given or refused any services on the basis of IQ scores.
In fact, I have never in my life been even asked what my IQ is, and I don't know it.
I'm having trouble picturing that society is defining my worth by an unknown IQ *at all* (since I don't know mine and have thus never disclosed it anybody), much less relying on it "to the exclusion of every other factor" in your words.
But that's my life experience. Could you give some personal examples of times when society has equated your worth as a human being with your IQ tests, to the exclusion of every other factor?
So maybe there isn't any "fight to keep having"? With virtually nobody asserting the other side.
"Hmm. Reflecting, I cannot think of a single time when I have experienced society equating IQ with my value as a person"
I think this is an extremely important point. As I said in a reply to Chris above, even if we had categorical proof of "racial" IQ differences, what difference would it actually make to the way we run society? I struggle to think of any.
I think the only reason that some persist on this point is that they want to justify, for example in Murray's case, the idea that racial disparities exist not because of racism but because of black people's "faultiness." Murray hasn't been coy about admitting that this is his motivation. Peyton Gendron used the same idea to justify his mass shooting of African Americans in Buffalo. So yes, some people are asserting the other side. Some of them extremely dangerous.
But I can also say from my life experience that I've had numerous people assume I wasn't intelligent until I "proved" that I was. I studied a specialised maths and physics course at university, and my lecturer was visibly surprised when I walked in the door for the first time. Without even asking my name, he told me I must be in the wrong class. I'm pretty confident he wouldn't have said that to a white student.
Many black people I know have had similar experineces of being assumed to be unintelligent. I know anecdotes aren't data, but I strongly believe it's stuff like the idea of racialised IQ and the widespread conflation of IQ and intelligence, that keeps the idea swirling in the public subconscious.
Mostly agreeing. Some fine tuning follows however.
> "As I said in a reply to Chris above, even if we had categorical proof of "racial" IQ differences, what difference would it actually make to the way we run society?"
Let's take the problematic concept of "race" out of it, and say more carefully:
> Even if we have objective measurements of statistical differences in IQ scores between population groups, what difference would it make to the way we run society?
That's asking one of the right questions!
And I have two answers. One is that it should make zero difference to our understanding of an individual person. Their ability to do something (or not) is specific to them, and even a fact which is statistically correlated with one of the population groups to which they belong, has no relevance to the individual, who may be typical or atypical (this assertion if much broader than cognitive abillity). Men may on average be taller than women, but that doesn't say anything about a particular man. Einstein may have been German and Jewish, but his brilliance says nothing about all Germans or all Jews. I think we are all agreed on that here, so it's not controversial.
However, one facet of society is it's self analysis, which brings up a second point. If somebody asserts that in the US, Blacks have a statistically lower average income than Asians (again: that says nothing about any individual person who is Black or Asian), we can be pretty sure they did not do a genetic assessment of every Black or Asian person included in those statistics, and so trying to invalidate that assertion based on an argument like "race is not a discrete variable (ie: with countable distinct states and no gradients)" would be rightly dismissed as sophistry. The categories for income stats are not based on genetic tests, but upon self-identification. If somebody else noted that Asians as a group also score higher than Blacks (and other "races") on IQ tests, this should be evaluated in the same way - it says nothing about any individual, but is an assertion based measurements of self-identified population groups. And so a rational society could neutrally consider evidence for and against causative factors linking sets of statistics, within population groups which are defined the same way for the different statistics.
That is, when an analysis being evaluated uses statistics categorized by self-identified population group, it is fair and reasonable to bring into the discussion other salient statistics which use *that same self-identification* - apples to apples. If self-identification defines the first statistics, it's equally valid for comparison with the second statistics. If the stats being added to the discussion are not based on genetically defined populations, it's unreasonable to discount them on a basis which they never claimed to have (genetic categories).
Does self-identification corelate with genetic background, or with culture, or both? At the moment, who cares? That's a different question with complex answers. As long as the population groups in two sets of statistics are both defined by self-identification, genetic factors are at best irrelevant and a distraction, whether due to good faith confusion, or a bad faith attempt to derail the discussion. (Rule of thumb: try to assume good faith as long as possible, and then sometimes beyond that).
In short, the second effect on running society (the first being *no effect* on assessing individuals), would be to allow a less ideologically constrained analysis of the dynamics within the society, when scientifically valid, with the goal of finding interventions which are effective in the real world, for implementing the (hopefully liberal) values we have. It's hard to fix real things if we are not allowed to understand their true dynamics but must instead hew to an ideology which disparages objective reality.
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PS: I too have the experience of being assumed not to belong in an advanced class, based on first impressions. In my case it probably had go do with SEC or undiagnosed ADD or related quirks. Yes it sucks when it happens. And yes I'm glad that I later demonstrated by performance that I had been properly placed, as I imagine you did - and I'm glad that my teacher was reality based rather than ideology based and so accepted the real world feedback rather than clinging to a false narrative based on superficial impressions.
"In short, the second effect on running society (the first being *no effect* on assessing individuals), would be to allow a less ideologically constrained analysis of the dynamics within the society, when scientifically valid, with the goal of finding interventions which are effective in the real world, for implementing the (hopefully liberal) values we have."
I think what you're very, very cautiously trying to say here is that if black people turned out to be inherently less intelligent than Asians, we shouldn't be surprised if they end up having lower incomes and shouldn't ascribe the difference to racism. This is essentially Charles Murray's argument too.
In principle it's perfectly reasonable. For example, we do have population groups in society whose disparities we blame on genetic issues. People with Down's syndrome, for example, have notable cognitive deficits and we're therefore not surprised when they don't dominate high income fields.
The thing is, this issue affects all people with Down's synrome, whereas even the most avowed racist would have to admit that at least some black people are as capable as their white peers. And even if we make the mistake of assuming that IQ is a meaningful measure of overall intelligence and ability, no study has found that the racial IQ gap is significant enough to lead to disparities of the size that we see.
So then, what else could be causing the disparities?
A history of racial oppression? In some cases, certainly. Racial wealth (as opposed to income) disparities in America are around 10:1. White Americans obviously had significant advantage when it comes to wealth acquisition. And wealth is a strong predictor of all kinds of poisitve academic and life outcomes.
Cultural differences? In some cases, certainly. Studies have found that some black children spend less than a third the time doing homework as their Asian peers. Higher single-parenthood rates and lower average incomes are also strong predictors of all kinds of negative academic and life outcomes.
Racial bias? In some cases, certainly. Unconscious bias has been found in several studies on employment and job application. Perhaps most famously the study that found a white felon received job callbacks at a slightly higher rate than a black man of similar age and skill wiith no criminal record.
All of these and more need to be considered carefully in any serious analysis of racial disparities in America. But until the issues affecting the black community from without are addressed, there will always be those who refuse to admit the possibility that there are also problems from within.
What we see from people like Murray is the opposite problem; somebody who refuses to see that there are problems that affect the black community from without, and so twists the data to support the pre-determined conclusion that racial disparity is due to some inherent flaw of "blackness".
Maybe I'm reading you wrong, but it sometimes feels as if you think I don't take cultural issues seriously when it comes to racial disparities, and that I blame disparities entirely on past or present racism in America. I'm sure you'll have spoken to some black people who do this. I do not.
I agree with you completely that an honest understanding of the dynamics between and within population groups is essential for addressing any problems/disparities between them. I dont think I've ever written anything that suggests otherwise. I may not spell it out in every repky, but I assume the readers here know my views well enough to take it for granted.
> "I agree with you completely that an honest understanding of the dynamics between and within population groups is essential for addressing any problems/disparities between them. "
And I agree with you. I agree about the many possibilities that need to be considered as hypotheses when trying to understand the observed dynamics. It was certainly never in my mind to narrow the hypotheses to be considered (like assuming that any one factor must explain all differences!).
One thing which I think might get missed, is that my primary interest in the IQ gap is in using it as one (of many) metrics to see if we are achieving our goals of underlying equality. When the gap is shrinking, then we may be doing something right. One value of this is that waiting for the downstream effects could take decades to generations, so it's hard to close the loop and use the feedback to improve current programs.
Imagine a magical intervention which entirely closed any gap for anybody coming to adulthood in or after 2023. Whatever influence that intervention has on income, say, will gradually increase
over the following 50+ years, as the post-intervention cohort gradually becomes a larger portion of the population, perhaps reading 50% by the 2060's. There is no magical intervention so stark, so the signal of a successful set of policies may be delayed even longer. But a decrease in the IQ gap (or lack thereof) might give us some much quicker feedback about successful interventions to change the environmental factors behind much of any such gap. (I have far less interest in any genetic factors, because they offer us no handles for improvement of society).
My bottom line is that I want to mitigate the disparities of power and money and status, but I'm convinced that we need to evaluate proposed strategies from a very rational viewpoint, rather than getting caught up in ideology and belief system which dogmatize certain strategies as sacred cows - including ineffective or counter-productive strategies.
> "I'm sure you'll have spoken to some black people who do this. I do not."
I see you as an independent and thoughtful individual, Steve. Your care about trying to be clear in your thinking and writing sets you apart from the average. I don't know what position you will take on things, because it's not cookie-cutter conformance to any party line, and I value that. So let me assure you that I am not assuming that you share sentiments with other people, of any race; to the best of my ability, I perceive you based on what YOU say. I do not assume that you will agree with other Black people I've interacted with, nor any other population group. This is how I prefer to be treated, and I strive to do the same for others.
Are we clear now?
"One thing which I think might get missed, is that my primary interest in the IQ gap is in using it as one (of many) metrics to see if we are achieving our goals of underlying equality. When the gap is shrinking, then we may be doing something right."
I read your entire comment but kept getting stuck on my uncertainty about which gap you're referring to here. When you say, "when the gap is shrinking..." do you mean the IQ gap? Or do you mean other gaps or disparities (income, wealth, representation, etc.)?
If we could magically close the IQ gap, I don't think much would change. Or rather, I don't think the *rate* of change would alter significantly. We'd still see the same cultural, historical and prejudicial issues that affect black people today. I don't believe that the IQ gap is a key factor in racial disparities. Not least because the IQ gap isn't large enough that you could detect it in a conversation, for example. For most jobs, a few points gap in IQ is meaningless.
If you mean the test score gap, this would be huge. But I think less because of any intelligence gains it would imply, and more because it would imply that the cultural issues that affected black outcomes had largely been fixed. It would mean black kids were studying more, were less likely to see education as "white" and that their home environments had improved. If gaps in employment and income persisted, it would be pretty definitive evidence of racial discrimination.
If we could magically close the gap in all other disparities, reaching Kendi's dream of equity, I think we'd fall somewhere between the two other possibilities. The boost in wealth, employment security, etc, would almost certainly improve outcomes for black children. But the cultural issues would remain, meaning that those children still wouldn't maximise the potential granted by those boosts.
Again, I agree with you about the need to be rational rather than getting caught up in ideology. And thanks for the clarification about perceiving me based specifically on what I say. But then, it begs the question, have I said something irrational or ideological in your opinion? If not why do you keep reminding me that we need to be rational and not ideological?
If I repeatedly pointed out in our discussions that it was important not to assume that black people are genetically inferior, even though you've never claimed that they are, or that some people can't talk about race without falling back on racist tropes, even though you hadn't, wouldn't you wonder why I felt the need to do so?
> "If we could magically close the IQ gap, I don't think much would change."
I was unclear, in using the word "magic". I meant to refer to real world interventions into the environmental influences on IQ, so successfully as to completely eliminate any IQ gap. Having 100% success in changing the environment, or 100% success in outcome, is the unreachable perfection I was calling "magic", posited only as part of a thought experiment. I did NOT mean "magic" like waving a wand and magically changing *just* IQ scores while nothing else in the environment changed, but I can see how one could interpret it so. My apologies if that wording caused a sidetrack.
Suppose that 100 or 200 years from now in the US, we've reached Kendi's anti-racist goals, and there are no remaining significant racial differences in education, employment, income, wealth, or imprisonment, and proportional representation in professions, business, media, and government. And let's further posit that this equality has been earned, not bestowed. That is, in this future time, every population group actively sustains their equal outcomes entirely through equal skill, effort, and contribution - without need for subsidy or preferential treatment.
My contention, however, is that the IQ gap would likely disappear earlier than some of the slower moving metrics which require integration over time. And I contend that we don't factually know which interventions will best produce the all-equal outcome described above. I am suggesting that environmental interventions which show a short to medium term improvement in testable IQ will be more likely to lead to the ultimate long term goal, so the former can be an early indicator of being on the right path.
I do see general intelligence as one intermediary factor on the path towards (deeper) equal opportunity. It's not an end goal, but it could be part of the mechanism of change. While skill at abstract thinking doesn't make one a more worthwhile person, and doesn't control outcomes, it does help with success in an increasingly technological world.
I noted in another comment that I do not know what my own IQ is, and I've never been asked for it - to determine whether I got admitted or hired, or to set my wages. That doesn't mean that my general intelligence has had no effect on my life.
Our society does not reward IQ. It rewards effective ability to accomplish things, or contributions - doing more or better or faster or more accurate or more interesting, etc. And IQ is a significant (but far from the only) factor which feeds into how much one can contribute to a company or organization - along with education, other talents, skills and traits. Persistance, for example, may in some cases matter more than any form of intelligence.
So if an intervention improves average ability for abstract thinking, as measured reasonably well via IQ, it's going to tend to improve other outcomes.
Obviously, this is just one influence on outcomes. A significant degree of discrimination could be another influence, and money or resources is yet another.
However, I don't really believe that we can get to the equality state described above, without reducing any gaps in the average skill at abstract thinking as ONE of the important factors.
As I mentioned, I would like to take the genetic questions off the table as not very interesting. They don't provide any opportunities for intervention or change, and I'm extremely uninterested in any questions of "inherent superiority/inferiority". What I'm interested in, is the environmental influences (the "nuture" side of nature vs nuture) on many of the traits needed for equal participation, IQ being one significant one.
I'm suggesting that IQ test averages could serve as a reverse canary in a coal mine - showing sooner than some other measures whether a program is likely to eventually produce the promised outcomes, so it can be expanded or revised or abandoned. Not the only metric, but one potentially useful one.
And that's just my suggestion, my hypothesis. I could be wrong. I'm not wedded to it, I have no interest in defending it to the death. I may change my mind later. Collaborative pushback is welcome. My goal is truth, not being more right than others.
My intention is to support rational evaluation of proposed or ongoing interventions, rather than ideological evaluations.
Steve, if you cannot avoid taking the following personally as being about you, please stop reading here. The rest is a vent about the state of the society, not a grievance against you personally.
I find it somewhat frustrating when some people tend to stop considering the core question - what rational intellectual tools do we have to better understand and improve society through wise interventions - and instead want to push my points into some kind of racial competition, or some kind of justification for ignoring disadvantages (which they can oppose). They darkly imagine what I must be driving out (within the deep worn grooves of their mind) and stop listening to what I'm actually saying. They don't hear what I am saying, but imagine that I must obviously be pushing some narrative they find abhorrent. I can say "Tool X might help us rationally evaluate the effectiveness of interventions aimed a reducing inequalities", and what they hear is "Tool X allows us to ignore inequalities and make no interventions" - perhaps because they have heard somebody else make that argument, and are so triggered their rational side is suspended. I am not making that argument, and I wish people were not so easily diverted onto hot button topics I'm not raising, and do not care about.
If you are still reading, Steve, I am not accusing you of this, but this frustration with the state of intellectual discourse today is part of the background, and I needed to vent.
"Steve, if you cannot avoid taking the following personally as being about you, please stop reading here."
Okay, we're going to sort this out now. Because I find this almost unbelievably rude and condescending. I'm not sure why it's happened, I think there was one conversation in particular when we really couldn't stop misinterpreting/talking past each other, and it seems to have coloured our interactions ever since, but this is as far down the slope as we're going to go.
Let me say right up front that I'm not claiming I'm blameless here, more on that at the end, but there are a couple of things I want to make very clear.
A) You are a guest here. A very welcome and valued guest. But a guest. I don't expect or want deference. I welcome thoughtful pushback. I do as little policing of people's expression as possible, but I do expect a very basic degree of respect. If you think you're about to write something I don't want you to write here, don't write it, or at least think carefully about how best to write it. It's not your place to tell me to stop reading and just write it anyway.
I'm not a child, I have difficult conversations for a living and generally navigate them just fine. I'm quite good at judging intent. But if you're aware, as you obviously are, that the way you phrase things leads to potential misunderstandings or offence, stop phrasing them that way. Unless you're physicaly unable to stop your fingers from moving, every word you type is a choice.
B) As for your frustration that some people "push your points into justification for disadvantages," please seriously consider the possibility that you may have some responsibility for their reaction. Or, in fact, that your biases might be, in part, creating the "racial competition" they're responding to. Your arguments are pretty much unfailingly biased towards questioning the influence or significance of racism.
A commenter mentions, as an aside, that they believe the African slave trade may have been the most brutal form of slavery, and it's a multi-day debate simply because I believe, with no real conviction, that it's possible that that's true.
People like Charles Murray and Nicholas Wade speak in obviously race essentialist terms, and we're quibbling about the exact wording of a sentence as if we can't understand context.
I state the well known fact that affirmative action has benefitted white women more than any other demographic (https://time.com/4884132/affirmative-action-civil-rights-white-women/), and you ask me, as you do irritatingly often, if I'm just blindly repeating what I've heard somebody else say instead of confirming it for myself (you understand that I have thousands of people critiquing what I say on a regular basis, right? I'm not in the habit of saying things I haven't verified).
And in each of these cases, I'm pretty sure (and in some cases have seen evidence), that you wouldn't have the same quibbles in the reverse case. If somebody claimed that the Atlantic Slave trade *wasn't* the most brutal form of slavery, I'm pretty sure you wouldn't feel the need to debate their assertion for days on end or at all.
If somebody said that the accusations of racial bias levelled at Chales Murray were baseless, I'm not convinced you'd offer any pushback at all, and I'm pretty sure it wouldn't be the same degree (this despite the critiques of many good-faith, well educated, people who have read his work carefully and work in his field).
If somebody said affirmative action benefitted black people more than any other demographic, even though there are no studies that support this, I'm pretty sure you wouldn't have asked for one.
To be clear, other than it being a bit exhausting at times, I don't particularly mind this. As a writer, it's valuable to have people keeping me on my toes. I don't want you not to ask me for verifcation of my claims if they're new to you (although a quick Google search of your own might be in order first). And as my bias is more towards the idea that racism is still a meaningful problem in many ways, it's good to have pushback. I'd be disappointed (and bored) if everybody here thought the same way I do.
But instead of telling people not to react to the things you write, maybe consider modifying the way you write. Consider that biases often come across even if you don't intend them to and even if you aren't aware of them. I'm not saying this to suggest I'm perfect in this regard, I'm certainly not. But if you're repeatedly getting this feedback from people's reactions, it's probably going to get you further to look within than to criticise what keeps happening from without.
As I said up top, I'm not pretending I'm blameless with regards to the friction and misunderstandings we're finding in our interactions. I've definitely allowed past irritation to influence later conversations, and I apologise. I'm going to do my very best to reset. It will be enormously helpful for me to do that if you stop caveating about emotionality or telling me what you're "not accusing me of but..." But regardless, I'll make a conscious effort to err on the side of assuming the best of intentions and to be polite and generous in my future responses.
OK, let's do our very best to reset as you say. I'm enthusiastically agreeing. I will try to stop caveating, and we will both make a conscious effort to err on the side of assuming best intentions and being polite and generous - and we'll both attempt to avoid seeming condescending, OK?
Practice topic: Are white women the primary beneficiaries of Affirmative Action? Let's do our best. I choose this in part because, as I said previously, "I don't have any vested interest in either answer, I have no position to defend on this one." Let's have a civil and productive discussion.
SQJ> "As a writer, it's valuable to have people keeping me on my toes."
My purpose in writing is to seek the truth about the issue (including to be kept on my own toes, if my assertions go beyond the data), but if this discussion helps you in that manner I would be pleased to so contribute.
SQJ> "I'm not in the habit of saying things I haven't verified"
SQJ> "I state the well known fact that affirmative action has benefitted white women more than any other demographic"
I used to accept that as likely true myself, because I had seen it asserted *many* times, though I had not investigated for myself. However, when I eventually looked into that for myself, I found that most of the popular sources were from blogs or journalists of questionable neutrality, who did not appear to be, for example, considering confounding factors which might run the risk of disconfirming their intended point. They were not surveys of differing opinions on the matter, so much as polemics.
One might as well survey the mainstream press about the question: "Was George Floyd's killing a hate crime". Easy to discover the popular consensus, but not much depth of examination.
Seeking something more substantial, I did find a peer reviewed article in the Journal of Social Sciences which examined the question scientifically - complete with academic bibliography, references, methodology, statistics and analysis. I cited it, summarized it's conclusions, and directly quoted four paragraphs from it. I welcome your reading it and discussing it's strengths and weaknesses with me, in the context of other studies.
The core conclusion was that while white women have had more gains over the time period, those gains were not linked to affirmative action, because they entered the workforce with greater skills and experience and thus on the whole did not need AA to get jobs in an growing market needing their labor. (Separately, one might argue that this greater preparation on their part was in substantial part due to the effects of past racial discrimination, but that's not the question under discussion - ie: how much they were benefitted by Affirmative Action specifically).
Often blogs and the popular press fail to consider such confounding factors. They often conflate "women advanced" and "women advanced based on AA" as if they are one and the same. Science needs to be more precise than that.
The journal article: https://spia.uga.edu/faculty_pages/rbakker/pdfs/affirmativeAction.pdf
My comment: https://steveqj.substack.com/p/i-expected-a-racist-diatribe-from/comments#comment-9456317
One article does not definitively answer the question. I put that out as one meaningful datapoint for starting a discussion; perhaps you were influenced by more comprehensive analyses; as you said above, you tend to verify before speaking.
So I said "I would be very interested in some links to the sources you found best analyzed and most persuasive."
And I'm still interested. I am *very* persuadable on this, by evidence and analysis. My first view was that it was probably true. That shifted after some preliminary investigation I'm somewhat leaning the other way, but only slightly; mostly it's not conclusively answered in my opinion. There is enough doubt that I would no longer repeat that assertion myself, because I'm unsure that it's true after early research. Going back to believing it true is not a big shift for me; I just need the evidence and decent analysis.
It should be obvious from my comment that I have already done some searching. But if you have already verified for yourself that the assertion is indeed a fact, it's not unreasonable to politely ask which sources you found most persuasive so I can read them as well.
Thank you for responding, with your link to an article from the popular press, which in turns cites, for example, a blog entry in the Chronical of Higher Education, and other sources.
At this time, I do not find them as persuasive as the peer review scientific article I cited. They do not refute it's assertions, so much as embody the problems it cites with naive analysis. For example, the Chronical blog argues:
> "After IBM established its own affirmative-action program, the numbers of women in management positions more than tripled in less than 10 years. Data from subsequent years show that the number of executives of color at IBM also grew, but not nearly at the same rate."
Notice that this makes no attempt to distinguish (as the scientific journal article does) between advancing, and advancing due to AA. That's exactly the kind of fuzzy thinking (or "motivated reasoning" that the scientific article is trying to avoid.
Please note that I have *never* asserted that it's a "fact" that white women did NOT receive more benefit. I've explicitly said that the question seems not yet conclusively answered in my mind (with a small and reversible leaning towards disconfirmation based on the *science* I have seen to date.) Since it's not yet clear to me what the truth is, I was asking for links to more evidence (from a writer who generally verifies their asserted facts).
I've done some quick research which caused me to no longer believe (at this point in time) that the factuality of the assertion (that white women are the largest beneficiaries of AA) has been objectively proven factual; and since you are convinced that it is indeed factual, I asked for your best sources so I could consider them as well and perhaps be persuaded as well.
As I say, I have no agenda in this except to seek the truth. I would not be upset in the least, whichever way the evidence leads. I was not uncomfortable when I tenatively believed it, I did not research it for years because I assumed it was true. I am assuming that you also have no pre-set conclusion or agenda other than the truth, and that you have been persuaded of the factuality of that statement through your previoius review of the science. I'm asking in good faith for links to that science. Given how science works, I assume there are (almost) always published counter-arguments to consider - but rather than start from scratch, I'm asking what analysis *you* found most convincing. I trust your judgement far more than I trust the average journalist or activist, Steve.
I appreciate the journalistic piece you link in Time, but I would guess that you have based your opinion of factuality on something more solid than that for "verification". If I'm wrong, in that guess, just say so. No harm, no foul. I'll drop it for now, but perhaps if someone else I respect makes the same assertion a year from now, I'll ask them what convinced them.
Side issue: I have tried to be respectful, and to make my own "conscious effort to err on the side of assuming the best of intentions and to be polite and generous" in this response. I've avoided caveats, and condescension, as best I can perceive. If I have failed in that, please help me improve; I will listen. I honestly look forward to the scientific evidence upon which you based your assertion of factuality, to be presented and received in that same spirit. Thank you.
"One might as well survey the mainstream press about the question: "Was George Floyd's killing a hate crime"."
Yeah, this is the problem with the press in general. But it's also a problem with our own biases. I saw this problem absolutely everywhere during COVID (although it's worth pointing out that AA and white women is a statistical claim whilst claims about George Floyd are purely subjective).
There were "data" to confirm whatever you might want to believe about vaccines and masks and myocarditis during the height of COVID. So it is with all research. There will always be that one study that casts doubt upon the consensus. There is simply no sociological data that you can't look at and say, "sure, but what if you control for X variable on Thursday evenings?"
Don't get me wrong, skepticism is vital. But if you spend all of your time on skepticism, simply because a conclusion doesn't quite fit your preexisting biases, if you spend all your time "proving" everything beyond any possibility of doubt or objection, you don't leave any time to actually do anything about the problem. Toni Morrison expressed this well years ago:
"The function, the very serious function of racism is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being.
Somebody says you have no language and you spend twenty years proving that you do. Somebody says your head isn't shaped properly so you have scientists working on the fact that it is. Somebody says you have no art, so you dredge that up. Somebody says you have no kingdoms, so you dredge that up. None of this is necessary. There will always be one more thing."
Some people get this balance very wrong. A single piece of data hinting in the direction they want to go and the matter is settled as far as they're concerned. But in the case of affirmative action, if the worry is that we've not completely verified whether these women advanced as a result of AA or not, why are we not equally worried about whether African Americans advanced as a result of AA or not? Implicit in the question is the assumption that white women likely advanced on their merits but African Americans didn't, no?
As for the conclusion of the study you linked, the conclusion seems to assume that we live in a meritocracy where AA was only about making sure the people with the best grades got the best jobs. An extraordinarily naive reading, no? From the paper:
"So why havenтАЩt white women been helped by affirmative action? The success of white female workers suggests they need no help. White women, compared with most blacks and Latinos, have greater education credentials and higher levels of required job skills, both of which make them more qualified in todayтАЩs job market"
Well, black people did need help! Not necessarily because they were less qualified, but because study after study shows that some employers will take a mediocre white person over a good black person. I have no problem believing that the average white woman was better educated than the average black person back then (in fact, I believe that's still true today).
But even the most well educated black people would have had comparative difficulty being hired over their white peers. AA incentivised employers to hire black people in defiance of this bias. And was only partly successful. Unfortunately, it was extremely successful in planting the idea in people's heads (including Charles Murray's head) that black people only succeeded because of AA and white women succeeded on merit. Murray was magnanimous enough to be "extremely pleased" when black people "proved" they were competent of course...
When I research a topic, I do so to a degree that allows me to talk about it intelligently. If I spent all of my time researching every nuance of every piece of data, I'd never actually write anything. Or, more to the point, I'd be a social scientist.
So if the entire lynchpin of an article was that white women had benefitted more from affirmative action than black people, I'd certainly dig into as much nuance as I could, carefully presenting the data for and against and explaining why I considered one more reliable than the other. But this was just an aside to a reader about Charles Murray's pretty blatant racial bias.
So yes, the data that I'm basing my claim on is the research detailing the relative rise in employment, income, managerial positions etc between white women and black people over the years of affirmative action. And the paper you linked doesn't attempt to prove that the claim is incorrect, it simply casts the possibility of doubt as a complete causative explanation (I tend to assume no one factor is a complete causative explanation of anything). But there is absolutely no statistical or scientific evidence for the inverse claim that black people benefitted more from affirmative action than white women. Even though it's widely assumed. If there were, and it were relevant to something I was writing about, I'd look at it with an open mind. I'm always interested first and foremost in the truth.
"OK, let's do our very best to reset as you say. I'm enthusiastically agreeing. I will try to stop caveating, and we will both make a conscious effort to err on the side of assuming best intentions and being polite and generous - and we'll both attempt to avoid seeming condescending, OK?
Practice topic: Are white women the primary beneficiaries of Affirmative Action? Let's do our best." And later "Let's have a civil and productive conversation."
I'm smiling as I write this, I'm not annoyed at all, and I certainly don't think you're doing this on purpose, but the above is a great example of the tone I'm talking about. Do you see how this might read as:
"Let me reassert that we'll both attempt to do the thing you've already said you were going to do. OK?"
Or:
"Let's have a civil and productive discussion. Even though you've just said that you're going to attempt do that in future."
This is one aspect of the caveating I'm talking about. Comments like these feel as if I'm being gently guided by the hand by an encouraging parent because I can't handle a civil discussion without that guidance. Which doesn't feel so great coming from a stranger on the internet when you're an adult. As I said, I'm going to do my best to ignore this in future, but I'm trying to point out that you might be contributing to the reactions that are frustrating you.
That sounds good. Let's do that.
Can you try to understand this from my perspective as well?
I hear that I have tended to overly caveat my statements because of past interactions. From now on, I will review any post I make here, looking for anything which might be interpreted as condescending. I plead guilty for not having done that well enough, for letting my reactivity shape my tone too much. I will strive to do better. I will strive to be less affected by (my perception of) your tone. And you are welcome to say "Hey, that last post slipped a bit into the territory we've agreed to avoid, let's be more mindful". I will hear that.
Let's reset, and let's practice the new approach starting with the issue of affirmative action. In another post.
Thank you for engaging constructively. I hear and respect your underlying positive intention.
And rather than our similarities making us more oversensitive towards each other, perhaps they can help us cut each other the same slack that we want for ourselves.