"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 struggl…
"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 haven’t 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 today’s 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.
Can I politely "keep you on your toes" as you invite?
I know that AA was not a lynchpin of your article and I was addressing one assertion in isolation rather than as an attack on your article. That being the assertion that white women were the main primary beneficiaries of affirmative action, treated as a standalone topic.
I will often in this reply use "the assertion" to mean that.
As I have noted, I have no agenda other than truth in exploring that assertion. I was never unhappy in the least during the years when I assumed it was probably true because I had heard it often, I did not actively seek out disconfirmation, and I will not be unhappy if the weight of evidence in the end leads back to that conclusion. Or the other direction. I am equally happy to receive scientific links leading in either direction. I have no ideology which benefits or suffers from the true answer to that, either way. That may not be true of everybody on the internet.
I truly *do not care* which way the conclusion goes. If people of color needed AA relatively more and benefitted relatively more from it, then it was well targeted. If women needed AA relatively more and benefitted relatively more from it, then likewise well targeted. If the need and the benefit were exactly equal, likewise. I have no preference between these conclusions. I do have a preference to the truth, tho.
I cited one academic paper just to suggest that the factuality of that assertion is not (yet) a scientific consensus, but my point was to solicit the best scientific counterpoint, not to stop there. I noted that the paper was one peer reviewed data point to weigh, but not definitive - it opens the question rather than closing it. My point was to gather the best info in all directions before making any conclusions. I defended taking the paper seriously rather than dismissing it on superficial grounds; the best counterpoint if it was wrong would be a better scientific analysis, not rhetorical attacks.
It's not a key issue, so I have not researched it much; but when you so strongly asserted it as fact, I figured I had stumbled upon a possible source for links better scientific counterpoint, and took the opportunity to explain why it had recently come into question, and ask about your basis for asserting it as established fact. I fully expected that you might have links to good science supporting the assertion, and welcomed that.
In that light of balanced and scientifically grounded investigation, I think the degree to which you elaborated on racially biased agendas for trying to disprove the assertion was uncalled for. It's not relevant to the scientific question behind the assertion, so I will let it go, but I will call to our attention that this kind of "smear by association" may not be consonant with our intentions.
> "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?"
I do not think that is a fair restatement of the issue. At question was how much of women's increased presence in the workforce can accurately be attributed to AA. Many articles in the popular press completely ignore that question, and assume that 100% of the statistical increases in female participation is due to AA hiring, and have nothing to do with changing roles of women; it also assumes that 100% of advancement for people of color is due to AA. We know that both those assumptions are false, and also that there is no reason that the percentage due to AA would automatically be the same for all population groups. That's a glaring problem at the heart of the issue, not a peripheral distraction of looking for an obscure hidden variable with near zero influence I think your reframing mis-portrays the significance.
> "But if you spend all of your time on skepticism, simply because a conclusion doesn't quite fit your preexisting biases,"
Steve, this does not strike me as being in the spirit of fostering a more respectful interaction. It's imputing disreputable motives rather than addressing the objective question.
> "I have no problem believing that the average white woman was better educated than the average black person back then... 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."
That is very reasonable. But does that contradict the concept that white women didn't get as much benefit from AA because they did need as much help, or reinforce it? To my mind you are arguing for the latter - you are saying people of color needed AA more and thus benefitted more from it, more often getting positions they would not have otherwise gotten. Which side of do you think that argues for?
I think I may see some of the underpinnings here. Aha, finally. If somebody weighing in on this issue were to say "white women's gains in employment were largely due to merit and did not require AA" (which by the way I am NOT asserting myself, if you read my full position), it would be easy (but not accurate) to conclude that it follows that "people of color needed AA only because of their lack of merit". That does NOT automatically follow. They could also have needed (and benefitted from) AA based on their merit not having been recognized.
I never say the core intention of AA (for those who benefitted from it) as being "hiring/promoting those who do not merit hiring/promoting" but as "compensating for a historical and ongoing disadvantage which unfairly holds back some people, to the detriment of those people and society as a whole".
Nowhere in that statement was there any assumption that "disadvantage" is the same thing as "lack of merit"!!! But some, possibly including yourself, could be responding to that assumed conflation.
So even if white women and people of color had exactly equal education and job experience (as proxies for merit in this context), AA could have benefitted people of color more because they needed it more due to the factors you mention; without AA they might not have gotten the jobs, while the women might have. Of course, we not talking about 0% / 100% binary differences, but about different rates of employment. And as you note, the white women did on average have more education, which would also reduce the degree to which they would not need AA.
Sigh. My exploring the logic of this, pointing out that *your* logic above is more supportive of people of color benefitting more then white women from AA (for good and appropriate reasons), may be taken as *my* advocating that. Is it not, I've been clear that my current assessment is "unproven", and I currently don't consider the assertion or the counter-assertion to be "facts". I can still observe the logic of arguments in either direction, tho.
> "the data that I'm basing my claim on is the research detailing the relative rise in employment, income"
Well, we can let it drop here if you wish. I do not accept that "rise in employment" is a reliable scientific proxy for "rise in employment due to AA", and you do.
If the assertion were "white women have had a higher increase in employment and advancement than people of color (in past decades)" I would easily agree. Since instead its "white women have benefitted more from AA than have people of color", I have no firm conclusions yet.
But I am open to solid science in either direction, and I have no fixed agenda or confirmation bias to support on this issue, other than seeking truth. I'm concerned about the rise of ideology trumping science today, so I prefer the latter as our guide, but on this issue I'm completely content with any direction that the science leads. Our discussion has been illuminating, but I have not seen any science in either direction emerge from it, other than the one paper I cited.
"Steve, this does not strike me as being in the spirit of fostering a more respectful interaction. It's imputing disreputable motives rather than addressing the objective question."
I have a habit, which I will be conscious of as we work through our "reset," of using "you" when I should probably use "one." "One" sounds pretentious to me, which is why I avoid it, but while I *do* think you have a bias towards minimising or failing to consider racism, I wasn't trying to implicate you here. Obviously I see how my wording might have made you feel that way though. Sorry about that.
But yes, it's a question of how far one is willing to dig and how much time one is willing to spend in order to have an assertion "proved." As I said, there will always be a study that casts doubt on a consensus (I think it's fair to say that there *is* consensus given that, as I pointed out, there is zero "solid science," including the study you linked, showing that black peple were the primary beneficiaries of AA despite their smaller gains. A single paper doesn't break consensus).
So it comes down to the standard of "proof" you (I do mean you in this case) are willing to accept. I'm asking in all sincerity, what level of proof would assure you without any shadow of doubt that the gains experienced by white women were due to AA in smaller proportion than the smaller gains for black people? Because it seems that this one paper, that focuses exclusively on 6 small cities in the South, and doesn't disprove "the assertion" is the sole source of your doubt.
And while you say that you're indifferent one way or the other, if I'd said that racial income disparities are due to higher rates of single parenthood, or that black culture is a significant factor in black criminality, or that black people don't emphasise education for their children to the same degree as other ethnicities, do you think you'd have asked me for studies to back those assertions up? Do you think the data backing up these assertions is airtight?
And I don't think your logic holds with regards to the impact of AA if black people and white women had equal education, because it discounts the influence of racism.
If black people and white women are equally employable by every metric, and a racist employer (I suspect there are one or two of them living in small cities in the American South) has to employ a woman or a minority in order to fill his AA quota, obviously he'd hire the white woman, no? So she'd be a beneficiary of AA in that instance. Our hypothetical racist employer could get away with this even if the black employee were *more* qualified.
So while all things being equal, one might expect things to work in a meritocratic way, with the best candidate eligible to be hired under AA getting the job, all things are not equal. Even the paper you linked notes that white women were perceived by most employers to be good workers. Why? Is this racial bias? The paper doesn't say anything about how black people were perceived. Which seems like a pretty major oversight given the subject matter no?
There will always be these fuzzy areas that can't be captured perfectly. Especially when the study authors don't seem to have thought to even consider them. And certainly not by the single question;
"Do you personally support affirmative action as a policy to give preferences to blacks and females in hiring and promotion?"
that the researchers asked the employers. It in no way even attempts to account for bias or to examine the realities of the hiring practices. Just looks at the end results and hand waves the stark difference in the employment fortunes of white women and black women as "intense competition." I honestly chuckled when I read that.
In the end, where one stands given the data available depends on how seriously one takes the impact of racism. Or whether one belives it's significant. The word racism or racial discrimination doesn't appear once in the entire paper. I don't see how one can perform a meaningful anaylsis of the relative impact of AA between a white and black cohort without seriously considering racism.
"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.
Steve, this experience is nearly unique in my life.
I realize that I've on occasion expressed frustration at how my words (and those of many others, even you) can be twisted by others, no matter how carefully we attempt to avoid that - whether in honest misunderstanding or bad faith pretense of misunderstanding. I'm sure you have observed the same thing.
However, that is NOT what happens between us here. I highly value your insights and trust your sincerity and intelligence. I almost never in my life have had the kind of dynamic I've had here with anybody else with those characteristics. I can see how one might conflate the two, but my occasional experience of impatience with foolishness or bad faith, and the way you and I seem to trigger each other, are quite distinct for me. And the experience with you is a rare opportunity for me.
I think the issues between us are more due to our similarities. That's one reason (besides my respect for your writing) that I've bothered to respond to these issues. I see it as something I can learn from, a mirror. Not in the sense that you have sometimes seemed to take it - that it's your mission to repeatedly tell me what's wrong with me. I'm getting better at ignoring the tone of that as a distraction from the possible learning; I can see now that I have sometimes done poorly at that in the past. Being defensive does not serve me. The learning I'm getting about myself is more from your need to treat me the way you do, and from your not being aware of that - I see myself in that, I see that I have some similar flaws. I do not feel superior; there is no flaw I've observed in you that I do not see in myself. And if we can be civil, I can learn from that.
One of the differences I observe in myself, is that when you treat me condescendingly (as I perceive it), it got under my skin more than usual precisely because of the high regard I have for you. It's like being harshly criticized by somebody whose esteem one values, not just some internet rando. That's not a frequent experience for me. It has taken some reflection to observe this in myself.
Whether you learn something about yourself and your part (or perceive any opportunity to do so) is up to you and not my concern. I am not trying to fix you.
> "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. "
I hear that you feel that way, and I can see how that could be unpleasant. That however is not the emotion nor intellectual perspective I experience, however. I've heard your interpretation,
can I share mine? The comments you apparently interpret as talking down to you, were not so intended. I meant to affirm our mutual positive intentions. We are trying to break some habits, and in my life, when I'm trying to do that, it has been helpful to keep reaffirming the new perspective as part of avoiding falling into a familiar rut. It's easy to slip into defensiveness. I am speaking as much to myself as to you, and trying to be allies in making a shift. My reflection is not turning up, so far anyway, the kind of talking down (parent to child, etc) energy which you appear to be reacting to
And the reaction you have to the words from me (in my previous post), is very unusual in my life. Really. In that mode (not speaking about every mode in which I write, sometimes I am less conscious and more reactive), most people hear me as reaching out as an equal, seeking a mutually respectful interchange between imperfect but well intentioned people. My experience is that it usually de-escalates and reassures. It has worked *many times*.
In this case, something else is going on. It feels to me thus: if there is any possible way to interpret my words as talking down to you, you will seize upon that interpretation and not give consideration or weight to any more benign interpretation. And that you are expecting me to phrase things in ways that cannot possibly be so interpreted, and holding me responsible for your reactions. I don't see much slack, or presumption of good will and intention, in your choice among plausible interpretations of my words.
SQJ> "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?"
That strikes me as the most negative interpretation possible, not as a generous one. I can see how my words could be so interpreted, but it doesn't seem to be the only possible interpretation, the most accurate interpretation, or the most generous one. It seems as if it's looking for something negative, rather than (even tentatively) assuming the best.
And in light of what I said about mirroring, at this point I'm seeing that as an opportunity to reflect upon the times when *I* may be unconsciously looking for a putdown (whether or not that is true of you now). Right now, I'm feeling pretty reflective and humble. But other times in some of our interactions, I'm realizing that I was feeling defensive and attacked without being very conscious of that, and that unconsciously influenced the tone and framing of my responses. I'm owning that, not blaming you for it.
And I apologize for my lack of awareness in those times. I can understand how those reactions may have crystalized some of your current propensity (as I perceive it) towards dark interpretations of even my most conciliatory outreaches. You have some reason for that, I was not being conscious enough.
But I'm ready to change that. I am sincerely ready for a reset and reframing. I don't think the "reset" has yet penetrated fully for us, there are some priors still influencing our interactions, influencing our interpretations of each other (we are humans after all). But I'm feeling patient with us. We can dig ourselves out. I'm becoming less reactive (albeit always imperfect).
It would help if you could read my words a second time when you feel I'm talking down to you, and ask "How would this land if I believed PGBR was trying to connect as an equal?". Or at least think about more than one interpretation, including some benign ones.
"if there is any possible way to interpret my words as talking down to you, you will seize upon that interpretation and not give consideration or weight to any more benign interpretation."
Let me start by saying that on reflection, I shouldn't have added that bit about "the reactions that are frustrating you." I see how that could easily be interpreted as a snipe. I apologise.
I think a significant part of this reset, at least for me, will be to stop analysing past disagreements or misinterpretations. We obviously have our own ways of communicating and view the words we read through our own lenses, so as you say here, the best way forward is just to assume good intent from each other.
Even if I wasn't already convinced of your sincerity, which I was, your reply here underlines your desire to move forward more positively. A desire which I absolutely share.
My only real quibble is with the quote above. I can promise you that there is no intent or desire to interpret your words as talking down to me. And I don't think the interpretation has anything to do with anything in our past. I believe I'd interpret them the same way even if this was the first time I'd seen them and they were directed at somebody else. Again, to be clear, not as deliberately condescending, they just come across as kind of patronising. I 100% believe that isn't your intention, and that settles the matter as far as I'm concerned.
Having all your interactions with somebody be as words on a screen removes all of the nuance that would, I'm sure, immediately resolve these misunderstandings. And often, we don't even write the same way we speak, so more scope for misunderstanding presents itself. I really appreciate your reply. If you're happy to, I'm ready to close the door on this and be internet buds.
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.
"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 haven’t 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 today’s 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.
Can I politely "keep you on your toes" as you invite?
I know that AA was not a lynchpin of your article and I was addressing one assertion in isolation rather than as an attack on your article. That being the assertion that white women were the main primary beneficiaries of affirmative action, treated as a standalone topic.
I will often in this reply use "the assertion" to mean that.
As I have noted, I have no agenda other than truth in exploring that assertion. I was never unhappy in the least during the years when I assumed it was probably true because I had heard it often, I did not actively seek out disconfirmation, and I will not be unhappy if the weight of evidence in the end leads back to that conclusion. Or the other direction. I am equally happy to receive scientific links leading in either direction. I have no ideology which benefits or suffers from the true answer to that, either way. That may not be true of everybody on the internet.
I truly *do not care* which way the conclusion goes. If people of color needed AA relatively more and benefitted relatively more from it, then it was well targeted. If women needed AA relatively more and benefitted relatively more from it, then likewise well targeted. If the need and the benefit were exactly equal, likewise. I have no preference between these conclusions. I do have a preference to the truth, tho.
I cited one academic paper just to suggest that the factuality of that assertion is not (yet) a scientific consensus, but my point was to solicit the best scientific counterpoint, not to stop there. I noted that the paper was one peer reviewed data point to weigh, but not definitive - it opens the question rather than closing it. My point was to gather the best info in all directions before making any conclusions. I defended taking the paper seriously rather than dismissing it on superficial grounds; the best counterpoint if it was wrong would be a better scientific analysis, not rhetorical attacks.
It's not a key issue, so I have not researched it much; but when you so strongly asserted it as fact, I figured I had stumbled upon a possible source for links better scientific counterpoint, and took the opportunity to explain why it had recently come into question, and ask about your basis for asserting it as established fact. I fully expected that you might have links to good science supporting the assertion, and welcomed that.
In that light of balanced and scientifically grounded investigation, I think the degree to which you elaborated on racially biased agendas for trying to disprove the assertion was uncalled for. It's not relevant to the scientific question behind the assertion, so I will let it go, but I will call to our attention that this kind of "smear by association" may not be consonant with our intentions.
> "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?"
I do not think that is a fair restatement of the issue. At question was how much of women's increased presence in the workforce can accurately be attributed to AA. Many articles in the popular press completely ignore that question, and assume that 100% of the statistical increases in female participation is due to AA hiring, and have nothing to do with changing roles of women; it also assumes that 100% of advancement for people of color is due to AA. We know that both those assumptions are false, and also that there is no reason that the percentage due to AA would automatically be the same for all population groups. That's a glaring problem at the heart of the issue, not a peripheral distraction of looking for an obscure hidden variable with near zero influence I think your reframing mis-portrays the significance.
> "But if you spend all of your time on skepticism, simply because a conclusion doesn't quite fit your preexisting biases,"
Steve, this does not strike me as being in the spirit of fostering a more respectful interaction. It's imputing disreputable motives rather than addressing the objective question.
> "I have no problem believing that the average white woman was better educated than the average black person back then... 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."
That is very reasonable. But does that contradict the concept that white women didn't get as much benefit from AA because they did need as much help, or reinforce it? To my mind you are arguing for the latter - you are saying people of color needed AA more and thus benefitted more from it, more often getting positions they would not have otherwise gotten. Which side of do you think that argues for?
I think I may see some of the underpinnings here. Aha, finally. If somebody weighing in on this issue were to say "white women's gains in employment were largely due to merit and did not require AA" (which by the way I am NOT asserting myself, if you read my full position), it would be easy (but not accurate) to conclude that it follows that "people of color needed AA only because of their lack of merit". That does NOT automatically follow. They could also have needed (and benefitted from) AA based on their merit not having been recognized.
I never say the core intention of AA (for those who benefitted from it) as being "hiring/promoting those who do not merit hiring/promoting" but as "compensating for a historical and ongoing disadvantage which unfairly holds back some people, to the detriment of those people and society as a whole".
Nowhere in that statement was there any assumption that "disadvantage" is the same thing as "lack of merit"!!! But some, possibly including yourself, could be responding to that assumed conflation.
So even if white women and people of color had exactly equal education and job experience (as proxies for merit in this context), AA could have benefitted people of color more because they needed it more due to the factors you mention; without AA they might not have gotten the jobs, while the women might have. Of course, we not talking about 0% / 100% binary differences, but about different rates of employment. And as you note, the white women did on average have more education, which would also reduce the degree to which they would not need AA.
Sigh. My exploring the logic of this, pointing out that *your* logic above is more supportive of people of color benefitting more then white women from AA (for good and appropriate reasons), may be taken as *my* advocating that. Is it not, I've been clear that my current assessment is "unproven", and I currently don't consider the assertion or the counter-assertion to be "facts". I can still observe the logic of arguments in either direction, tho.
> "the data that I'm basing my claim on is the research detailing the relative rise in employment, income"
Well, we can let it drop here if you wish. I do not accept that "rise in employment" is a reliable scientific proxy for "rise in employment due to AA", and you do.
If the assertion were "white women have had a higher increase in employment and advancement than people of color (in past decades)" I would easily agree. Since instead its "white women have benefitted more from AA than have people of color", I have no firm conclusions yet.
But I am open to solid science in either direction, and I have no fixed agenda or confirmation bias to support on this issue, other than seeking truth. I'm concerned about the rise of ideology trumping science today, so I prefer the latter as our guide, but on this issue I'm completely content with any direction that the science leads. Our discussion has been illuminating, but I have not seen any science in either direction emerge from it, other than the one paper I cited.
"Steve, this does not strike me as being in the spirit of fostering a more respectful interaction. It's imputing disreputable motives rather than addressing the objective question."
I have a habit, which I will be conscious of as we work through our "reset," of using "you" when I should probably use "one." "One" sounds pretentious to me, which is why I avoid it, but while I *do* think you have a bias towards minimising or failing to consider racism, I wasn't trying to implicate you here. Obviously I see how my wording might have made you feel that way though. Sorry about that.
To be clear, the assertion didn't appear in the article at all. It's not just that it wasn't a lynchpin, it played no part. It was just an aside in a reply to another reader here in the comments (https://steveqj.substack.com/p/i-expected-a-racist-diatribe-from/comment/9156563).
But yes, it's a question of how far one is willing to dig and how much time one is willing to spend in order to have an assertion "proved." As I said, there will always be a study that casts doubt on a consensus (I think it's fair to say that there *is* consensus given that, as I pointed out, there is zero "solid science," including the study you linked, showing that black peple were the primary beneficiaries of AA despite their smaller gains. A single paper doesn't break consensus).
So it comes down to the standard of "proof" you (I do mean you in this case) are willing to accept. I'm asking in all sincerity, what level of proof would assure you without any shadow of doubt that the gains experienced by white women were due to AA in smaller proportion than the smaller gains for black people? Because it seems that this one paper, that focuses exclusively on 6 small cities in the South, and doesn't disprove "the assertion" is the sole source of your doubt.
And while you say that you're indifferent one way or the other, if I'd said that racial income disparities are due to higher rates of single parenthood, or that black culture is a significant factor in black criminality, or that black people don't emphasise education for their children to the same degree as other ethnicities, do you think you'd have asked me for studies to back those assertions up? Do you think the data backing up these assertions is airtight?
And I don't think your logic holds with regards to the impact of AA if black people and white women had equal education, because it discounts the influence of racism.
If black people and white women are equally employable by every metric, and a racist employer (I suspect there are one or two of them living in small cities in the American South) has to employ a woman or a minority in order to fill his AA quota, obviously he'd hire the white woman, no? So she'd be a beneficiary of AA in that instance. Our hypothetical racist employer could get away with this even if the black employee were *more* qualified.
So while all things being equal, one might expect things to work in a meritocratic way, with the best candidate eligible to be hired under AA getting the job, all things are not equal. Even the paper you linked notes that white women were perceived by most employers to be good workers. Why? Is this racial bias? The paper doesn't say anything about how black people were perceived. Which seems like a pretty major oversight given the subject matter no?
There will always be these fuzzy areas that can't be captured perfectly. Especially when the study authors don't seem to have thought to even consider them. And certainly not by the single question;
"Do you personally support affirmative action as a policy to give preferences to blacks and females in hiring and promotion?"
that the researchers asked the employers. It in no way even attempts to account for bias or to examine the realities of the hiring practices. Just looks at the end results and hand waves the stark difference in the employment fortunes of white women and black women as "intense competition." I honestly chuckled when I read that.
In the end, where one stands given the data available depends on how seriously one takes the impact of racism. Or whether one belives it's significant. The word racism or racial discrimination doesn't appear once in the entire paper. I don't see how one can perform a meaningful anaylsis of the relative impact of AA between a white and black cohort without seriously considering racism.
"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.
Steve, this experience is nearly unique in my life.
I realize that I've on occasion expressed frustration at how my words (and those of many others, even you) can be twisted by others, no matter how carefully we attempt to avoid that - whether in honest misunderstanding or bad faith pretense of misunderstanding. I'm sure you have observed the same thing.
However, that is NOT what happens between us here. I highly value your insights and trust your sincerity and intelligence. I almost never in my life have had the kind of dynamic I've had here with anybody else with those characteristics. I can see how one might conflate the two, but my occasional experience of impatience with foolishness or bad faith, and the way you and I seem to trigger each other, are quite distinct for me. And the experience with you is a rare opportunity for me.
I think the issues between us are more due to our similarities. That's one reason (besides my respect for your writing) that I've bothered to respond to these issues. I see it as something I can learn from, a mirror. Not in the sense that you have sometimes seemed to take it - that it's your mission to repeatedly tell me what's wrong with me. I'm getting better at ignoring the tone of that as a distraction from the possible learning; I can see now that I have sometimes done poorly at that in the past. Being defensive does not serve me. The learning I'm getting about myself is more from your need to treat me the way you do, and from your not being aware of that - I see myself in that, I see that I have some similar flaws. I do not feel superior; there is no flaw I've observed in you that I do not see in myself. And if we can be civil, I can learn from that.
One of the differences I observe in myself, is that when you treat me condescendingly (as I perceive it), it got under my skin more than usual precisely because of the high regard I have for you. It's like being harshly criticized by somebody whose esteem one values, not just some internet rando. That's not a frequent experience for me. It has taken some reflection to observe this in myself.
Whether you learn something about yourself and your part (or perceive any opportunity to do so) is up to you and not my concern. I am not trying to fix you.
> "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. "
I hear that you feel that way, and I can see how that could be unpleasant. That however is not the emotion nor intellectual perspective I experience, however. I've heard your interpretation,
can I share mine? The comments you apparently interpret as talking down to you, were not so intended. I meant to affirm our mutual positive intentions. We are trying to break some habits, and in my life, when I'm trying to do that, it has been helpful to keep reaffirming the new perspective as part of avoiding falling into a familiar rut. It's easy to slip into defensiveness. I am speaking as much to myself as to you, and trying to be allies in making a shift. My reflection is not turning up, so far anyway, the kind of talking down (parent to child, etc) energy which you appear to be reacting to
And the reaction you have to the words from me (in my previous post), is very unusual in my life. Really. In that mode (not speaking about every mode in which I write, sometimes I am less conscious and more reactive), most people hear me as reaching out as an equal, seeking a mutually respectful interchange between imperfect but well intentioned people. My experience is that it usually de-escalates and reassures. It has worked *many times*.
In this case, something else is going on. It feels to me thus: if there is any possible way to interpret my words as talking down to you, you will seize upon that interpretation and not give consideration or weight to any more benign interpretation. And that you are expecting me to phrase things in ways that cannot possibly be so interpreted, and holding me responsible for your reactions. I don't see much slack, or presumption of good will and intention, in your choice among plausible interpretations of my words.
SQJ> "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?"
That strikes me as the most negative interpretation possible, not as a generous one. I can see how my words could be so interpreted, but it doesn't seem to be the only possible interpretation, the most accurate interpretation, or the most generous one. It seems as if it's looking for something negative, rather than (even tentatively) assuming the best.
And in light of what I said about mirroring, at this point I'm seeing that as an opportunity to reflect upon the times when *I* may be unconsciously looking for a putdown (whether or not that is true of you now). Right now, I'm feeling pretty reflective and humble. But other times in some of our interactions, I'm realizing that I was feeling defensive and attacked without being very conscious of that, and that unconsciously influenced the tone and framing of my responses. I'm owning that, not blaming you for it.
And I apologize for my lack of awareness in those times. I can understand how those reactions may have crystalized some of your current propensity (as I perceive it) towards dark interpretations of even my most conciliatory outreaches. You have some reason for that, I was not being conscious enough.
But I'm ready to change that. I am sincerely ready for a reset and reframing. I don't think the "reset" has yet penetrated fully for us, there are some priors still influencing our interactions, influencing our interpretations of each other (we are humans after all). But I'm feeling patient with us. We can dig ourselves out. I'm becoming less reactive (albeit always imperfect).
It would help if you could read my words a second time when you feel I'm talking down to you, and ask "How would this land if I believed PGBR was trying to connect as an equal?". Or at least think about more than one interpretation, including some benign ones.
Warmly, PGBR
"if there is any possible way to interpret my words as talking down to you, you will seize upon that interpretation and not give consideration or weight to any more benign interpretation."
Let me start by saying that on reflection, I shouldn't have added that bit about "the reactions that are frustrating you." I see how that could easily be interpreted as a snipe. I apologise.
I think a significant part of this reset, at least for me, will be to stop analysing past disagreements or misinterpretations. We obviously have our own ways of communicating and view the words we read through our own lenses, so as you say here, the best way forward is just to assume good intent from each other.
Even if I wasn't already convinced of your sincerity, which I was, your reply here underlines your desire to move forward more positively. A desire which I absolutely share.
My only real quibble is with the quote above. I can promise you that there is no intent or desire to interpret your words as talking down to me. And I don't think the interpretation has anything to do with anything in our past. I believe I'd interpret them the same way even if this was the first time I'd seen them and they were directed at somebody else. Again, to be clear, not as deliberately condescending, they just come across as kind of patronising. I 100% believe that isn't your intention, and that settles the matter as far as I'm concerned.
Having all your interactions with somebody be as words on a screen removes all of the nuance that would, I'm sure, immediately resolve these misunderstandings. And often, we don't even write the same way we speak, so more scope for misunderstanding presents itself. I really appreciate your reply. If you're happy to, I'm ready to close the door on this and be internet buds.
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.