People point out disparities as evidence that there aren’t equal opportunities in society.
The conservative position is simply to assert that equality of opportunity exists cuz America, and if you question that you are a communist who just wants everyone to be the same.
People in this thread are up in arms about the principle, but the reason that they are being challenged is based on how they operate in practice.
Do all children have equal access? Nominally, maybe. But that’s de facto not the case.
But I feel it is very unfair, outright evil to take away an opportunity from gifted people (both from privileged families and a few from very bad families that would have been lifted up by said programs!! The aforementioned example could perhaps break the cycle and get a much much better life than any of his/her relatives) on the basis that the statistics on the enrolled will be biased. It is not the task of such a small-scale program to solve a huge, complex problem that probably can only be solved in decades if ever.
They say they don't believe that any children are more talented than any other children, and are advocating eliminating standard "advanced" courses, such as calculus, from the high school curriculum. The only classes that would be available in their proposal are the current remedial math track.
I think you've confused "straw man argument created by its detractors" with "the actual concrete plan being established by its proponents".
The (successful) proponents of equity based teaching are so far outside the mainstream that it's an honest mistake. (I made it, and now I'm furious.)
People who disagree with the basic concepts around equity tend to view the entire discourse as a monolith, but people are actually allowed to have different opinions on what is actually equitable and what isn’t.
Personally I wouldn’t support doing away with advanced math courses either. But just because someone does that in the name of equity, doesn’t mean I think equity itself is bad. I’m able to separate the two.
They actually say that it is - have you seen the famous comic where the three guys are watching the baseball game but the short guy can't see through the fence? They literally are saying the equity of outcome is the beginning and the end of their goals.
The point is to demonstrate agency over the systems we create. What’s the flip side of that scenario? People aren’t given stools to stand on and tall people get to watch while short people don’t? Who built the fence? Why is it that height? Why aren’t there bleachers?
Is just sitting there doing nothing equality of opportunity somehow?
I think reading "head height" as the outcome, is a very short-sighted interpretation.
Like anything else, interpretation has nuance and you could read it both ways. On HN we're supposed to address "the strongest possible interpretation" in our comments, so I would try to apply that principle here as well...
Edit: a long take on all the variations, by the meme's originator! https://medium.com/@CRA1G/the-evolution-of-an-accidental-mem...
That’s a very low bar if you take population level disparities and assume it’s a lack of equity causing this. You’re talking about having a deep understanding of incredibly complex systems layered on top of one another.
Equality of opportunity is never possible. We’re all born with different genetics. Anything less is just arbitrary line drawing as to what’s ok and what isn’t (ie tribalism).
Are racial disparities socially determined or not?
In sports, the rules are whatever we say they are, that’s the part that’s socially determined. Lebron James is a amazing basketball player, due to a combination of his genetics and his hard work. But there’s a parallel reality wherein basketball was never invented. And people enjoy sports like horse racing or marathon running, where he would never be able to be world class given his frame. What sports are popular is based on culture and happenstance, and up to the whims of society, not genetics or hard work of individuals.
For several hundred years, America literally constructed a society where it was decided that white people were considered more valuable than black people. That had nothing to do with what individual black people did, those were just the rules of the game.
You may say “but that’s not how it is anymore”, and yes things have certainly changed. But at the same time, there are people who are alive today who weren’t allowed to attend the same schools as whites, weren’t allowed to drink from the same fountains as whites, etc.
The argument that is being made, is that society continues to favor people based upon the color of their skin. Certainly, individual talents and hard work contribute to one’s place in life, but that does not mean that the playing field is level.
Reading the intent behind that statement, though, that Nigerians have succeeded in America despite any hinderances they may have faced due to wider societies treatment of black people, that would be somewhat outside of the framework of what I am talking about.
The construction here is, do Black Americans have worse outcomes, on average, because of themselves, or because of societies treatment of them. Culture would fall into the bucket of “they are the reason for their own problems”.
Obviously Nigerians do well on average, but they are also a small fraction of the population. Pointing to Nigerians and saying that race isn’t a contributing factor is making an argument after having found the statistical outlier that proves your argument, how do Nigerians compare to the top cohort of white Americans based on ethnicity or whatever? Is it possible that Nigerians would actually be doing better were there not racial barriers?
> having found the statistical outlier that proves your argument
Well, why are they a statistical outlier? If you ask Nigerians, they'll tend to credit their culture. Do you have a different explanation?
> Is it possible that Nigerians would actually be doing better were there not racial barriers?
I suppose it's more possible that they should be doing much worse than they are, because of the racial barriers.
I was under the impression that it did add clarity, so I find your question odd.
What would be the charitable interpretation of the statement “socioeconomic disparities between black Americans and white Americans are due to their respective cultures”?
What’s problematic is the degree to which people can’t even entertain the idea that racism is the primary driver of these disparities, rather than things that are specific to POC, such a culture or genetics, especially given the clear and obvious precedent that is firmly established within this country.
What is a reach, is your reaction to this suggestion.
We no longer deny people opportunities based on their race. If your SAT score is high, you'll be admitted anywhere you want. If you study hard, your score will be high. The reach is constructing the SAT, or any other similar test, as racist because the scores are not evenly distributed by race.
The reason why many people cannot accept this is because many other groups experienced problems from racism as well, but they were eventually able to overcome these barriers. Moreover, the system has already changed to be more accommodating, maybe even putting most of their focus and resources on the bottom 20% of students at the expense of everyone else. Yet, we still have people stating that it’s still unfair.
Black Americans do not have worse outcomes.
Specifically, given the distribution of individuals in the group "Black Americans" across all socially relevant dimensions—including culture—individual Black Americans have identical* outcomes to similarly-situated individuals of every other group in America including Whites, Asians, etc.
As you would expect in a country with equal opportunity for all, both legally and culturally.
*Black Americans actually do better than expected because there's an enormous cultural push to promote Black Americans whenever possible—college admissions, management, etc. not to mention Black Americans being so over-represented in media that most Americans think the country is around 40% Black whereas the actual number is ~13%, i.e. they're off by a factor of 3.
Perhaps the hypotheses should be "maybe there is something in Nigerian/pre-industrial culture that allows children to thrive more than in American/industrialized culture"?
Obviously yes.
I’m sorry, but this simply doesn’t follow.
The premise: that there are a multitude of things that lead to to disparities (even just random chance). If disparities are random then yes, that’s not a problem I’m going to get tussled up about.
But it’s not a matter of “it could be anything”. We have strong evidence that it is oppression, and when that is the case, that I do have reason to care about, and it’s about opportunity not outcome.
But let's be clear, you just claimed that the mere existence of disparities is evidence of oppression. That only follows if group outcomes would be equal in the absence of oppression, but that is a completely invalid assumption that has no basis in historical fact.
It’s not nor us it ever been about the disparities alone, but the disparities in conjunction with the long history of racial oppression in America. People are alive today who grew up under Jim Crow. People are alive today who were threatened with violence for attending elementary school.
Regardless, in practice people do treat it as proof. Before I move on to the other arguments supporting oppression as an explanation I want to drive home that point: there is hardly ever a serious attempt to rule out other possible explanations for disparities, and to suggest that anything other than racism/oppression might explain those differences opens one up to accusations of racism.
Merely referencing Jim Crow is not enough. It ignores both all the ways in which Jim Crow was ineffective at its aims at the time, as well as the seismic cultural and legal changes that have occurred within the intervening years.
It also fails to account for the success of various other minorities (Jews, Nigerians, descendants of Caribbean slaves, various Asian groups) - many of whom also have faced very serious oppression (including outright attempts at elimination) in the very recent past.
None of this is to say that racism does not occur, but I have yet to see a (non-circular) causal explanation for how that can account for a significant amount of present disparities.
Well, for the oppressor, sure, but why should the oppressed accept it?
I said that there are differences due to things other than oppression, and that those aren't a problem unless you think equality of outcome should be goal