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Comment by dinkumthinkum | Hacker News Reader

You've got to be joking. I mean, I'm not at advocate of what the article is proposing but this is crazy. It is always inherently racist?

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Yes. The whole "inherent ability" thing is bullshit - even if it does exist, schools don't actually group by ability, they group by (a) how well kids do on tests at a young age and (b) how good the kid's parents are at convincing the schools to put their kids in a higher set, both of which have as much to do with race and socioeconomic class as they do with actual ability.

Whenever ability tracking is tried in any multiracial society, it always, and I mean always, results in markedly different outcomes for various racial groups. Is that not, ipso facto, racism?

so different outcomes for different racial groups = racism?

have you taken a look at the competitors in the 100m sprint in the last 30 years?

But it is not obviously unfair or wrong. The students are separated according to ability, not the colour of their skin.

> it always, and I mean always

It doesn't care what you mean when you don't have the evidence to back it.

All you have to do to shoot me down is cite a single instance to the contrary. Just one.

Burden of proof is on you to prove your ridiculous theory.

It's called the Achievement Gap, not my "ridiculous theory." Google it.

Can you cite some situations where that's true?

All of them. Even a single instance in which the Achievement Gap had been successfully closed would be regarded as news on a par with the moon landing or controlled nuclear fusion. There would be no end of talk about it.

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