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Comment by gdubs | Hacker News Reader

The famous example of this is the so-called "Regatta Question" in which an SAT question assumed a knowledge of Crew -- an elite sport that would have been a rather obscure reference for minorities from the inner-city. [1]

1: http://articles.latimes.com/2003/jul/27/local/me-sat27

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Isn't this more an issue of class more than race, doe? Even with the argument that members of a certain race tend to belong to a certain class it doesn't change the fact that its still inherently a class and environment issue.

Like, from your post, I would say that Crew is an obscure reference for anyone living in the inner-city, not just minorities.

That would assume that race and class can be entirely separated. I'd say that they cannot.

But even if they cannot be separated (a conversation for another time) these questions are still difficult for anyone living in the inner city, especially those in the lower income class, not just those who are minorities, wouldn't you agree?

Also, although racism is quite possible, the lack of social mobility may explain why race and social class are closely related (i.e. if you inherit both race and social position we'd expect a society to look like this)

In this specific instance, it's really excluding all but the elite. I remember learning what crew was for the first time while visiting colleges, and I grew up in middle-class suburbs.

The idea is that if something negatively affects protected group(s) disproportionately, then it doesn't matter whether the mechanism by which it does so is via class -> strong race/class correlation. It's still discriminatory.

I don't think anything was arguing that they weren't discriminatory, or in the very least I wasn't trying to argue that. The claim was that it was discriminatory towards non-whites. I'm claiming its discriminatory to anyone regardless of race and instead its more dependent on their income level and environment they grow up in.

I'm a white male but I know that personally I had no clue what Crew was during my high school years. Anecdotally, I went to school in an area where the public school population majority was, well, what we consider the minority when discussing race relations.

one very old question does not prove anything about the actual cultural bias of the SAT now or then! research on this topic mostly shows that cultural bias is not a serious problem: http://lp.wileypub.com/HandbookPsychology/SampleChapters/Vol...

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