• This is a political forum that is non-biased/non-partisan and treats every person's position on topics equally. This debate forum is not aligned to any political party. In today's politics, many ideas are split between and even within all the political parties. Often we find ourselves agreeing on one platform but some topics break our mold. We are here to discuss them in a civil political debate. If this is your first visit to our political forums, be sure to check out the RULES. Registering for debate politics is necessary before posting. Register today to participate - it's free!

Are you smarter than The Obama?

Are you smarter than The Obama?


  • Total voters
    33
Status
Not open for further replies.
Most law schools don't release their admissions data. The University of Arizona law school and the University of Nebraska are exceptions. Look at these charts:

nebraskawv2.jpg


arizonaim4.jpg


IN all cases the lowest 25% of white applicants scored higher than the highest 25% of black applicants. In 2007, there is NO OVERLAP between black and Asian/white scores. Not a single Asian/white applicant scored as low as the highest scoring black applicant

So the question becomes... are the scores lower because the black applicants did not have equal access or opportunity to quality education? I think MistressNomad pointed out that was the likely case. Now... what we don't have are LSAT results from the same groups of kids, of different ethnic backgrounds which went to the same schools.

I've basically seen two major arguments that explain such results:

1.) That blacks and minorities do not have access to quality educational schools, therefore their standardized tests are lower than others.
2.) That standardized tests are racially biased, therefore do not take into account the diversity of the students taking the tests which cause the student to make mistakes, whereas if the questions took into account the racial differences, the students tests scores would be higher.
 
Point #1 Blacks are no longer oppressed.

Blacks who earn a Master's degree have almost identical incomes to Whites. Blacks who earn doctorates are earning incomes on par with Whites.

mastersdegreeshs9.jpg


For every additional year of schooling, blacks earn a higher wage premium than whites.

returnstoschooling.jpg


When all factors are held equal, wage discrimination based on race disappeared back in the 1970s.

The Myth of Racial Discrimination in Pay in the United States

The analyses of the General Social Survey data from 1974 to 2000 replicate earlier findings from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth that racial disparity in earnings disappears once cognitive ability is controlled for. The results are robust across many alternative specifications, and further show that blacks receive significantly greater returns to their cognitive ability than nonblacks. The trend data show that there was no sign of racial discrimination in the United States as early as 1970s. The analyses call into question the necessity of and justification for preferential treatment of ethnic minorities.​

2.) Yes. The data, otherwise known as the real world, shows this beyond dispute. Why else do you think that we have programs designed to equalize outcomes across race?

So in other words, if blacks had the same education and background as whites, they would make the same. WOW! That's great. You get alot of these sources over at Stormfront?
 
I've basically seen two major arguments that explain such results:

1.) That blacks and minorities do not have access to quality educational schools, therefore their standardized tests are lower than others.
2.) That standardized tests are racially biased, therefore do not take into account the diversity of the students taking the tests which cause the student to make mistakes, whereas if the questions took into account the racial differences, the students tests scores would be higher.

I am pretty sure it is some of both(more the former than the latter more recently), plus a few other factors, such as overall environment(blacks tend to live in poorer neighborhoods, which is, well, not a good environment to learn or excel in much in. It really strikes me as something of a viscous circle type problem. Black kids don't get the education they need due to being poor and the results, so they get ****ty jobs, so their kids don't get the education, and so on. It would also be probably more true to use the word poor in place of blacks. It's a problem of being poor, not of race.
 
So the question becomes... are the scores lower because the black applicants did not have equal access or opportunity to quality education? I think MistressNomad pointed out that was the likely case.

Yes, she pointed that out and I refuted her claim by posting a study which looked at the educational outcomes of a massive social experiment which moved thousands of poor black families out of bad neighborhoods and installed them in solid middle class neighborhoods, neighborhoods with schools which lacked no resources, and the result was that there was no improvement, years later, in the educational outcomes of the black students.

We see this all over the place. Here is Princeton High School,

Several months after Blake graduated, Princeton High School (and thus the district as a whole) ran afoul of the statute for the first time, based on the lagging scores of African-American students on a standardized English test given to 11th graders. Last month, the school was cited for the second year in a row, this time because 37 percent of black students failed to meet standards in English, and 55 percent of blacks and 40 percent of Hispanics failed in math. One of the standard complaints about No Child Left Behind by its critics in public education is that it punishes urban schools that are chronically under financed and already contending with a concentration of poor, nonwhite, bilingual and special-education pupils. Princeton could hardly be more different. It is an Ivy League town with a minority population of slightly more than 10 percent and per-student spending well above the state average. The high school sends 94 percent of its graduates to four-year colleges and offers 29 different Advanced Placement courses. Over all, 98 percent of Princeton High School students exceed the math and English standards required by No Child Left Behind.​

This phenomenon is seen all across the country and across all socioeconomic groups. Here is a black Harvard economics professor talking about the school his own children attend:

Yet whites and blacks taking similar level courses report that they spend the same time on homework. It is just that the results are different: 38 percent of whites who spend two hours on homework nightly get all their work done; only 20 percent of blacks spending two hours finish their homework — the Gap.

It would be politically convenient for Professor Ferguson, a black man raising his two children plus a nephew in a Boston suburb, if the Gap could be explained away by economics.

It cannot. When he controls for income, half the Gap persists. Among the richest families, blacks average B+, whites A-. How to explain it?​

I've basically seen two major arguments that explain such results:

1.) That blacks and minorities do not have access to quality educational schools, therefore their standardized tests are lower than others.
2.) That standardized tests are racially biased, therefore do not take into account the diversity of the students taking the tests which cause the student to make mistakes, whereas if the questions took into account the racial differences, the students tests scores would be higher.

Point #1. - Answered above.
Point #2. - Tests being racially biased has long ago been addressed. Even the academic critics who pointed this out 30 years ago now concede that this is no longer the case. This is now an old-wive's tale which seems to have a half-life that approximates the age of the universe.

Further, research is now quite clear that the SAT OVERPREDICTS black performance.

Differential Validity and Prediction of the SAT

As for gender by ethnicity analyses, the SAT overpredicted African American students’ FYGPAs; however, overprediction was greater for African American males, with mean residuals ranging from -0.24 to -0.20 compared to African American females, with mean residuals ranging from -0.13 to -0.04 for the 1994 version of the SAT.​
 
So in other words, if blacks had the same education and background as whites, they would make the same. WOW! That's great. You get alot of these sources over at Stormfront?

Who polices the police and who moderates the mods?
 
I am pretty sure it is some of both(more the former than the latter more recently), plus a few other factors, such as overall environment(blacks tend to live in poorer neighborhoods, which is, well, not a good environment to learn or excel in much in. It really strikes me as something of a viscous circle type problem. Black kids don't get the education they need due to being poor and the results, so they get ****ty jobs, so their kids don't get the education, and so on. It would also be probably more true to use the word poor in place of blacks. It's a problem of being poor, not of race.

When I retired and moved to jersey for a few years I worked in an alternative high school as security. I can only tell you what I know and that is that none of the kids in the 3 yrs I worked there made the truance level, meaning they all missed more days then was allowed to move to the next grade or graduate...no one cared...when they were busted with drugs, no one cared the police werent called they werent suspended or tossed out...why? money each student in jersey has a dollar figure.
The graduation test was a joke...they piled all the kids they could get to attend in a hall 2 days before the test and gave them the answers...went over each question and told them the answer..and still most of them failed. The end result they GAVE them diplomas I asked the principle why...his answer was to give them a chance....The saddest part is that the alternative school was hailed a huge success for guess what...its graduation rates...thats why theres pictures on Mcdonalds registers instead of numbers...
 
I am pretty sure it is some of both(more the former than the latter more recently), plus a few other factors, such as overall environment(blacks tend to live in poorer neighborhoods, which is, well, not a good environment to learn or excel in much in. It really strikes me as something of a viscous circle type problem. Black kids don't get the education they need due to being poor and the results, so they get ****ty jobs, so their kids don't get the education, and so on. It would also be probably more true to use the word poor in place of blacks. It's a problem of being poor, not of race.

You're pretty sure of that are you? On the basis of what? Your intuition? Your sense of how the world SHOULD operate?

How about testing your hypothesis?

The Kansas City Experiment:


For decades critics of the public schools have been saying, "You can't solve educational problems by throwing money at them." The education establishment and its supporters have replied, "No one's ever tried." In Kansas City they did try. To improve the education of black students and encourage desegregation, a federal judge invited the Kansas City, Missouri, School District to come up with a cost-is-no-object educational plan and ordered local and state taxpayers to find the money to pay for it.

Kansas City spent as much as $11,700 per pupil--more money per pupil, on a cost of living adjusted basis, than any other of the 280 largest districts in the country. The money bought higher teachers' salaries, 15 new schools, and such amenities as an Olympic-sized swimming pool with an underwater viewing room, television and animation studios, a robotics lab, a 25-acre wildlife sanctuary, a zoo, a model United Nations with simultaneous translation capability, and field trips to Mexico and Senegal. The student-teacher ratio was 12 or 13 to 1, the lowest of any major school district in the country.

The results were dismal. Test scores did not rise; the black-white gap did not diminish; and there was less, not greater, integration.

The Kansas City experiment suggests that, indeed, educational problems can't be solved by throwing money at them, that the structural problems of our current educational system are far more important than a lack of material resources, and that the focus on desegregation diverted attention from the real problem, low achievement.​

The black-white IQ gap shows up by the age of 3. This isn't society causing the problem.
 
The racism is strong in this thread. Ignorant, pathetic, irrational racism.

The Inconvenient Truth is now racism? What did Al Gore call climate change skeptics? Oh yeah, deniers. Like Holocaust deniers. What should we call people who deny reality and fling about unsubstantiated charges of racism? How about liberals.
 
You're pretty sure of that are you? On the basis of what? Your intuition? Your sense of how the world SHOULD operate?

How about testing your hypothesis?

The Kansas City Experiment:


For decades critics of the public schools have been saying, "You can't solve educational problems by throwing money at them." The education establishment and its supporters have replied, "No one's ever tried." In Kansas City they did try. To improve the education of black students and encourage desegregation, a federal judge invited the Kansas City, Missouri, School District to come up with a cost-is-no-object educational plan and ordered local and state taxpayers to find the money to pay for it.

Kansas City spent as much as $11,700 per pupil--more money per pupil, on a cost of living adjusted basis, than any other of the 280 largest districts in the country. The money bought higher teachers' salaries, 15 new schools, and such amenities as an Olympic-sized swimming pool with an underwater viewing room, television and animation studios, a robotics lab, a 25-acre wildlife sanctuary, a zoo, a model United Nations with simultaneous translation capability, and field trips to Mexico and Senegal. The student-teacher ratio was 12 or 13 to 1, the lowest of any major school district in the country.

The results were dismal. Test scores did not rise; the black-white gap did not diminish; and there was less, not greater, integration.

The Kansas City experiment suggests that, indeed, educational problems can't be solved by throwing money at them, that the structural problems of our current educational system are far more important than a lack of material resources, and that the focus on desegregation diverted attention from the real problem, low achievement.​

The black-white IQ gap shows up by the age of 3. This isn't society causing the problem.

You realize this has jack **** to do with what I said, right?
 
Who polices the police and who moderates the mods?

Moderator's Warning:
If you feel a mod post is against the rules, use the report post button and the rest of the mod team will look at it. Do not comment on it inthread.
 
The Inconvenient Truth is now racism? What did Al Gore call climate change skeptics? Oh yeah, deniers. Like Holocaust deniers. What should we call people who deny reality and fling about unsubstantiated charges of racism? How about liberals.

you believe blacks are inferior to whites? how would one acquire a high verbal iq, i wonder?
 
what "inconvenient truth"? that blacks are inherently inferior to white people?

that's not truth..its just ignorant, illogical, & irrational racism.

Numbers do not lie. This does not, however, result in implication of inferiority of a race. These results are primarily based on a lack of effort and proper training. Ultimately, this falls on the shoulders of parents. Your shadow follows you, but if you try to follow your shadow then you will get nowhere.
 
It's a problem of being poor, not of race.

Really? Let's test your hypothesis:

The Racial Gap in Academic Achievement

by ABIGAIL THERNSTROM

The SATs, too, paint a dismal picture. In 1995, black students from families in the top income bracket—$70,000 and up—were a shade behind whites from families earning less than $10,000 on the verbal assessment and significantly behind them in math.​

Your hypothesis is falsified.
 
Really? Let's test your hypothesis:

The Racial Gap in Academic Achievement

by ABIGAIL THERNSTROM

The SATs, too, paint a dismal picture. In 1995, black students from families in the top income bracket—$70,000 and up—were a shade behind whites from families earning less than $10,000 on the verbal assessment and significantly behind them in math.​

Your hypothesis is falsified.

And so their race made them score lower? Are you saying that black students are mentally inferior due to race?

Personally I think it's due to culture and lifestyle, not race.
 
You realize this has jack **** to do with what I said, right?

You claimed "Black kids don't get the education they need due to being poor and the results, "

So, if my response has nothing to do with your claim, that is, if education funding, the quality of the teachers, the availability of resources within the school, are not what you're talking about, then your model must be putting a lot of weight on other factors associated with being poor causing the poor educational outcomes.

What are these other factors associated with being poor? Spell them out and let's see if we can test the validity of your model.

Upthread I've already dealt with the claim that it is a neighborhood effect.

Looking forward to the details on your model.
 
put white people through 400 years of slavery and 100 years of segregation and see what their test scores look like.

I came from a mother who had me at 18 years old. Disgraced by her having a child prior to being married, my grandfather gave her the option to give me up for adoption or leave his household. My mother went with the latter choice, and thus we clearly started with a disadvantage ourselves. Given where I began and where I reached based on hard work, I believe the mention of slavery in modern times is purely an excuse for those lacking ambition.
 
And so their race made them score lower? Are you saying that black students are mentally inferior due to race?

Personally I think it's due to culture and lifestyle, not race.


Fine, if you think that this is a product arising from culture and lifestyle, then what business does society have in intervening in order to modify these results? Secondly, the Discrimination Assumption would be completely unwarranted. If it's not society that is causing the outcomes but the choices of culture and lifestyle, then it becomes unnecessary to blame society for being discriminatory bigots who are oppressing innocent people. In fact, innocent people are being blamed for causing something that is caused by culture and lifestyle.
 
Fine, if you think that this is a product arising from culture and lifestyle, then what business does society have in intervening in order to modify these results? Secondly, the Discrimination Assumption would be completely unwarranted. If it's not society that is causing the outcomes but the choices of culture and lifestyle, then it becomes unnecessary to blame society for being discriminatory bigots who are oppressing innocent people. In fact, innocent people are being blamed for causing something that is caused by culture and lifestyle.

I think it's stupid to lower standards or manipulate results to favor people of a certain race. That is racism and it punishes those who work hard for their grades. However, the fact that blacks may do less well than other races on tests is not a case of correlation=causation. They don't fail or do worse because they are black. If anything I think it may be due to lifestyles and a weaker drive to study and do well academically.
 
Numbers do not lie. This does not, however, result in implication of inferiority of a race. These results are primarily based on a lack of effort and proper training. Ultimately, this falls on the shoulders of parents. Your shadow follows you, but if you try to follow your shadow then you will get nowhere.

That is quite the truth..working class parents breed more working class kids...professional parents raise more professionally inclined children...and it works in reverse going down the scale....
NO one is born inferior intellectually than anyone else...its breeding the sets the course
 
I think it's stupid to lower standards or manipulate results to favor people of a certain race. That is racism and it punishes those who work hard for their grades. However, the fact that blacks may do less well than other races on tests is not a case of correlation=causation. They don't fail or do worse because they are black. If anything I think it may be due to lifestyles and a weaker drive to study and do well academically.

Its home environment and neighborhood environements...the very poor living in slums, ghetttos barrios whateve label you give it have pressures that other more fortunate kids cant even begin to understand....Look im an old white guy...that spent a good portion of my life in the worst neighborhoods of a major city...I saw first hand what some people have to live through and HAVE TO TRY AND OVERCOME it can be overwhelming...try and understand that these inner city kids live in much more dangerous world than suburban and richkids...they have to be aware of what they say who they talk to how they dress where they go...their main goal is not becoming prey of the animals they live amongst....more privledged kids cant even imagine what that pressure does to those kids
Let me add this...I agree with digsbee lowering standards and giving diplomas away are not the answer....we, us have to do something about the cause the root...the neighborhoods....if we dont, its never going to change...
 
Last edited:
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top Bottom