[theorique]

What is wrong with the statement "We won't lower the bar"?

It is the legacy of the famous Griggs vs Duke Power case.

Requiring IQ tests to filter employees was found to have "disparate impact" with respect to different identifiable groups.

Silicon Valley does a lot of different IQ test proxies in order to filter their prospective employees in a hopefully-not-racist way: programming tests, seeking college degrees, etc.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griggs_v._Duke_Power_Co.

[jldugger]

The consequences of Griggs v. Duke more complicated than that: the problem with IQ tests is that they are slippery. An employer can say "we want the best and brightest." And they can decide that a degree from Stanford meets that criteria, even if the impact is disparate.

But if they use an IQ test, suddenly there's a slippery slope: Why is the cutoff 130? The error range on IQ tests is non-zero, so what if a black candidate with 129 comes in? How do you defend that disparate impact in court? You can't.