[Gomer1800]

"The College Board, the New York-based nonprofit that oversees the SAT, said it has worried about income inequality influencing test results for year"

If only these systems in place focused on this rather than race. I know race in the USA correlates strongly with socioeconomic status and outcomes, but its turned out to be such a divisive issue that consistently antagonizes stakeholders and leads to controversial policy decisions.

Sure poverty disproportionately affects some ethnic groups more than others, but it nonetheless has pervasive effects on the health and economic outcomes of people of all races. Hopefully the next system to replace the last takes into account the economic handicaps of students and not their race.

[scott_s]

That some ethnic groups disproportionally are more likely to suffer from poverty is caused by racism. It’s not possible to fix that problem without addressing racism. Yes, not all poverty is caused by racism, but some clearly is. So if you’re starting from the position of not addressing racism, you’re limiting what you can accomplish.

[1shooner]

Acting to provide equitable access to education is an inherently economic intervention. I'm not sure what outcome other than economic you would expect from College Board activity.

[krastanov]

I can agree with you that it might be a more productive fast way to fix some of the issues, but the fact is that racism still affects even the well-off people of color. Maternal deaths related to birth are a recently studied example, as is upward/downward social mobility among the well-off.

[SamReidHughes]

Such studies aren't capable of determining that "racism" is the cause.

[Miner49er]

What else could be a cause?

[pacala]

This is a very divisive topic, for which we have strong cultural taboos and entrenched polarisation. I have yet to see shared explorations in search for the truth, where points from both sides of the debate are treated as coming from a place of good intentions. Every mistake, and there will be mistakes, genuine or perceived, will likely be exploited at the maximum, and possibly will devolve in invectives or worse. Furthermore, it is a complex topic where there may be a superposition of many causes, and teasing out the causes and their respective relative weights, by necessity, will be beyond what HN format can possibly support.

Case in point, "racism". Implying, among other things, KKK and lynchings. Would you submit that the root cause for differentials in college-level education attainment in 2019 between racial groups is endemic lynchings? If not, I would kindly submit that we need a different word to start a conversation.

Edit: Small rephrase to hopefully address u/krastanov concerns.

[krastanov]

I completely agreed with you until you wrote:

> Case in point, "racism". Implying KKK and lynchings.

Is there really a group of people that participate in intellectually honest debates that actually think the use of the word "racism" in 2019 implies "KKK and lynching"!? This sounds incredibly out of proportion to me - yes, KKK/lynching are near one of the extremes of the spectrum of racism, but it is (or used to be) incredibly far from the main realization of racism today.

[krastanov]

While I very much disagree with that idea because it has been disproven plenty of times, the usual "not racism" explanation that people suggest is some inherent difference between ethnicities unrelated to historical subjugation or current policies. At this point I take the proponents of such "not racism" explanations as willfully ignorant implicit racists at best.

[mises]

"If you don't agree with me, you're a willfully ignorant implicit racist."

Not a productive remark; painting all who disagree with you as "racists" devalues the legitimate use of the term and prevents honest discourse.

[nathanasmith]

You are starting with your conclusion already in mind.

[SamReidHughes]

The inverse of poor immigrants' children having great upwards mobility. More people being in a high income bracket because of circumstance, without repeatable performance in the next generation. You'll see the same thing with the demographic of bitcoin millionaires.

In the case of maternal deaths, obviously obesity, diet, drug use, etc, are variables. And simple biological propensity to survive childbirth. And the physiology of Africans, let alone the complexities of X% African + (100-X)% Anglo physiology, being harder to deal with.

[marcusverus]

What studies attribute racial differences in maternal mortality to racism?

[Balgair]

One caveat: It is unlikely that you can min/max more than one variable in a system at once with a single pertubation.

As an example: Say you are trying to give out bank loans to white and black people, and to men and women. You have a metric that you give loans out: namley their credit score. You are not guaranteed to be able to give out bank loans to all people fairly. Say that black women, via the randomness of life, have lower credit scores than white women. So, because you give out loans via credit scores, you disadvantage black women. This is not okay. So, you then include some factor in the bank loaning process that accounts for that the race of the person applying for the loan. This then corrects the racial disparity in the loans to balck and whote women. However, what did you do to the rates of applications to black men and white men? Your new metrics have likely affected those rates, maybe negatively affecting women as a whole as comapred to men. Maybe it results in lowered rates to black men as comapred to white men. Who knows. You repeat this process of sdjustment until all loans are given out fairly. Then you look at what was done to Native American populations, homosexuals, asians, poor people, etc.

I'm not saying that you are forbidden from being able to iteratively get to fairness in bank loans, but a single rule change is very unlikely to result in total fairness amoung all possible divisions of people. Additionally, to get to fairness in all bank loans, the rule set is likely to be somewhat complex [0] and then it'll have to change with time.

[0] The handshake problem maybe? n(n-1)/2 complexity? With just 7 racial categories alone you get 21 total interactions that need to be adjusted for, Add in 3 gender categories and you then have 210 interactions. Now put in 4 monetary classes, you get 3486 interactions to deal with. Now add in pregnant people, veterans, the disabled, political views, religious groups, etc. It roughly grows as N^2 and gets hairy really quick.