[pacbard]

The context for the use of "racially segregated" is probably within the current anti-racist movement (see, for example, Kendi's work). This movement has moved away from labeling racist a policy that was implemented with racist intent (like segregated schools during Jim Crow) towards labeling racist a policy that has unequal outcomes based on race, regardless of policymakers' intent.

If you start from that perspective, it naturally follows to label G&T education as segregated if we observe that one group being overrepresented in it and another group being underrepresented.

Of note here, it's the assumption that the distribution of gifted and talented eligibility attributes is uniformly distributed among different groups of students and that somehow the system is not picking up eligibility signals for specific students. There is some emerging evidence that this is the case for Black students, as the identification gap between Black and White students closes when the G&T assessor is Black (I think that Grissom has a recent paper on this). If we reject the uniform distribution assumption, we end up assuming that the G&T eligibility traits are unevenly distributed among students, which I believe is one of the longest lasting beliefs of racist thought in education.

[Zababa]

I'll preface this by saying that I don't live in the USA, so some of these things are a bit alien to me. I'm sorry if the way I word things here is not the best, the goal here is not to attack or even label something as good or bad, but only understanding.

> This movement has moved away from labeling racist a policy that was implemented with racist intent (like segregated schools during Jim Crow) towards labeling racist a policy that has unequal outcomes based on race, regardless of policymakers' intent.

> If you start from that perspective, it naturally follows to label G&T education as segregated if we observe that one group being overrepresented in it and another group being underrepresented.

> If we reject the uniform distribution assumption, we end up assuming that the G&T eligibility traits are unevenly distributed among students, which I believe is one of the longest lasting beliefs of racist thought in education.

Would that reasoning hold when applied to spaces where black people tend to be more successful than whites? Sports being a big one here. Would you call sports racist? Would you argue that the equivalent of G&T eligibility traits for sports are evenly distributed among students, regardless of their race? I can see how racist people would push the idea that these traits are unevenly distributed, but when I put things in another context, all of that doesn't make any sense. We don't have a problem accepting as a society that some people are really ahead of the pack when it comes to sports, but when it comes to intelligence (whatever that means, you could probably separate it in academic and work success but most of these are not as clear cut as "who was the fastest to run 100 meters?") we have a hard time talking about it.

I guess my question behind this is: what is the aim of the current anti-racist movement? Is it equality in a "colorblind" way, as in the ultimate goal is that race is never a factor in the success and failures that people achieve? Or is it a movement trying to replace negative discrimination with positive discrimination? Is it a movement that's interested in scientific truth, whatever the outcomes may be? Or it is a movement that would hide inconvenient truths if this would help the "cause"?

[bitwize]

The thing about racism is, a system can be racist without being explicitly so. Even without Jim Crow laws and segregation, even assuming everyone is perfectly colorblind, the historical context where there were slavery and Jim Crow laws for hundreds of years means that whites wield considerably greater social capital than blacks, and that means they have a significant social advantage.

The amelioration for this is equity, or as you call it "positive discrimination". That means -- yes, holding whites back so that blacks have an opportunity to step forward. Blacks need greater advantages in order to achieve social parity with whites. It is also exceedingly shameful that one of the easiest ways to repair the damage caused to blacks' pool of social capital -- slave reparations -- was never considered by the U.S. government.

[Zababa]

Thank you for the clear and honest answer, that's what I was looking for.

> Even without Jim Crow laws and segregation, even assuming everyone is perfectly colorblind, the historical context where there were slavery and Jim Crow laws for hundreds of years means that whites wield considerably greater social capital than blacks, and that means they have a significant social advantage.

How do you reconcile this view with the fact that asians were also discriminated against, but now do better than whites? The way you described it, there is a perverse incentive for people at the bottom to stay at the bottom. Is that considered a problem? That perverse incentive might trap them even more at the bottom, is that being considered? Are those views, in a way, close to universal income? As in, the idea is that you raise the absolute bottom at which you can fall in society? Some kind of glass floor, as opposed to the glass ceiling?

Again, no judgement on those views or any others. I'm thankful for your straightforwardness.

[bitwize]

> How do you reconcile this view with the fact that asians were also discriminated against, but now do better than whites?

There are places where blacks do better than whites. In the Bronx, New York, the standard of living went up because of an influx of Afro-Caribbean immigrants who made more than the local white population. But minorities with an earned advantage are outside consideration of equity policy, which is focused on providing unearned advantage for certain minority groups to compensate for centuries of unearned advantage held by whites.

> The way you described it, there is a perverse incentive for people at the bottom to stay at the bottom. Is that considered a problem?

No. Iron rule of 2020s American politics: Statements that may give power to "the enemy" if they were true are always to be considered false, and even taboo to talk about. To give an example, consider the following statement: There exist cisgender biological men who are very willing to put on a dress and pose as transgender women, for the purpose of creeping on women in ladies' restrooms. Without even an accusative reference to a particular purported transgender woman, this statement MUST be considered false, and even transphobic hate speech, because if true it would make policymakers hesitate to pass laws mandating that transgender people be permitted to use the facilities that match their stated gender identity.

Here's another one: The risk of serious side effects from getting the COVID vaccine is far less than the risk of serious complications from catching COVID. Watch the right squirm at that one, and even shout you down for proposing it, because to them accepting it means implicitly legitimizing Biden's vaccine mandates.

"Perverse incentives for people to stay at the bottom" sounds an awful lot like Reagan's "welfare queens" rhetoric from the 1980s, which was widely considered racist and even a "dogwhistle" (a coded statement designed to appeal to far-right racist without raising alarm among decent people), so discussing such perverse incentives is pretty much off the table in American policy discussion.

[Zababa]

Thanks again for all the explanation and the civil conversation. I guess the only things that stays a mystery for me is why the focus on race, especially when you said that they focus on poor people inside that group?

[chucksmash]

Race was the deciding factor in doling out these injustices historically.

Skin color is probably not how we would choose to classify people if we were starting from scratch today, but if poor white people always got to use the front door and well-to-do black people had to use the side door, to say "we're fighting for the right of everybody both rich and poor to be allowed to walk in through the front door" is a true statement that misses the problem.

[legolas2412]

I've always felt that America always looks everything from the lens of race. Class problems specially are casted as a race problem. I personally think this is the leftover of 1960-70s, when class differences were a taboo because of the red scare, and race differences were being fought against for civil rights. The end result is that even in legitimat class differences like in access to education, it is only seen through the lens of race.

[ziml77]

I'm not sure that holding people back in an attempt to boost up others will amount to anything good. If you hold white people back to give black people a chances, the white people are going to hate black people that much more. It's certain to lead to worse issues with racism.

[Zababa]

I'm not sure that's a given. For example, does paying taxes that depend on how much you earn leads to more hate and more issues?

[legolas2412]

Different treatment based on something you can't control like your race is discrimination. And very few people like discrimination, specially against themselves

[mc32]

Among humans it's likely evenly distributed, but... the blame for unevenness should fall more on the parents who rear their kids to fail rather than on the system who fails to find those rough diamonds. The parents should suffer most of the culpability. They are the ones steering their kids to poor outcomes via parenting styles.

[endisneigh]

Parents do not exist in a vacuum. If we accept racism did (or does) exist, it presumably would affect the parents of said victims which would lead to the poor outcomes for the kids.

Said disparity would grow as the kids would be then denied said opportunity on the basis of their parents' failure. The kids' kids would then suffer the same, and so forth.

In other words, how would you "punish" (if that's even necessary) the parents without punishing the kids?

[mc32]

It's not about punishment but blame. Educate the parents. Have classes that guide them on child rearing. When parents neglect their children nutritionally or behaviorally, the state intervenes. Have programs all through K-12 that inculcate this idea. Work to turn that ship around.

Have them break out of a bleak culture. They are the PARENTS, it's their responsibility to rear their kids, not the state's responsibility. They made the decision to have kids.

[threatofrain]

Why would structural racism within NY's G&T programs include Asians as the largest plurality?

[nobody9999]

>Of note here, it's the assumption that the distribution of gifted and talented eligibility attributes is uniformly distributed among different groups of students and that somehow the system is not picking up eligibility signals for specific students. There is some emerging evidence that this is the case for Black students, as the identification gap between Black and White students closes when the G&T assessor is Black (I think that Grissom has a recent paper on this).

Absolutely. I don't have any reference right now, but numerous studies have shown that schools in poor, minority neighborhoods are significantly worse than other schools.

What can make a big difference is having higher levels of expectation for student performance and backing that up with tools to increase it. But it's pretty clear that many teachers and school administrators in those poorly performing schools don't have those high expectations, nor do they make the effort to encourage those who would benefit from G/T programs and get them into those programs.

When the people who are charged with educating you don't make the effort, then why should the students?

The solution is to make the bad schools better, not destroy the programs that could benefit those students just as much as those from other schools.

[ravel-bar-foo]

> There is some emerging evidence that this is the case for Black students, as the identification gap between Black and White students closes when the G&T assessor is Black

Could you provide details on this? My impression had been that for magnet high schools the only admissions evaluation was made on the basis of test scores, but you make it sound like admissions are more subjective, with an "assessor".

[pacbard]

This is the paper I had in mind: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/23328584156221...

> Students of color are underrepresented in gifted programs relative to White students, but the reasons for this underrepresentation are poorly understood. We investigate the predictors of gifted assignment using nationally representative, longitudinal data on elementary students. We document that even among students with high standardized test scores, Black students are less likely to be assigned to gifted services in both math and reading, a pattern that persists when controlling for other background factors, such as health and socioeconomic status, and characteristics of classrooms and schools. We then investigate the role of teacher discretion, leveraging research from political science suggesting that clients of government services from traditionally underrepresented groups benefit from diversity in the providers of those services, including teachers. Even after conditioning on test scores and other factors, Black students indeed are referred to gifted programs, particularly in reading, at significantly lower rates when taught by non-Black teachers, a concerning result given the relatively low incidence of assignment to own-race teachers among Black students.

[padastra]

There's some conclusions that I disagree with here assuming the same starting facts. Also, I think calling things "racist" or "segregated" usually ends critical thinking because they have the same emotional label as the initial definition (systematic differences in treatment due to skin color) even as the definitions have expanded (systematic differences in outcomes, independent of cause).

Let's presume that intelligence is heritable. Given the difference between humans and other species I do not see how this can be argued.

Let's also presume that intelligence varies between humans. If there is no variation across a population, then it cannot be selected for, unless you argue a stepwise change that's completely uniform, for which I don't see any other evolutionary proxy.

Let's NOT presume that intelligence varies between races.

My question to you is this:

Can the children of a group of humans selected for intelligence (e.g. completed enough education despite a cultural revolution, had enough finances, etc. -- Asians; escaped systematic genocide, etc. -- Jews) be, on average and not uniformly and with lots of overlap, smarter than the children of a group of humans not selected for intelligence (e.g. sold by other Africans into slavery, so presumably disadvantaged in the original African society, lower-educational-barrier illegal immigration as with many Central and South Americans)?

Note for the purposes of this question that reproduction within each group (Asian immigrants : Asian immigrants; Jews : Jews; African-Americans : African-Americans; Hispanics : Hispanics) is much larger than reproduction between groups, preventing admixing over time.

[isolli]

Similarly, I consider that the vaccine passport in NYC is racist (in effect if not in intent). By not recognizing infection-acquired immunity, it disproportionately forces Black people to take a vaccine that they do not need. This is because Black people have suffered higher rates of infection (partly due to the fact that they were more likely to work in person during the pandemic). Moreover, for historical reasons (see [0], [1]), Black people have lower rates of vaccine uptake, so the vaccine passport mechanically excludes a higher proportion of them from public spaces.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_Syphilis_Study [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_health_in_the_United_...