[ironlake]

> settled on racist teachers

If the population of gifted kids is statistically over-represented by white kids, then one of these must be true:

• The test doesn't measure giftedness, but rather level of education. So we would expect kids from worse schools to perform worse. This is institutional racism. The opportunity is not equal. • Gifted kids from minority communities don't have equal access to the test or the classes. This is institutional racism. The opportunity is not equal. • White kids are smarter. They all took the same test, white kids came out on top. This is a racist belief with a millennia of discredited science to back it up.

No racist teacher required.

[surgical_fire]

> They all took the same test, white kids came out on top. This is a racist belief

I am not even white, but something there in your rationale does not make sense. If they all took the same test and white kids were on top, how is this a belief?

Is there a word missing somewhere? Is the implication that the test was rigged? It is an honest question, I couldn't follow the rationale there.

[chimpanzee]

you missed this relevant (albeit, unspecific) fragment when you extracted the quote:

> with a millennia of discredited science to back it up

[scarmig]

The third prong is a bit badly posed: descriptively, white kids test better than black kids, and each of the three prongs offers an explanation. The third prong points to a discredited belief of genetic inferiority; by positioning the three prongs as exhaustive, the author structures the argument such that if you don't accept either of the first two prongs, then you must be a racist.

[chimpanzee]

Perhaps. I didn’t really read that much into GGP’s comment. I just wanted to point out that the comment does (minimally) rebut scientific racism. And by selectively omitting that rebuttal in the quote, GP makes it appear as if the denial of scientific racism is just a claim of faith.

[surgical_fire]

But you mentioned that a test was taken. Is the test somehow unscientific? Is it rigged to favor white kids? Are you speaking of a hypothetical test that doesn't exist and was never applied?

If a test was actually taken, and it is not rigged, how can it not be a sort of scientific evidence?

[chimpanzee]

I did not.

[scarmig]

> This is institutional racism. The opportunity is not equal.

The test is not a form of racism, institutional or otherwise. It's doubling as a proxy measure for the socioeconomic disadvantage the students have experienced up to that point.

You can't get rid of socioeconomic disadvantage by refusing to measure it, no more than you can cure COVID by refusing to test for it.

[danans]

> It's doubling as a proxy measure for the socioeconomic disadvantage the students have experienced up to that point.

A socioeconomic disadvantage which in the case of California - and almost certainly elsewhere - is caused in significant part by historical racist policies (i.e. redlining).

[scarmig]

Getting rid of a test that measures effects from redlining does nothing to eliminate the effects of redlining.

[danans]

Agreed, but interpreting the results of tests without considering the effect that policies like redlining have on such results furthers the lie that the the variation in test results between groups represents innate differences in abilities of those groups instead of the effects of systemic and multigenerational discrimination.

[ivalm]

These are not the only three alternatives.

And looking at actual outcomes in the US it’s easy to see that the truth is different. It’s not even white kids that come up on top, it’s mostly Asian kids (and before that Ashkinazi kids). It’s not because they have some institutional privilege. It’s because culture matters and valuing smarts and education is important not just for test taking but also for benefiting the society long term.