At 01:54 AM 7/28/97 -0700, rakesh bhandari wrote: >Now, Connerly does not ask, is that suburban residence really an advantage >for black middle class kids? Having attended a predominantly white middle >class high school which was attended by 4 African-Americans out of 1500 >hundred students, I find it amazing that Connerly simply refuses to >consider the graver impacts on these children of racism and the >consequences of teacher neglect, self-doubt and demoralization from being >in "better" communities. The racist treatment of and rumours spread about >these "poor" kids in our high school were so barbaric as to still make me >sick. Indeed my high school principal just recently had to apologize for >referring to the Bay Bridge as connecting Fairyland (SF) with Jungleland >(Oakland). > > Also what such results do indicate is that SATs do not test for actual >intellectual attainment. That is, perhaps because certain children simply >refuse to demonstrate actual intellectual attainment in a competitive >setting out of a radical identification with an oppressed group (see >William Whyte's classic studies of subcultural solidarity as summarized by >John Madge The Origins of Scientific Sociology) and because they may indeed >be anxious about stereotypes and thus protect themselves through >underpreparation (and the SAT must be prepared for), their test scores >simply don't reflect their *substantive* intellectual accomplishments, much >less capabilities. > > Such results could as easily serve to dereify low test scores and prove >the terrible consequences of racism as they are used to prove black >inferiority (most insidously by Murray and D'Souza). Perhaps then what >needs to be banned is not affirmative action but the tyranny of >standardized testing as a determination or diagnosis of superior and >inferior intellectual accomplishment (what do people think of Elaine Mensh >and Harry Mensh The IQ Mythology: Class, Race, Gender and Inequality?) Being a product of a foreign school system that actually emphasized problem solving skills, I was apalled by the fact that a graduate admission test in the US of A contains basically the 6th grade math problems. But then I discovered that it is not the quality of thinking but timing that counts -- there is no way anyone can pass that test if one tries to "solve" those problems, there is simply not enough time for that. The trick is to learn a few tricks about selecting the right answers. So I wisened up, bought a Princeton Review book (still not the same as paying for the whole course) and did well on the GRE. For a long time I wondered why would a college (or grad school) admission examination contain tasks that no student is ever asked to preform in the academic settings. Then I wisened up again and realised that the American school system is not about knowledge, learning and education, at least not primarily so. It is about socialization into a set of values and attitudes required to succeed in a corporate environement. And the SAT/GRE test precisely for that -- on those tests, you are actually punished from trying to solve problems on your own, but rewarded from picking up the right solution from the four or so options handed down by the authority. That is what Princeton Review course prepares you to do, if your parents can cough up enough dough to pay for it. How does that relate to the issue of race? There has been a whole debate on the role of culture and cultural identity in the position of ethnic minorities in the American society. While some of those "culture of poverty" arguments were clearly racist and sexist (e.g. that African American families, being often female headed, fail to instill the right set of values) they pointed into the right direction -- that the American institutions and middle class society has very low tolerance for diversity; to succeed, you must fit it. Specifically, any ethnic group whose culture espouses collectivism over individualism, cooperation over competition, expressing emotions over "maintaining a face" , skepticism and distruct over deference toward mainstream social instituions -- is automaticaly labeled as inferior in the American society. Examples include not only African Americans, but Latinos, Italians, Eastern Europeans, or Jews -- whose cultures share those traits. In that sense, the whole debate over AA in the UC system is sending the right message: cultural diversity is not tolerated in mainstream Amerikkka; if any group of people cannot adopt the Anglo-acceptable set of social attitudes, physical appearance, and norm of behavior, they will not succesd in this society, now matter how much education they get and what technical skills they acquire. Admitting them to prestigious universities is not only a waste of resources, but also unethical, beacuse it raises false hopes. In the same vein, expelling non-Aryans from German universities was "justified" by the fact that there was no place for the "life unfit for life" in the Nazi society. Gauleiter Wilson is simply honest about that. This is ethnic cleansing Amerikkkan-style: keeping the "tiermenschen" in their "proper" place yet avoiding brutal spectacles a la Nazi Germany or Republika Srpska. wojtek sokolowski institute for policy studies johns hopkins university baltimore, md 21218 [EMAIL PROTECTED] voice: (410) 516-4056 fax: (410) 516-8233 POLITICS IS THE SHADOW CAST ON SOCIETY BY BIG BUSINESS. AND AS LONG AS THIS IS SO, THE ATTENUATI0N OF THE SHADOW WILL NOT CHANGE THE SUBSTANCE. - John Dewey
