‘Culture wars’ are fought by tiny minority – UK study

It depends on the policy. Is the height of a basketball hoop a policy that is unintentionally discriminating against me because I can't jump that high? Is the Nobel Prize racist because Jews are massively overrepresented among winners?

The debate here is over whether any policy that results in racial disparity is racist. To me, that argument is obviously wrong.

> A good example is in the (historical) [entrance exams for the UK's Grammar School systems which are sat at age 11[(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eleven-plus#Controversy); while the grammar-school system was ostensibly universal and open to all, the entrance exams with questions predicated on a familiarity with middle-class culture naturally disadvantaged working-class students.

To you, tests like the one you mention are racist (or classist) because you assume that certain races or classes will be more likely to know certain things and others less likely. But, ironically, to me, your assumption is racist (and classist) because we have different definitions of racism.

Finally, I think there's a serious flaw in your thinking. If "studies show" that rich kids test better in math, does that mean math tests are classist? Is it even possible to create a test so that every group you consider (ethnic or socio-economic) will achieve the same average score? And which groups shall we consider? Isn't it common knowledge these days that there is no canonical way to divvy people up into "races"? Why is it that, for the purpose of college admission, "Asian" is an ethnicity but "Jew" isn't? Furthermore, imagine I am born to rich parents and my parents hire a math tutor from the age of 3 until I graduate high school. By the time I take the SAT, I will probably be much better at math than the average high school student. Is there anything wrong with that? Why is it correct for tests to attempt to discern innate ability rather than current ability?

The problem arises when the only opportunity is to replace measurable discrimination with non-measurable discrimination. For example, SAT results are easy to measure, and because of this we take correlations with X, Y, and Z, and find that SAT slightly discriminates against people in subpopulation Z.

So we replace the SAT with a holistic interview-and-quiz format that is only used at our institution. The data is kept internal (for student privacy) and there aren't enough datapoints to derive meaningful correlations with X, Y, or Z.

Is there less discrimination? We don't know! What you accomplish is to replace a standard within which you can detect discrimination with one where you can't.

So yes, using metrics that have small but measurable inequities may be preferable to using metrics where inequities cannot be measured. In the metrizable case the "disadvantage" is at least bounded.

Now, in the alternative case where you actually have options, i.e. you have one measure with some inequities and another measure that you know has fewer inequities, then of course it would be racist to choose the first measure over the second. But this is not an analogous situation to university entrance exams at all.

Alice wants to read the news, Bob wants to write it. Mallet wants to foster discussion of an idea of dubious worthiness to further nefarious but unstated aims.

Alice is attracted to lurid, weird and scary, even though she mostly knows better, because we all are.

Bob is attracted to easy stories, because it is hard to run a paper today.

Mallet doesn't care too much about how his poison gets out there, only that it does.

Among other things, this suggests that any one thing, like not embedding Twitter quotes, is unlikely to make much difference - Mallet will shift to something else.

The issue of gay marriage in the US was fought mostly by progressive and social conservative activists, but the people they were trying to convince were those in the middle. The reason the progressives won is that the middle became increasingly convinced that banning gay marriage was immoral for the government to do.