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it feels weird because this the whole point of 'disparate impact' decisions from the courts in the past. apparently, some groups were coming up with proxies to derive their desired racial preferences instead of using explicit discrimination but now Harvard and other universities are doing exactly that and its magically ok. its even more messed up because i'm pretty sure i've seen them make statements into the public record saying this was exactly what they were planning to do.
No, this isn't the case. The court in Griggs explicitly accepted that Duke Power was NOT using proxies to derive their desired racial preference. That would have been illegal without accepting "disparate impact" as being a violation in itself.
"If the court accepts that, than the court is a ass — a idiot."¹
The Wonderlic test was first written in 1939; Duke Power Co. only adopted it as a requirement on the same day they could no longer legally discriminate directly on the basis of race.
The case should have fallen under the doctrine of noli meiere in cruro et dicere pluviam.
¹Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist.
...So on the day the law said they could no longer screen by race, they stopped screening by race and started screening by IQ test. And this proves to you that they were still screening by race, because they... complied with the law to stop discriminating by race?
What screening method should they have switched to, in your view?
The fact that they explicitly discriminated by race as long as they could legally do so indicates mens rea; that they sought to exclude Black Americans for being Black Americans.
The same method they used to screen white people prior to the Civil Rights Act.
@The_Nybbler:
That would have been somewhere in the vicinity of a plausible conclusion if, sometime between 1939 and 1964, Duke Power Co. had started requiring an IQ test for all applicants and stopped considering their race. The fact that they made the change not when the Wonderlic test was introduced, not when overt racial discrimination was becoming frowned upon, not when the Civil Rights Act passed Congress, but at the very last moment they thought they could get away with, points toward the grown-up equivalent of hovering one's finger 5 mm from someone's face while saying "I'm not touching you! I'm not touching you!".
"They explicitly discriminated by race as long as they could legally" applies to anything they did after the ruling as well.
So any other method of screening that someone might want to try out is outlawed?
From 1939 (when the Wonderlic test was introduced) to 1964 (Civil Rights Act), they had the choice of (1.) whether or not to consider race and (2.) whether or not to consider (measured) intelligence. During that period, they chose to open doors for white people, no test required, but close them to black people, no matter how intelligent. This is evidence establishing motive; that their goal was to keep black people at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder.
Prior to the Civil Rights Act, Duke Power Co. did not use any screening method if the applicant was white; if they had had such a testing requirement prior to 1964, that would have been evidence that they were being honest about their motivations, and would have been justified in using a different instrument (unless they switched from a test that a random black person was half as likely to pass to one he was a hundredth as likely to pass). The fact that they felt no need to require any kind of test until they had to consider black people indicates that having any method of screening was a transparent attempt to weasel out of extending to Black Americans the same opportunities which had previously been reserved to the more melanin-lacking segments of the population.
This makes no sense. When they were told to stop discriminating, they changed their screening method into one that doesn't consider race at all, why should I assume that actually their motivation was to discriminate, just because the criteria are different than what they used to apply to white people?
So if I look them up now and it turns out they have some degree requirements, it must mean the goal of introducing them must have been racism, correct?
That does not follow at all. If your usual pool of applicants overwhelmingly have an aptitude level that passes your minimal threshold, you might choose to forgo screening because it's just adding cost. If the government tells you that you must consider a broader pool, where some of the applicants do have the necessary aptitude and some do not, and you then decide to add screening, that does not mean the screening is meant to filter out the melanin content.
If you want to prove that their aim was to filter out people because of their race, you have to prove that the test itself doesn't measure aptitude, or that that it's distribution is the same between the smaller and broader applicant pools.
This is tangential, but your points on infering motives from qualification criteria brought to mind a video on a completely different context you might enjoy as something to listen to on the way to work / in a workout.
Perun, an Australian defense-economist youtuber, recently made a video of how you could use reasonable-sounding arguments to justify objectively terrible decisions. In his context, it was a 'if you were a spy for an enemy country, how would you sabotage defense procurement for a country wanting to build up forces for a possible invasion against your true-loyalty country,' the principles behind it are more broadly applicable.
It comes to mind as a parallel because the very direct contrast between stated and real motivations, and one where you have to persuade people to accept things against their interests, while hiding your own. It includes ways to shape / manipulate qualification and testing systems to build a more credible case.
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