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Culture War Roundup for the week of August 17, 2026

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Companies began filtering for degrees because degrees filtered for more than just raw IQ, even if they were degrees in psychology or art history. IQ tests remain legal in hiring unless they can be shown to be used for the purpose of disparate impact(which on the case of Griggs was blatantly true). The private sector uses the Wunderlic test all the time. Most decent noncollege jobs, and not a few college jobs, require aptitude tests that are heavily G-loaded. Degrees (used to)show the ability to work in a white collar environment productively and without rocking the boat, and that is why they became required for white collar employment.

Companies that really want to discriminate have a very limited number of loopholes, but it’s technically doable- there’s a handful of companies which require new hires to join a particular private club, for instance(the largest of these is the knights of Columbus insurance corp, which is Fortune 500- obviously this means they hire only male practicing Catholics with conservativish political views- but these jobs are posted publicly to job boards in view of the public). And hooters declares all of its front of house staff actresses to get away with the crazy high levels of discrimination.