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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   29010 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 7, 2023

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Yeah, its similar to Harvard's affirmative action. They need black people so they juice the numbers with people that have little connection to African-American culture.

Actual lived experience as an African American matters very little. Having the right DNA and visual appearance is what is important to the left, at least according to revealed preference.

That’s the issue though. American schools shouldn’t be worse than Nigeria or Jamaica etc. We spend a ton of money on them.

They're not worse than Nigeria. They're worse than the elite of Nigeria.

In a lot of these places people don't go to public school because "public" is for people with no choice. Private schools on the other hand don't have to try to educate everyone.

One of my classmates went to Yale. She was very smart and studious but I have to wonder what would have happened had she been stuck in some stereotypically hellish inner city school with the worst performing students.

But, honestly, a lot of it is just pre-school social family resources. People from her class come in with an expectation of studiousness (which parents reinforce with private tutoring and other means). Hard to hold it against American schools that in a universal system many people...don't.

(That said, it is insane to me that teachers have to expect violence. You'd think that would be a bare minimum thing).

Nigeria only has a population 4.3X our black community. Maybe throw in the Caribbean and some other countries and you get to 10x. That just doesn’t seem big enough to filter at the rate we are seeing especially when a large pop of that population probably doesn’t have parental wealth to even enter the filter (for schooling/travel expenses).

That just doesn’t seem big enough to filter at the rate we are seeing

It isn't?

I'm honestly asking here: there's very few Ivy League spots. Even if every person in Harvard's 2026 class counted as "black" it hardly seems a huge rate.

Especially if Murray in Facing Reality is right: Harvard can skim off the top of the most academically inclined blacks. Everyone else then does their best with what they have. Even if that means "talented locals" rather than "peak of Nigerian elite".

Versus ADOS for taking a disproportionate share of the spots. Not for overall numbers.

I don't mean to be thick. I'm just not grasping the argument.

Jews, for example, can be disproportionately represented despite making up a small segment of the racial superclass (which is not as poor or badly off). Why doesn't the same logic apply?

I’m sort of going on gut instinct. But I guess I’m assuming.

  1. American blacks on net have higher hbd than African Blacks since we go with the 1 drop makes you black rule here.
  2. Approximately 50 million American blacks. All with access to our education system, public libraries, internet connectivity, etc.
  3. 40 million or so West Indian blacks and 1 billion or so in African (though different age pyramids). A significant portion of which may have ability but no access to libraries or education etc to even enter the American filter.
  4. My instincts tell me atleast around half but maybe more of African elites in the Ivy League or in politics are from category (3) versus category (2).

Obama/Kamela not being American ADOS but Scott, Brown, Thomas are. It just seems those outside of the American environment are more prevalent that I would expect.

Huh. I actually share most of those assumptions (my full opinion on HBD is...up in the air). It's more that I just don't share the sense of statistical implausibility. I was just wondering if I just wasn't getting the math.

I guess, ironically, HBDers who gleefully cite things about how overrepresented Jews or whoever are in this or that place has simply deadened my reaction to the idea that some segments of the populace will just do way too well (based on what a layman thinks is "fair"). If you tell me a highly restricted group of the best off people from a billion-strong pool do well enough to seize a couple of thousand spots a year from one of the worst performing ethnic groups in the US...it's hardly the biggest overepresentation they've claimed.

To me, when you combine the intuitions that:

  1. Black migrants probably have a lower crime rate
  2. Black migrants probably from better educated families.
  3. Black migrants are probably likely to be in two parent families.
  4. If HBDers like Charles Murray are right then there should be a huge shortage of the top-top ADOS students. Of course supplementation would be necessary if you didn't want to drop standards (more).

I find it harder to be shocked.

I would find it more unintuitive if it was across the entire college system.

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