Is it not strange how in an article arguing from otherwise a very egalitarian, leftist viewpoint, when it discusses how students perform given more or less difficult classes, it somehow thinks the most relevant statistic is the race of the students? (Approximately, even, because American race designation is kinda weird anyway.)
Sure, socio-economic circumstances are correlated with race. (Unfortunately still in this day and age.) Not perfectly, but there is a correlation, so absent other data, it can be used as a proxy for the socio-economic circumstances in which the student grows up. But there are multiple problems with this:
1. If we are to lessen discrimination, the very first thing we should do is stop discriminating. Is this considered normal in the USA? Stop tracking race! And even if you do track it (or an approximation of it) to double-check you're not inadvertently disadvantaging certain minority groups, certainly (1.) there are better measures to designate minority groups, and (2.) one can do this without telling all the world about it and giving society even more fuel for discrimination. If people see other people treat people equally, and see that as normal, they will tend to do the same. We should lead by example, not start a discussion on equality with the worst kind of discrimination.
2. Surely there are better indicators for socio-economic circumstances than race? What about the salary of their parents? This is a typical measure in The Netherlands (where I live). Or even where they live. And if you say that we cannot track those things because that would be an infringement on privacy: how on Earth is tracking parents' salary an infringement on privacy but not tracking race?
Like, I agree that teaching less math is bollocks. But that's not the thing that surprises me most when reading OP.
The USA is currently obsessed with race, and this influences all discussions.
I agree that this topic could be more accurately and inclusively framed as how to improve outcomes for low income students, or children with absentee/incarcerated parents, or children of addicts.
Unfortunately, some people care much more about racial outcomes than they do about any of those I mentioned.
The point of the racial framing IS to polarize, divide, and mobilize a political base, not to solve an underlying problem.
Talking about helping poor children doesn't get people as riled up, and has the risk of actually leading to agreement and a solution.
American politics has no hindsight and is a zero sum game. If you fix a problem in American politics, you don't get credit for it later. You only get credit for promising to fix problems in the future.
If parties agree and implement a solution, neither party comes out ahead, and even worse, you just made the opposition look more reasonable. It is a prisoners dilemma where cooperation is punished
>Talking about helping poor children doesn't get people as riled up, and has the risk of actually leading to agreement and a solution.
Funny, but let's not underestimate how much class warfare there is in modern politics. Even if they do a great job using identity politics to lampshade it.
I think Occam's razor suggests the reasons of race are much simpler: race is considered a public statistic, one not trying to be hidden behind welfare, stocks, shell companies, tips, etc. Financial status is much more complex and varies based on COL. Easier statistic, easier to focus on.
To give a bit of context to all the sibling comments:
We are talking about a history where:
a) A decision to not occupy a defeated country was made because they were impure/non-white (Mexico)...
[I don't think I have encountered a similar historical example. I will spend some time looking/reviewing just in case I am forgetting some similar situation.]
b) Called Germans and Finnish immigrants "non-white":
Italians and Greeks faced the same treatment.
Everything and everyone had to be assigned at some class/color. The wikipedia article goes even more in depth about the issue that also posed for Asians in the U.S. which is a whole lot different rabbit hole, and which I am still confused about.
c) Gun control and argumentation started because of racism. NRA actually did support gun control at one point: when the Black Panthers tried to exercise their right to bear arms. And when Reagan introduced the Mulford Act in response, evidence shows it was enforced based on race.
There is the claim that the 2nd amendment was enacted to ensure slaves wouldn't revolt. Not sure yet how much weight one should place to that claim; but the world history supports such considerations. [Review cf. Spartans for instance or the Japanese class system.]
Do you have a source regarding the theory that the race was the primary factor in deciding the territory following the Mexican American war? I haven't encountered this example before. I'm obviously skeptical but willing to read more.
As a counterpoint, the last several centuries are full of examples of countries establishing territories or colonies in foreign lands with different ethnicities. In those cases, the local population was generally not given much power for self governance, if at all.
The US has a pretty long history of returning militarily conquered territory back to locals for self governance. These countries usually remain within the US sphere of influence of course, and often retain a US military presence, but we dont call it occupation or the territories colonies. Instead we call them allies (e.g. Germany, Japan, the Philippines, S Korea, ect).
>The USA is currently obsessed with race, and this influences all discussions.
The United States has always been obsessed with race. The south had completely different schools based on a child's skin color. What makes you think this is new?
I totally agree that racial issues have always been a topic in American politics. from the colonial period, to secession from Brittan, to the failed secession of the south, to the civil rights movements, to now.
That said, the relative importance of the issue and satisfaction obviously shifts over time. Gallop polling shows that that by many metrics, perceptions of racial Injustice are at a multi-decade high. It is interesting that far fewer people feel that black people are treated fairly than in the late 90's. It would be interesting to see data going back even further.
So the actual issue that we've started talking about how our obsession with race effects the people on the losing end of that deal.
>. It is interesting that far fewer people feel that black people are treated fairly than in the late 90's. It would be interesting to see data going back even further.
It seems intuitive to me. If you have a problem and then activists put in a ton of time to make that problem more visible, its going to change people's perceptions of social issues. For example, if you asked people in 1990 and 2020 if the Catholic church adequately protects children from sexual predators, you're probably gonna get a pretty drastic difference in responses.
Keep in mind my point was that the political emphasis on race is at a high point.
I agree that if activist put a lot of emphasis on this and make it more visible that this feeling will be stronger. That doesn't negate the point above, it supports it.
Sure, people can argue over how productive the additional attention is for actually resolving issues, but that's not what I'm trying to do. I merely staying that attention is very high right now
>Keep in mind my point was that the political emphasis on race is at a high point.
A high point compared to what? The 90s? You have some recency bias in your understanding of this topic.
> agree that if activist put a lot of emphasis on this and make it more visible that this feeling will be stronger. That doesn't negate the point above, it supports it.
You didn't make a point, you said something was 'interesting' which I commented on because its really not, it just makes sense.
>Sure, people can argue over how productive the additional attention is for actually resolving issues, but that's not what I'm trying to do. I merely staying that attention is very high right now
I think you're mostly trying to backtrack a hot take
It goes back much further than that, literally to the founding of the country. Our constitution has provisions specifically protecting the slave trade. The way we elect our president was designed specifically to give slave owners more power. Racism is an integral part of US history and always has been. You literally cannot make sense of US history without it.
Slavery goes back a lot further than the founding of the US, and is important context for broad swaths of History.
Regarding the election of the president, I assume you're talking about the 3/5 compromise. I think this had the opposite impact of what you're claiming.
It gave white male voters in the south less power. Representation based on total human population would have given them more.
If you were voting white male in the North, your representation was based on the total population of your state, including those that cant vote, i.e. women and children.
In the south, your total population for the purposes of proportional representation was reduced lower than the total human population of your state
Not so. The 3/5 rule and the Electoral College gave slaveholders drastically more power than they should have had.
If the president was elected strictly based on votes cast, the North would have dominated every election.
Not only did the South have completely disenfranchised slaves who nevertheless added to their masters electoral votes, but they also had much more limited franchise even for white males.
The constitution was set up to let the South prevent the vast majority of their people from voting without giving up much political power as a result.
Neither of this North nor the South supported proportional representation based on both votes cast. Your assertion that the 3/5 compromise the South more electoral power begs the question in comparison to what alternative. If you're hypothetical is that became more power than the number of Voters, then sure. But no one at the time was advocating for proportional representation based on the number of men in the state.
Nobody supported the vast majority of people voting. The Electoral College was never based on voter numbers.
It's cultural though, we (the people in the US) are obsessed with race. Literally everything you do and talk about is colored by it, and it's pretty much impossible to escape.
The more heterogeneous the society becomes the more obsessed we become with the differences between us.
You're seeing it too in the UK and will be seeing a LOT more of it as your demographics shift to be like ours.
you're missing the fact that here in the US race is an extremely large factor in how students succeed, partly from correlation with socioeconomic and cultural factors, but also because it determines what sort of treatment kids get in school, from the teachers and from the administration.
anecdotally, I have a friend who, when she was looking for a school for her kid, had to drill down into the data for which schools had significantly worse results for black students, because that spoke to systemic factors in the school environment, and so even if the school looked good in its overall statistics she knew her kid would not likely get a good education there.
This is actually a good point; I had not considered that the equality that people are trying to achieve here is equality between races. And if that's what you're interested in, surely that's what you need to track.
I'm sorry for your friend; that situation sounds like a very odd mix of empowering (having the data — albeit after drilling) and deeply discriminatory and marginalising.
Over here we do actually have at least some of the race inequality problems, but we're putting much less emphasis on them. The approach has advantages but clearly also disadvantages. Thanks for the thought-food.
The most relevant statistic to Noah is the race of the students because the most relevant statistic to the implementors of the new math framework was the race of the students; when you see the word 'equity' being brought up in American politics, it always, always, always means addressing an observed disparity between black and white populations. Find any article about the math framework written by its proponents and you will see that race takes up the entire page. You are right that it is stupid; Noah is not saying 'I think this is important myself', he is saying 'the framework does the exact opposite of what its proponents want, down to the last detail'.
Usually in data science, you "mine" for features or combination of features. That is you collect as much as possible, then actual find the critical features e.g. to construct a random forest/decision tree/ ...
Here they are going as you point out the other way.
And the more I study U.S. history (and politics) the more racist I find it.
Conversely, many European countries have a history that includes slavery and an arguably better track record of successful abolition and reconciliation. Maybe there's something the US can learn.
European countries' history with slavery largely consists of having it in far off colonies and then cutting those colonies loose. The US doesn't have the luxury of making a clean break.
Is it not strange how in an article arguing from otherwise a very egalitarian, leftist viewpoint, when it discusses how students perform given more or less difficult classes, it somehow thinks the most relevant statistic is the race of the students? (Approximately, even, because American race designation is kinda weird anyway.)
Sure, socio-economic circumstances are correlated with race. (Unfortunately still in this day and age.) Not perfectly, but there is a correlation, so absent other data, it can be used as a proxy for the socio-economic circumstances in which the student grows up. But there are multiple problems with this:
1. If we are to lessen discrimination, the very first thing we should do is stop discriminating. Is this considered normal in the USA? Stop tracking race! And even if you do track it (or an approximation of it) to double-check you're not inadvertently disadvantaging certain minority groups, certainly (1.) there are better measures to designate minority groups, and (2.) one can do this without telling all the world about it and giving society even more fuel for discrimination. If people see other people treat people equally, and see that as normal, they will tend to do the same. We should lead by example, not start a discussion on equality with the worst kind of discrimination.
2. Surely there are better indicators for socio-economic circumstances than race? What about the salary of their parents? This is a typical measure in The Netherlands (where I live). Or even where they live. And if you say that we cannot track those things because that would be an infringement on privacy: how on Earth is tracking parents' salary an infringement on privacy but not tracking race?
Like, I agree that teaching less math is bollocks. But that's not the thing that surprises me most when reading OP.