Sure, but does this give any insight? Examining one factor out of the thousands that could potentially affect this does not strike me as in any way useful, especially since it happens to be a factor that's certain to generate lots of emotion and very little rational discussion.
For example, it strikes me as unlikely that these factors are actually caused by race directly. I don't buy into the PC idea that everybody is exactly, precisely the same, but the differences simply aren't all that large.
What seems much more likely is that it's related to poverty. Poverty and race are highly correlated in the US for various historical reasons, and I'd wager that the charts would show just as much, if not more, link between poverty and scores as between race and scores.
But we can't say for certain without a proper analysis of all potential confounding factors. Picking a single one and pretending it's automatically important is the wrong way to do it.
> it strikes me as unlikely that these factors are actually caused by race directly ... but the differences simply aren't all that large.
These are things you want to believe, but they are not true. The reality is that race plays a huge role in intelligence. It's totally unfair, but it is what it is. Ignoring it, and believing otherwise does not make it go away, or make it better. It makes it worse.
> Poverty and race are highly correlated in the US for various historical reasons
Poverty is also highly correlated with intelligence. More correlated than it is to race.
> link between poverty and scores as between race and scores.
Of course, because poverty is a proxy to intelligence.
> Picking a single one and pretending it's automatically important is the wrong way to do it.
Pretending that the main one is automatically not-important because it's unfair, and/or huts your world view, is also the wrong way to do it.
I've never seen this claim convincingly supported in a way that partials out the effect of socioeconomic status, parental involvement, and geography. It's an easy claim to support if you just look at straight averages.
I'm sure there is information I'm not familiar with, but I'm unimpressed with the "citations" that have followed this claim in other conversations.
In the United States, low income whites perform better than high income blacks on the SAT - it's not a fact I suggest you go around citing at parties[1]
" Blacks from families with incomes of more than $100,000 had a mean SAT score that was 85 points below the mean score for whites from all income levels, 139 points below the mean score of whites from families at the same income level, and 10 points below the average score of white students from families whose income was less than $10,000."
I should feel free to check my privilege, but this actually seems like an even-handed discussion. Scroll down to "Other Explanations for the Racial Scoring Gap on the SAT."
""" Clearly, one of the main factors in explaining the SAT racial gap is that black students almost across the board are not being adequately schooled to perform well on the SAT and similar tests. Public schools in many neighborhoods with large black populations are underfunded, inadequately staffed, and ill equipped to provide the same quality of secondary education that is offered in predominantly white suburban school districts. """
""" In many cases black schoolchildren are taught by white teachers who have low opinions of the abilities of black kids from the moment they enter the classroom. These teachers immediately write off black students as academic inferiors and do not challenge them sufficiently to achieve the skills necessary to perform well on standardized tests. """
The thing is, we're nerds. We ought to think more critically than "black people are disproportionately poor and perform less well academically, oh well, that's that." Pre-chewed explanations like that ought to be anathema, especially when they're deployed in the service of a cultural agenda.
But there's a disturbing tendency to ignore the US' complex and problematic history with racism. It's lazy. It's a cop-out.
There's a disturbing issue not to think seriously about the causes of educational inequalities at all, at least not to the point where people weigh more than one hypothesis.
I've found the writings of a high school teacher under the name "education realist" to be thought-provoking. That's where I got this link from. He may be a Voldemort[1], but he's an honest one.
Yes, I've noticed that as well. Yet no matter how much you try to convince them that this stuff is complicated and many different factors are at work, some people just keep coming back to race as if it was the only thing that matters.
White in lowest income bracket are lower than black in top income bracket.
Unfortunately, this data (from 2003) seems to show a persistent handicap in all but the highest income brackets for black SAT test takers. I'm sure there are a million studies and a million opinions, but my personal view is that it's likely due to historic inequalities still manifesting in current generations, as opposed to anything else.
Many of my friends from the Russian immigrant community came from a very different economic background than I did. For me, my grandparents would never have understood if I did not pursue graduate work in some form. From my friend's parents point of view, college was optional. I'm willing to bet that from ethnic make up, all of us are virtually indistinguishable and may even be related on some level. Different families, different attitudes to education, different SAT scores...
The racial component is not a property of genetics except insofar as one's race is evident to a white onlooker. So your implied reasoning is exactly backwards. It's 100 years of slavery followed by 100 years of oppression, conditions imposed on a set of people because of skin pigment.
This is the hand the US citizenry has been dealt. Or rather I should say this is the hand the US has dealt itself. If we as a country are behind because we've left a non-trivial subset of our own citizens behind, that's as much an indictment as anything else.
Namely that we need a lot more effort put toward educational success for black children. The unemployment rate among young black males is particularly astronomical, and it correlates directly to failures in education and a skyrocketing in poverty rates. There has been a total failure across all aspects for the black community: education, employment, crime, family formation, etc.
You've got a huge swath of political parasites that abuse the black community, counting on their votes, while having done absolutely nothing to help improve the worsening rate of black poverty.
You've got shyster scumbags like Jessie Jackson and Al Sharpton, that also act as parasites on the backs of black people. Always ready to prey on cheap opportunism, while under their supposed community leadership results have gotten dramatically worse.
It all has to change. Separating out the data, reveals where the real problems are, and having a dialogue about it is the first step. So far, very few want to talk about it.
Another glaring problem, is that America has lost its blue collar jobs. That was a core channel for upward mobility from poor > middle class, and a required staple to hold onto a large middle class. The vast erosion of quality manufacturing jobs over the last 40 years has particularly slammed people that were mostly poor to begin with - their ability to move up has been stopped (and all that destroys with it).
For example, it strikes me as unlikely that these factors are actually caused by race directly. I don't buy into the PC idea that everybody is exactly, precisely the same, but the differences simply aren't all that large.
What seems much more likely is that it's related to poverty. Poverty and race are highly correlated in the US for various historical reasons, and I'd wager that the charts would show just as much, if not more, link between poverty and scores as between race and scores.
But we can't say for certain without a proper analysis of all potential confounding factors. Picking a single one and pretending it's automatically important is the wrong way to do it.