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This test feels like it is cartoonish. To the point where it was either the KKK who were assigned to boost AA and decided let’s make black people say they suck at science and then go collect our bonus for boosting AA or some senior dude just got pissed he had guys not on merit and created a test so dumb it wins a lawsuit easily. Basically got pissed at the politicians.
There has to be less obvious ways to cheat on an exam than this.
Those are not actually the only two options.
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"Aspects & Assumptions of Whiteness & White Culture in the United States" put out by the National Museum of African American History. An info graphic sandwiched between the the following two paragraphs:
Some hallmarks of Whiteness & White Culture:
*Self-Reliance
*Emphasis on the Scientific Method
*Objective linear thinking
*Adherence to rigid time schedules
*Plan for future
*Delayed gratification
*Decision-Making
Note: These ideas have been around since at least 1990. [PDF]
I think it was on /r/stupidpol where someone said "Since I don't get to decide which side of the race war I'm on, I'm glad I'm on the side the plans for the future."
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Yes, but why bother when you know you can cheat obviously and the institutions will have your back?
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It only looks this way because you've rejected blank-slatism. If, instead, you believe that all groups and maybe even all individuals are born with the same cognitive abilities and that observed differences in measurement are a product of either biased testing or oppression/oppressor dynamics in their lives, this is a good test. If you start from that premise, finding people who had terrible science scores in high school is a filter for finding the people that were most oppressed, not a filter for people of low cognitive ability. I promise you that I have encountered people that insist that the only thing you can learn from racial differences on a test is how biased that test is towards different racial groups. Whether they truly believe it or no, I couldn't say, but if the approach taken here follows logically from it.
See my comment here:
https://www.themotte.org/post/851/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/183748?context=8#context
The test was not designed to filter for kids bad at science. The test was designed with arbitrary answers to filter out everyone but those with the cheat codes.
Yeah, I see that now.
I think my post above is still worth noting for people that have never been exposed to that worldview, even though this specific instance seems more like plain corruption than a genuine disagreement between parties.
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Take a look at Trace's follow-up thread:
https://x.com/tracewoodgrains/status/1752197404768571629?s=20
I remember when this story came out years ago. I remember how it got covered by conworld and how it got ignored by MSM.
The story at that time was like you describe: Obama admin wanted more black recruits, so they made up a questionaire that would favor blacks. With such expected answers as doing poorly in science.
What Trace makes clear, and was never covered well even ten years ago, is that this was much more malicious. The test was rigged. The answers were impossible to get right by accident. The only way to pass this test was to cheat by knowing the right answers, which is exactly what the union did.
Look at the questions after "bad at science". That question asks "what was your worst subject in high school". One of the very next questions is "what was your worst subject in college". Here, the answer is completely different: you're supposed to answer "public history". Each of those questions is weighted to 15 points, for 30 points total (out of a few hundred or so). So you're not passing this exam unless you know exactly what the answers are supposed to be.
Agreed it gets a little less cartoonish after the initially are you bad at science question and just becomes you need to cheat to win.
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