[OT] NCAA Revisits Native American Team Nicknames

[Ken \'70]

[Q]Tom Lento Wrote:

 
If you include the appropriate controls, you find that if all else is equal, race is not a particularly good predictor of income - it's still correlated, but not as much as you would find in, say, the early 70s. [/q]

This is Jenck's conclusion.  In the '70s he believed racism was the primary independent variable in outcome differences.  He now believes it's the abilities measured by standardized tests (SAT, AFQT, WAIS, Raven Matrices, et. al.)

[Q]
Whites are more likely to have higher educational attainment, higher occupational prestige, and better family backgrounds (parents' education and occupational prestige).  [/q]

Taken together these are what are known as "Socio-economic status" or SES.  This factor can be normalized so that you're comparing blacks and whites with equal SES (both Jencks and Murray present evidence on this).  When this is done it is shown that SES has a lower correlation to outcomes than test measured cognitive ability.  Although SES and test scores are correlated the causality arrow shouldn't be thought to point from SES to ability: if you take a smart rich person and make him poor he doesn't suddenly become dumb, and a dullard who wins the lottery doesn't instantly become bright, but it's easy to understand that smarter people will create more value and duller people less.

[q]
To claim that racism has no effect on outcomes is pretty dicey, especially based on the evidence you provide.  Once you have a degree, and are offered a job, racism may have little effect on your salary, but it's getting to that point that's the important part.  Do you have any handy studies showing that race is completely irrelevant in terms of educational attainment, social connections (see Granovetter 1973 for an example of the importance of social contacts in the job market) and access to capital?  If not, you have a lot more work to do.[/q]

Race is obviously a factor in education. Look at Cornell, U Mich. and all competitive schools.  In Grutter v. Bollinger U Mich. argued before the Supreme Court that if race preferences didn't exist their entering freshman class would be only 2% black instead of the 7% they obtained with their racial policies.

At Cornell, a 1992 Council on Financing Higher Education (COFHE) report showed that admitted whites have a 180 point higher SAT score than blacks and asians have a 220 point higher SAT score (that being almost 2 full standard deviations).  You can look at these numbers as indicating that "affirmative action" is not simply a tie breaker for admissions, but a huge additional hurdle for asians and whites compared to blacks.  So yes, race is a big factor in accessing higher ed. opportunities.

I think it's safe to say that when comparing racial groups normalized at a cognitive level, access to capital for black or white does not come into play when considering the broad population and average incomes.

Which is not to say environment isn't a significant factor in relative outcomes.  Here's an excellent article from today's Boston Globe, for example: http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005/05/24/minorities_racism_and_umass146s_choice/
His view is backed up by "Locus of Control" research in psychology which I'm sure some of you are familiar with.

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[Tom Lento]

[Q]Ken '70 Wrote:
Taken together these are what are known as "Socio-economic status" or SES.  This factor can be normalized so that you're comparing blacks and whites with equal SES (both Jencks and Murray present evidence on this).  When this is done it is shown that SES has a lower correlation to outcomes than test measured cognitive ability.  Although SES and test scores are correlated the causality arrow shouldn't be thought to point from SES to ability: if you take a smart rich person and make him poor he doesn't suddenly become dumb, and a dullard who wins the lottery doesn't instantly become bright, but it's easy to understand that smarter people will create more value and duller people less.
[/Q]

It's not that simple.  The arrow of causality does not go smart->higher SES, either.  I'm sure you're familiar with studies of social reproduction.  The best predictor of SES is parents' SES - where you come from matters.

If you take a smart person, and give that person a terrible education in a poor urban school, no social capital (contacts who can get you good jobs), and no financial advantages, that person will finish with a much lower SES than a person of average intelligence born into an upper-middle class family who is given an excellent education (from primary school on up) and has access to important job contacts.  I'm sure I can dig up some studies if I felt so inclined, but this is a tricky thing to measure.  I know Granovetter did work on contacts and job success.  Check out his book _Getting a Job_ for more information, or his AJS paper "The Strength of Weak Ties" for a rundown on the theory.

Furthermore, test-based measures of cognitive ability are loaded - I guarantee you that people with a better education do better on these tests.  If not, I'd really like to see the study, and the methods they used.  When you use a test, you're basically using a proxy for cognitive ability, and while I agree intelligence is NOT related to SES I believe these proxies are related.  Honestly, I can't think of any way to measure intelligence as wholly separate from individual and family SES, unless you find a reliable way to measure their ability as infants.

[Q]Race is obviously a factor in education. Look at Cornell, U Mich. and all competitive schools.  In Grutter v. Bollinger U Mich. argued before the Supreme Court that if race preferences didn't exist their entering freshman class would be only 2% black instead of the 7% they obtained with their racial policies.

At Cornell, a 1992 Council on Financing Higher Education (COFHE) report showed that admitted whites have a 180 point higher SAT score than blacks and asians have a 220 point higher SAT score (that being almost 2 full standard deviations).  You can look at these numbers as indicating that "affirmative action" is not simply a tie breaker for admissions, but a huge additional hurdle for asians and whites compared to blacks.  So yes, race is a big factor in accessing higher ed. opportunities.[/Q]

I'm not sure what you're arguing here.  Are you suggesting that whites are at a disadvantage in terms of their access to higher education?  If so, you're either making a spurious claim about the relative unimportance of access to education at the primary and secondary levels, you're suggesting that blacks are simply stupider than whites, or both.

Here's how I read your argument - the only reason access to higher education is even close for blacks and whites is affirmative action policies.  Without such policies, blacks would NOT have the same access to higher education, by any means (see the UMich information you presented above).  Why?  Lots of reasons, which I addressed in an earlier post (family background, financial position, and most importantly parents' education).  Social reproduction is a difficult thing to overcome, whether you're black or white.  In the past, it was even more difficult for blacks, although affirmative action policies *may* tip the scales in the other direction.  Certainly, at the moment of acceptance to college, blacks have a substantial advantage over whites, but it's not clear that this advantage outweighs the other disadvantages faced by blacks as a group.  

[Q]I think it's safe to say that when comparing racial groups normalized at a cognitive level, access to capital for black or white does not come into play when considering the broad population and average incomes.

Which is not to say environment isn't a significant factor in relative outcomes.  Here's an excellent article from today's Boston Globe, for example:
His view is backed up by "Locus of Control" research in psychology which I'm sure some of you are familiar with.

(you can use Login: uscho@zudnic.net, Password: uschouscho if you need it)[/Q]

So which is it?  Access to capital does not come into play when considering average incomes, or environment is  a factor?  

This whole discussion boils down to a single point, and you can go to the GSS and satisfy yourself on its validity.  Blacks are underrepresented in the higher levels of the SES scale, and are HEAVILY overrepresented at the lower levels.  So if environment matters, then blacks are, on average, in a worse environment, and therefore, on average, do worse than whites.  Sounds to me like access to capital - social and economic - has a substantial effect on average incomes by race.  Again, you can go to the GSS and find evidence for this, although you'll probably need a better statistical package than the one at the UMaryland site.

To suggest that race is not a factor in this disparity is practically indefensible.  You can claim that race is no longer a *direct* obstacle to socio-economic advancement, but you would have to admit that the initial disadvantages faced by the average black person in this country are a result of earlier racist practices.  I'm not sure I believe this argument, as I think some of the obstacles facing the average black person in this country are maintained by latent racism, or at least awareness of race (housing distributions come to mind - see Thomas Schelling's segregation model for a theoretical explanation of the relationship between awareness of race and segregation, and Massey and Denton's _American Apartheid_ for an examination of the effects of residential segregation on the minority).  However, this is a rather different debate from "race does not affect outcomes."

Incidentally, the article you cited above says nothing about socio-economic environment, rather it's invoking an important cultural argument about individual motivations.  I'm equally suspicious of arguments based strictly on individual drive, and arguments built on purely structural factors - having middle class benefits won't make you successful if you're lazy and stupid, but being smart and hard-working will not be enough to overcome significant structural obstacles (there are exceptions in both cases, but on average I believe this is true).

Sorry, didn't mean to totally hijack the thread.  I'll try to keep my coments to a more reasonable word count.  And maybe on topic.