3 ms·

I think your "values" are leading you to believe blatant racist and victim-blaming tropes like "black people have disparate outcomes because... they're worse pa

• btilly 6y ago
  I see. It is racist to say things like, "We should encourage black parents to not beat their kids so much." And yet as articles like https://www.apa.org/pi/families/resources/newsletter/2017/04/racial-trauma https://www.apa.org/pi/families/resources/newsletter/2017/04... point out, that happens to be a very real problem. And so we refuse to even discuss the very interventions that are most likely to have the biggest impact. On the school funding gap, I'm all for fixing it. That's one of the root causes behind why black boys are under half as likely to meet state reading standards in California as white ones. It isn't the only one - black kids are already substantially behind before they enter school - but it sure needs fixing. But along with that, let's not lie to ourselves about the consequences of the current situation. A black high school graduate is half as likely to have actually learned what they were supposed to as a white. A business should be able to hire high school students but require a literacy test. The fact that blacks are half as likely to pass said test should be viewed as a judgment on our school system, and not blacks. But in our legal system, businesses who try that are likely to be sued and are likely to lose the lawsuit. (Many have.) Because insisting that your employees can read and write is considered racial discrimination. So businesses instead require a college degree and don't have a literacy test. The result is that businesses get literate employments, they hire fewer blacks than they otherwise would have, and now there is more demand for college degrees. Which helps cause tuition to go up, and saddles young people with debt. Which means that everyone loses. In short I support creating results. Not mandating them. What it takes to create results sounds shocking because those ideas have been off the table for discussion for decades. And likewise discussing the failures of the current system is also off the table.
  • kozd 6y ago
    The two things you've suggested as solutions are "parenting classes" and "encourage black parents to not beat their kids so much". You're doing the same thing here as you did above with your original post. No anti-racist would look at the results of IQ tests and frame their conclusion as "don'tcha see, black people are stupid". No anti-racist would look at the article you posted which acknowledges that "the use of corporal punishment in black communities today is a byproduct of centuries of slavery, the racial terrorism of the Jim Crow era, and exposure to racism that continues to chip away at the vitality of black life." and come to the conclusion that "black parents just need to learn what white parents have learned". Everyone can hear the dog-whistles loud and clear.