trochee

Cross-posted to debunkingwhite

On Friday (the 19th, yes, this is late) I attended an early-morning talk at the University of Washington (Seattle) by Lani Guinier. She spoke to a room full of suit-and-ties, and just a few students and faculty (not enough, I'm sorry to say). But it was a good group (mostly deans and administrators) to hear her message.[1]

She spoke for about an hour, debunking in record time the myths of "meritocracy" and the insidious ideas about race and diversity around that idea.

She also spent some time explaining why we can't be race-blind -- well, the debunkingwhite readers won't be shocked by these thoughts, and she spent some time exploring how and where organizing can happen. Occasionally, it's in unusual places (see the Hopwood case, in the notes below).

She also hit on one of my hot buttons -- the worthlessness and sheer evil of standardized testing. A few choice vignettes:

The LSAT correlates at only 9% with first-year law school grades.
The SAT correlates better with grandparents' income than it does with undergraduate school performance..
The LSAT has no significant correlation with either income after law school or with job satisfaction after law school. LSAT and undergraduate GPA, on the other hand, are negatively correlated with community service law.

Who do we [2 ] think we're admitting, using these alleged "merit" tests? On what basis do we consider this "merit"? What happened to the ideals of education as a privilege, not a reward? Guinier asks all the right questions on this big, complicated, and all-too-easily-misunderstood issue.

myths:

 1. attachment to merit as objective, separate idea; it's connected to
    individual effort

 2. diversity is opposed to / d	eparture from merit -- so we don't want
    to talk about it, or related categories: geography, class, gender

    - so race gets used to explain class, because talking class runs
    counter to "American Dream"

 3. There is a group of experts at identifying merit ("in this room"),
    and somehow these people always identify people who look just like
    us...  "meritocracy" introduced in british satire 1958 ("rise of
    the meritocracy"), where winners would win and feel they deserved
    so, and similarly for losers.  No obligation to the winners. 

    Earlier systems required "character", which was white, male,
    episcopalian, and would "serve" society ("noblesse oblige"). Early
    ideas for "democratizing" college admissions assumed introducing
    middle-class students into the school would get even more
    community-minded. 

    Introduction of meritocratic idea means nobody feels obliged to
    help out; admissions is a reward for your goodness.

 Pretending to ignore race (in order "to not be a racist") is
 destructive.  Being upfront and talking about these lightning-rods is
 good.


Study of UMich law school (David Chambers) -- went to study stigma of
race of graduates.  

 turns out no relationship between undergrad GPA, LSAT and career (as
 finance).

 no relation to career status either -- related *negatively* for one
  cohort, but otherwise not significant

 Community leadership -- negative relationship with LSAT/GPA (!)

 Who most likely to fulfill all three criteria? Black and Latino
 admissions ("presumably exceptions to 'merit'").

 So "merit" is flawed... even when focused narrowly on "first-year
 law/college grades"

 Women were getting slightly higher GPA and slightly lower LSAT
 (neither significant).

LSAT is 9% better than random in predicting first-year grades!

Meritocracy is normalized.  Issues of diversity can disturb these
assumptions. 

------

Race is tangled up with class

Hopwood case, U Texas

Black and Latino professors/activists discovered that working class,
rural and poor whites were having trouble getting in too.  64 of 1500
high schools.  150 highschools => 75% of the freshmen.  many whites
getting shut out along with blacks and latinos -- largely rural, poor,
working class.

SAT has racial *and* *class* components. SAT scores correlate with
your grandparents' wealth very very well. Better than to grades, in
fact. 

10% rule passed (!) with urban and rural legislators on board --
conservative white rural legislators saw their interest as well.

-----

Explaining our decisions to those who disagree with us is critical --
we become better problem-solvers

Under Reagan, we lost the notion that education of the people makes a
better society.

Also lost was the idea that students go back as leaders -- commitments
to individualism, competition have swamped it.

Also, now individuals are expected to pay for this private benefit.

At state level, now invested in incarceration, not education.  CA used
to spened 2.5 times on education vs prison, now prison outstrips
education

And all this while more need to have college education!  And tuitions
are rising.

Who should we be educating? Why? Is it enough for graduates to be
meritocrats? 

We need to rethink the goals of education that will ensure more
sustained public support.

------
Admissions by lottery 

seems to be happening in high schools and elementary schools; often as
community begins to dissent

Lottery seems to work. When provided with opportunities, everybody
gets on!

We as a society overlook and deny ourselves these people!

movement in the direction of privatization is eroding our own power

------

It's also worth checking out the website she and Harvard have put together: Race Talks.

[sad] Unfortunately, there were no Linguistics people there but me -- at least, none that I recognized. My (electrical engineering) lab PI showed up, though, and I found out about the whole thing from a lab colleague. Hooray for progressive geeks!

[we] I say "we" because I recognize that I'm part of the elite here -- I have very good SAT, GRE, and LSAT performance and I'm likely to become part of the educational institution in a few years.