Equality of outcome is not the goal of equity. That’s a straw man argument created by its detractors.

People point out disparities as evidence that there aren’t equal opportunities in society.

The conservative position is simply to assert that equality of opportunity exists cuz America, and if you question that you are a communist who just wants everyone to be the same.

I disagree its a strawman argument. Its a clear delineation. Trying to get all kids to successfully complete gifted programs is a very challenging if not impossible goal. Not all kids will be successful in gifted programs. However, Equality of opportunity states that any kids its appropriate for have access. Its an important distinction. Now, its arguable that certain sub-cultures within America make success in school or gifted programming challenging (parents who don't trust schools, parents who don't engage in school for various reasons).

I don’t have a problem with gifted programs in principle, but it’s also fair to ask how they are working in practice.

People in this thread are up in arms about the principle, but the reason that they are being challenged is based on how they operate in practice.

Do all children have equal access? Nominally, maybe. But that’s de facto not the case.

no, they closed the gifted programs in the urban school system I attended, at that time, right after Music Education. The emphasis went to "no child left behind" whatever that is, sports programs, armed guards (yes), and at high school, loans and grants for college admission. Advanced placement ? most gifted kids and almost every single girl from my neighborhood, disappeared in a blink at grade 8.

not only is it entirely fair to ask how they work in practice, but we must do so. Do all children have equal access? maybe is your answer. The solution to get more access isn't to eliminate it. Its to educate parents in groups who "should" be in it but aren't.

Sure, larger socioeconomic problems will definitely turn up in statistics, because it turns out that being gifted heavily relies on parental model, and many many other things. Even a very motivated child will fail to partake in such a problem if he/she has serious problems at home, e.g. being beaten, having to work to support the family, etc.

But I feel it is very unfair, outright evil to take away an opportunity from gifted people (both from privileged families and a few from very bad families that would have been lifted up by said programs!! The aforementioned example could perhaps break the cycle and get a much much better life than any of his/her relatives) on the basis that the statistics on the enrolled will be biased. It is not the task of such a small-scale program to solve a huge, complex problem that probably can only be solved in decades if ever.

I'm all for equity of opportunity. However, the people California has chosen to set our curriculum are explicitly working toward equality of outcome.

They say they don't believe that any children are more talented than any other children, and are advocating eliminating standard "advanced" courses, such as calculus, from the high school curriculum. The only classes that would be available in their proposal are the current remedial math track.

I think you've confused "straw man argument created by its detractors" with "the actual concrete plan being established by its proponents".

The (successful) proponents of equity based teaching are so far outside the mainstream that it's an honest mistake. (I made it, and now I'm furious.)

I’m not intimately familiar with all of the details of what is being advocated in California. All I can speak to is my perspective on what equity is and how I think it should be applied.

People who disagree with the basic concepts around equity tend to view the entire discourse as a monolith, but people are actually allowed to have different opinions on what is actually equitable and what isn’t.

Personally I wouldn’t support doing away with advanced math courses either. But just because someone does that in the name of equity, doesn’t mean I think equity itself is bad. I’m able to separate the two.

> Equality of outcome is not the goal of equity.

They actually say that it is - have you seen the famous comic where the three guys are watching the baseball game but the short guy can't see through the fence? They literally are saying the equity of outcome is the beginning and the end of their goals.

There's different versions of that meme, so please make sure you know which one you're arguing about.

Edit: a long take on all the variations, by the meme's originator! https://medium.com/@CRA1G/the-evolution-of-an-accidental-mem...

We clearly have different interpretations of that metaphor.

The point is to demonstrate agency over the systems we create. What’s the flip side of that scenario? People aren’t given stools to stand on and tall people get to watch while short people don’t? Who built the fence? Why is it that height? Why aren’t there bleachers?

Is just sitting there doing nothing equality of opportunity somehow?

That cartoon literally ends with the resolution of all three heads being at the same height. It's depicting the equality of their outcomes. And it's hailing it as the goal to be achieved. The point isn't that stools are handed out demonstrating agency, but that they're handed out with the goal of outcome equality.

I think the outcome is that they all get to watch the game. I guess you can call that "equality of outcomes".

I think reading "head height" as the outcome, is a very short-sighted interpretation.

Like anything else, interpretation has nuance and you could read it both ways. On HN we're supposed to address "the strongest possible interpretation" in our comments, so I would try to apply that principle here as well...

What’s the parallel of that metaphor wherein only equality of opportunity is sought, though?

The fence is 100 feet high and requires climbing an arduous ladder to see over it. One of the people decides not to climb it.

Equity of outcome can be a worthwhile goal if that outcome is a boolean opportunity for example, as in case of the cartoon. Also, setting the boolean to the worse value for everyone is not a morally good solution in my opinion - that way noone will see the game.

> People point out disparities as evidence that there aren’t equal opportunities

That’s a very low bar if you take population level disparities and assume it’s a lack of equity causing this. You’re talking about having a deep understanding of incredibly complex systems layered on top of one another.

Equality of opportunity is never possible. We’re all born with different genetics. Anything less is just arbitrary line drawing as to what’s ok and what isn’t (ie tribalism).

> That’s a very low bar if you take population level disparities and assume it’s a lack of equity causing this

Are racial disparities socially determined or not?

Thomas Sowell has a great book on the subject called Discrimination and Disparities. There are interviews where he goes over the high-level ideas in the book if you don't have time to read it, but the basic punchline is that this: no two populations have ever been equal, and only sometimes is that because of some form of oppression or because of genetic differences. There are a multitude of cultural and environmental differences that cause disparate outcomes, and unless equality of outcome is your goal those differences shouldn't bother you.

> unless equality of outcome is your goal those differences shouldn't bother you.

I’m sorry, but this simply doesn’t follow.

The premise: that there are a multitude of things that lead to to disparities (even just random chance). If disparities are random then yes, that’s not a problem I’m going to get tussled up about.

But it’s not a matter of “it could be anything”. We have strong evidence that it is oppression, and when that is the case, that I do have reason to care about, and it’s about opportunity not outcome.

If it is actually oppression, then yes that is a valid reason to be concerned.

But let's be clear, you just claimed that the mere existence of disparities is evidence of oppression. That only follows if group outcomes would be equal in the absence of oppression, but that is a completely invalid assumption that has no basis in historical fact.

I claimed that disparities are evidence, not that they are proof.

It’s not nor us it ever been about the disparities alone, but the disparities in conjunction with the long history of racial oppression in America. People are alive today who grew up under Jim Crow. People are alive today who were threatened with violence for attending elementary school.

I didn't say you claimed it was proof. I said "evidence" and I think that as a matter of evidence it is pretty weak.

Regardless, in practice people do treat it as proof. Before I move on to the other arguments supporting oppression as an explanation I want to drive home that point: there is hardly ever a serious attempt to rule out other possible explanations for disparities, and to suggest that anything other than racism/oppression might explain those differences opens one up to accusations of racism.

Merely referencing Jim Crow is not enough. It ignores both all the ways in which Jim Crow was ineffective at its aims at the time, as well as the seismic cultural and legal changes that have occurred within the intervening years.

It also fails to account for the success of various other minorities (Jews, Nigerians, descendants of Caribbean slaves, various Asian groups) - many of whom also have faced very serious oppression (including outright attempts at elimination) in the very recent past.

None of this is to say that racism does not occur, but I have yet to see a (non-circular) causal explanation for how that can account for a significant amount of present disparities.

I'm not clear why I shouldn't care that there are differences due to oppression?

Well, for the oppressor, sure, but why should the oppressed accept it?

I didn't say you shouldn't care about differences due to oppression.

I said that there are differences due to things other than oppression, and that those aren't a problem unless you think equality of outcome should be goal

No, differences in learning ability are largely heritable. Self-identified racial groups vary in statistical distribution of their mental abilities. I think generally in the West the chief cause of differing group outcomes on mental tasks is differing learning abilities.

What does "socially determined" mean, and what are the alternatives?

The best analogy I can think of is sports.

In sports, the rules are whatever we say they are, that’s the part that’s socially determined. Lebron James is a amazing basketball player, due to a combination of his genetics and his hard work. But there’s a parallel reality wherein basketball was never invented. And people enjoy sports like horse racing or marathon running, where he would never be able to be world class given his frame. What sports are popular is based on culture and happenstance, and up to the whims of society, not genetics or hard work of individuals.

For several hundred years, America literally constructed a society where it was decided that white people were considered more valuable than black people. That had nothing to do with what individual black people did, those were just the rules of the game.

You may say “but that’s not how it is anymore”, and yes things have certainly changed. But at the same time, there are people who are alive today who weren’t allowed to attend the same schools as whites, weren’t allowed to drink from the same fountains as whites, etc.

The argument that is being made, is that society continues to favor people based upon the color of their skin. Certainly, individual talents and hard work contribute to one’s place in life, but that does not mean that the playing field is level.

Does social determination include culture? That's a greater determinant of outcomes than skin color, as the example of outcomes between African Americans and Nigerian immigrants indicates.

To be very clear about it, this is all the more impressive because Nigeria is, by and large, still a pre-industrial society. The differences in basic worldview and outlook (including attitudes towards education) brought by industrialization and modern economic development (often misattributed to "Whiteness" in divisive political rhetoric) are absolutely huge and easily overwhelm any model where "skin color" or "genetics" exogenously determine these outcomes. This is easily ascertained by looking at how individual countries in the modern West industrialized over time and went through these very changes in culture. The skin color of English lower classes did not change much from the 17th to the mid-19th century, but their culture absolutely did.

Why do we immediately assume that that's "impressive" and not "telling"? Isn't that assumption plain old American/Western exceptionalism?

Perhaps the hypotheses should be "maybe there is something in Nigerian/pre-industrial culture that allows children to thrive more than in American/industrialized culture"?

Culture is socially determined in the sense that culture is simply the collective actions and decisions that a group of people make.

Reading the intent behind that statement, though, that Nigerians have succeeded in America despite any hinderances they may have faced due to wider societies treatment of black people, that would be somewhat outside of the framework of what I am talking about.

The construction here is, do Black Americans have worse outcomes, on average, because of themselves, or because of societies treatment of them. Culture would fall into the bucket of “they are the reason for their own problems”.

Obviously Nigerians do well on average, but they are also a small fraction of the population. Pointing to Nigerians and saying that race isn’t a contributing factor is making an argument after having found the statistical outlier that proves your argument, how do Nigerians compare to the top cohort of white Americans based on ethnicity or whatever? Is it possible that Nigerians would actually be doing better were there not racial barriers?

> do Black Americans have worse outcomes […]

Black Americans do not have worse outcomes.

Specifically, given the distribution of individuals in the group "Black Americans" across all socially relevant dimensions—including culture—individual Black Americans have identical* outcomes to similarly-situated individuals of every other group in America including Whites, Asians, etc.

As you would expect in a country with equal opportunity for all, both legally and culturally.

*Black Americans actually do better than expected because there's an enormous cultural push to promote Black Americans whenever possible—college admissions, management, etc. not to mention Black Americans being so over-represented in media that most Americans think the country is around 40% Black whereas the actual number is ~13%, i.e. they're off by a factor of 3.

Rewriting "culture" as "they are the reason for their own problems” seems rather uncharitable, and unhelpful to the discussion. Why are you doing that, given that it's not adding any clarity?

> having found the statistical outlier that proves your argument

Well, why are they a statistical outlier? If you ask Nigerians, they'll tend to credit their culture. Do you have a different explanation?

> Is it possible that Nigerians would actually be doing better were there not racial barriers?

I suppose it's more possible that they should be doing much worse than they are, because of the racial barriers.

> Rewriting "culture" as "they are the reason for their own problems” seems rather uncharitable, and unhelpful to the discussion. Why are you doing that, given that it's not adding any clarity?

I was under the impression that it did add clarity, so I find your question odd.

What would be the charitable interpretation of the statement “socioeconomic disparities between black Americans and white Americans are due to their respective cultures”?

I mean, there's nothing "problematic" about having a different culture, with different values. There's also nothing surprising about the fact that different cultures and values produce people vastly differently suited to social and economic success. I don't see any issue with these facts in combination, nor do I need to reach for "marginalization" or racism to explain any of this.

No one ever suggested that it was problematic that people have different cultures, or even that it’s bad to acknowledge that black culture is different from white culture, quite the contrary.

What’s problematic is the degree to which people can’t even entertain the idea that racism is the primary driver of these disparities, rather than things that are specific to POC, such a culture or genetics, especially given the clear and obvious precedent that is firmly established within this country.

What is a reach, is your reaction to this suggestion.

The research substantiates this thesis though. As cited variously in grandparent threads, domestic environment and culture are the main predictive factors of academic and economic outcomes. Poor kids who study do much better than rich kids who don't.

We no longer deny people opportunities based on their race. If your SAT score is high, you'll be admitted anywhere you want. If you study hard, your score will be high. The reach is constructing the SAT, or any other similar test, as racist because the scores are not evenly distributed by race.

> What’s problematic is the degree to which people can’t even entertain the idea that racism is the primary driver of these disparities

The reason why many people cannot accept this is because many other groups experienced problems from racism as well, but they were eventually able to overcome these barriers. Moreover, the system has already changed to be more accommodating, maybe even putting most of their focus and resources on the bottom 20% of students at the expense of everyone else. Yet, we still have people stating that it’s still unfair.

I believe they are social, but I also believe it is very much not the task of a school program to solve racial disparities that are multi-generational and perhaps one of the most complex issues in the US. It is the equivalent of a hospital closing down because they can’t save everyone.

Can something be sticky to a race but not genetic?

Obviously yes.