No, I Am Not Lost – A Black Woman's Experience in the Stanford CS Major

Re:No, I Am Not Lost – A Black Woman's Experience in the Sta... by waterlesscloud on Tuesday July 21, 2015 @08:45PM (#9926982)

Say you have a class that starts out with 30 students. 18 white, 10 asian, 2 black.

Say the course is very hard and it cuts 2/3rds of the total students. If the cuts were proportional by race, we now have 6 white, 4 asian, and 0 blacks.

There was no racism involved in the class, the fact that no blacks remain is a result of the class brutally weeding out 2/3rds of the students and that the initial number of blacks was very low.

You can quibble over numbers, but the basic idea remains that large percentage cuts in an unbalanced population can make it tend more toward homogeneity.

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Re:No, I Am Not Lost – A Black Woman's Experience in the Sta... by ectoplasm on Tuesday July 21, 2015 @08:52PM (#9927010)

That's a good numerical analysis. However, you also have to account for the fact that, on average, black children in the US get a poorer education. There are studies and statistics and on and on. Is it controversial to think that somebody might be less smart because they got a worse education? And then is it so surprising that when they get into Stanford due to affirmative action, they can't handle the course load? The whole system is a mess.

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Re:No, I Am Not Lost – A Black Woman's Experience in the Sta... by flippinburgers on Wednesday July 22, 2015 @02:18AM (#9927998)

It looks like people are downvoting this which is hilarious because it is accurate. If you assume proportionality this will happen.

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