Mental Decline

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/414585/trigonometry-racist-kevin-d-williamson
It's a pretty good article, for NRO. This was a good bit:

"our current government-dominated model of education has been a catastrophe for African-American students. They are not the only social catastrophe for African Americans, and the effects of those catastrophes are difficult to disaggregate. But the data are reasonably clear."

Claiming that "government-dominated education" is in itself especially harmful is difficult to support. Union-dominated government schools in a nation whose intellectual life is overrun with cultural Marxists would be a more accurate diagnosis of our particular problem. The Bismarckian system he mentions was highly effective at turning out great scientists and engineers--they were the best in the world until WWI bankrupted the system. It is, in my opinion, mainly a question of the intellectual culture that pervades a society and the standards it presupposes on the one hand--and, on the other, the genetic quality of the human beings who move through the educational system. The article properly emphasizes the destructiveness of the Left on the first issue--but, political correctness forbids mention of the second, which is a worsening problem due to our dysgenic immigration policies. Whether public or private schools are preferred is symptomatic of the intellectual culture. By the way, when American students are disaggregated by race, they outperform in virtually every instance their co-racials in their home countries (ie, American Japanese outperform Japanese, American Mexicans outperform Mexicans, etc).

Basic Numbers in Education

Note that this is a remedial education post--those who understand racial IQ disparities should skip it.

http://phys.org/news/2014-03-men-high-academic-success.html
This study shows 5% of blacks/Hispanics take certificates or associates degrees within 3 years at community colleges--and 32% of whites achieve the same. The initial racial differences in academic capacity on the ACT: the test shows that 15% of blacks, 29.5% of Hispanics, and 54% of whites at community colleges are prepared for college. This is the only hard predictive data--the percentage of each race that meets ACT college readiness benchmarks. But, this disparity is exacerbated by the fact that "equally capable" students of different races have far different levels of achievement. It shows 17% of hispanics, 33% of blacks, and 59% of whites who meet ACT college readiness benchmarks (equally capable in theory) get certs/degrees within 3 years. But, the blacks/hispanics claim to be more "motivated and committed"? This might be related to the races having different definitions of "motivated and committed." There might also be some lying involved in the claims.


Another problem is that most blacks who make the college readiness cutoff barely make it, whereas most whites who make it are comfortably above the minimum. In other words, the average ACT scores of "college ready" whites and blacks are different, with the white average markedly higher. This is unavoidable due to the large racial IQ gaps. Average IQs for the major races in America are 110 for Jews, 105 for Asians, 100 for whites, 92 for Hispanics, 85 for blacks. The black-white IQ gap has been in the 13-18 point range for 100 years. That is, it is nature consequent upon evolution in different environments, which different environments produced different characteristics, including different intelligence levels. In the general population 75% of Jews, 60% of Asians and 50% of whites have 100+ IQs--but only 31% of Hispanics and 14% of blacks have 100+ IQs. Note that this statistical difference in IQs is almost exactly the same as found above in the percentage of each race that is college ready. Also, if you calculate the average IQs of whites, blacks, Hispanics who make the 100+ IQ cutoff you find that the averages are approximately 114 for whites, 109 for Hispanics, and 106 for blacks. Whatever IQ cutoff is specified (whether 90, 100, 110, etc.) this difference in averages above the cutoff persists. The college ready whites are therefore smarter on average than the college ready blacks/Hispanics, just as college ready Asians and Jews are smarter on average than college ready whites. Another way to look at this is to consider what the minimum IQ of each graduate (5% of blacks/Hispanics, 32% of whites) would be if only the smartest of each group could graduate, which would give a general idea of how much the graduation rates are based on pure intelligence and how much on other factors like effort. This is in the nature of a thought experiment, since the smartest of each race do not attend community colleges. The underlying principles of analysis are about the same though--only there would be an IQ ceiling for each race in reality. If the smartest 5% of blacks/Hispanics and the smartest 32% of whites graduated, the minimum IQs for each race would be the following: black IQ: 106, Hispanic IQ: 116, white IQ: 107. This shows that if all blacks and whites with IQs above 107 graduated, the graduation rates would be almost exactly what the study found in reality: 4% for blacks, 32% for whites. This implies roughly equal effort and equal treatment among blacks and whites, though the 32% of whites with 107+ IQs still have higher average IQs than the blacks with 107+ IQs (which means in reality slightly better effort or treatment for the blacks). Hispanics in the 107-115 IQ range are not graduating as blacks and whites in that range are. The lack of effort therefore seems to be primarily an Hispanic problem. To get black numbers up to 32% you would have to arrange for blacks with minimum IQs of 91 to graduate. Moreover if Hispanic effort levels improved to match black/white levels, their graduation rate would rise from 5% to 13%.


Because the authors are politically correct socialist cowards, none of this IQ-based analysis finds its way into the 36 page report, even though my analysis explains everything very clearly. In particular, my analysis specifies the most correctable problem: lack of effort among Hispanics. Beyond that, only much lower academic standards across the board or, in the long run, differential eugenics would have much impact. And this study does not get close to the real problem, which is the huge disparities in the number of blacks/Hispanics capable of doing high level work, people at the 135+ IQ level. About 5% of Jews, 2% of Asians, 1% of whites, 0.2% of Hispanics, and 0.01% of blacks make this cutoff. Whites outnumber Hispanics 5 to 1 and blacks 100 to 1 at this level. Virtually all of the best scientists and inventors have IQs of at least 135. Many are 145+ where the ratios are 7 to 1 and 280 to 1. Without science and invention progress stops or, as in Sub-Saharan Africa, it never starts, or, as in "Idiocracy," progress turns into regress.

Cost-Effectiveness Demonstrated

How to End-Run the Ripoff Machine

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323301104578255992379228564.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

 

In time, this may produce the tragic consequence of fewer communists--I mean professors--lounging away on tenure and spouting PC garbage. A few of their fellow fifth column buddies in the sprawling higher-ed bureaucracy might also find the end of the road. It may even come to pass in a generation or two that the only remaining campuses in America will be those focused on science and engineering, which require physical labs, or the truly elite schools, which can afford the outrageous expense.

Socialism in Education

http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/10/02/are-top-students-getting-short-shrift

Public education in this country borders on a Stalinist mentality, a top-down penal state that prioritizes uniformity and conformity over achievement. This policy is justified by referring to the need to socialize students in a way that prepares them for a "multicultural" world. But, America has always been multicultural and there is no evidence that those schools which emphasize achievement first of all things--that such schools produce less multiculturally adapted students. It stands to reason that better education would, ipso facto, induce more adaptability to life itself.

Tyrone the janitor, Shaqweesha the cashier, Billy Bob the handyman, Francisco the yard man--these low IQ types will never make the world a better place. They are labor. The best we can hope from them is labor and that they will avoid the welfare rolls and prison. Those with sufficient wit to win a Nobel Prize or to invent a new technology or to found a business or reinvent one--these highly capable types, who necessarily possess high IQs, ought not to be burdened by an academic environment that includes the left side of the IQ distribution. They slow the process of education, distract the teacher, and are much more prone to bad conduct. And does the presence of 10th percentile IQs in the same room as 95th percentile IQs really bolster the confidence and effort level of the weaker students? The gap is large and consistent, and they eventually get the message. This jumbling together of disparate types eliminates equality of opportunity, while failing to produce the socialist dream (and my nightmare) of equality of result.

The capable figures represent the possibility of progress, from which historically all tend to benefit. Indeed, the poor have benefitted, in terms of quality of life, considerably more than the rich from the last century of progress. And their most important disability in America today is the dependency psychology foisted upon them, perhaps unknowingly, by the welfare state. Using our education system to confer upon the underclass a heightened aptitude for discovering new welfare programs to enroll in--this function may be less beneficial to the American people than a focus on identifying and encouraging the high achievers who form the forefront of societal evolution.

Another Education Success--

--for black America: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/06/education/06atlanta.html I love that even the NY Times could not resist mentioning that the ringleader of this dystopian fiasco is currently on vacation in Hawaii--though, of course, the top to bottom blackness of those involved was blacked out. The Times' philosophy on race is that it is only mentioned to make whites look bad or minorities look good--otherwise it is racist to mention race. Orwell concisely termed this "doublethink"--an effective element of tyranny. And all this devolves, no doubt, from the religion of egalitarianism and the pressure on the shepherds of the lower orders to live up to it. Overmatched by nature and circumstance, they succumb to the temptation of mendacity--but, how clumsily they fashion their deceptions! Thus we have a natural hierarchy also in the art of lying and a correspondent division of labor. The socialists must tighten their discipline hereafter. Such grotesqueries are painful to all and may even undermine the brilliant, almost self-consistent line of lies dreamed up by the priests of political correctness.

Obama's Misdirections

One way to influence the political discourse is to frame the issues by not mentioning issues that are uncomfortable fits for your ideological commitments. http://isteve.blogspot.com/2011/01/michael-lind-v-sputnik-moment.html I do not agree that our education system is ideal. It ought to be privatized by means of vouchers and the students who are not college-bound ought to be steered into vocational training programs to suit their interests and abilities. This will not solve the black-hispanic low performance issue. That appears to be caused by a nexus of lower IQ and anti-education cultural bias, with a small contribution from poverty. The idea that we lag on innovation is a joke: America and Israel far surpass any competitors in that realm. The problem is the Chinese and others a quite adept at stealing or otherwise acquiring our inventions and robbing us of much of the benefit the patent system is intended to secure. In China IP is a joke. Even the Europeans refuse to pay the innovation premium built into the price Americans pay for new drugs. And American companies give away patents and trade secrets for the privilege of doing business in China. Our government handles these matters most weakly and lets the Chinese hold sway. The great risk of mishandling trade with China arises from our loss of strategic industries to them. There are two types of strategic industries. First, industries presently at the core of the economy or vital to military superiority need to be kept onshore by whatever means--and they're not hard to identify. Second, and of more conjectural identity, those industries with the greatest potential for future growth and innovation must be sparked and succoured. We have attended to the military needs so far as government can apply competence to anything. On present time economic vitality, we've lost a considerable portion of the infotech industry, which is large and growing. Future industries face pressure to move to nations with more strategic emphasis on their development, China in particular. Cleantech continues a rapid exodus that way and holds enormous growth potential. Perhaps the worst part of this is that if we do not have a solar industry or a microchip industry, we will ineluctably lose our capacity to innovate in those areas. Most innovation occurs incrementally, accomplished by those with the most intimate familiarity with the technology and the business paradigm. This kind of loss we cannot afford to take. In select industries, we must implement an industrial policy aimed at sustaining their presence onshore and augmenting their innovation-engendered competitiveness. That this program will slip into corruption and incompetence is foreknown, and worth suffering for the stakes involved. Perhaps it would be best to structure it as an independent, apolitical agency like the Federal Reserve.

Something Against the Reactionaries

A novelist arguing for the exclusion of Huck Finn from high school reading lists:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/16/opinion/16moore.html?hp

My published comment:

On this logic, I suppose we should not read The Merchant of Venice or Oliver Twist (to avoid offending sensitive Jewish children) and should also exclude The Scarlet Letter and Madame Bovary (female sensitivity) and exclude Dead Souls (sensitive entrpreneurs and speculators). And why shouldn't we find cause to exclude even that sainted novel, To Kill a Mockingbird? First, it is thoroughly mediocre literature. Second, extremely tedious. Third, with respect to our theme of social offense, Ms. Lee renders up quite a few insulting caricatures which some might identify as directed at them and lacking in accuracy. With a little interpretive creativity offense can be found in any work of literature.

 

If Huckleberry Finn is to be removed from the high school curriculum, it ought not to be done so for the purpose of protecting the students from any view of a world before political correctness. And it ought to be replaced by a work of equal or greater aesthetic and intellectual power--not Mockingbird, not True Diary--try Emerson, Whitman, Hawthorne, Dickinson, Melville, James, Faulkner, Stevens, Frost.

Another Way to Play

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704111504576059713528698754.html?mod=WSJ_hp_editorsPicks_1 I think this approach comes from a culture that evolved in a country overpopulated and impoverished for millenia. These conditions create an acute form of ingrained social competitiveness. But, just as identical ingredients manifest different flavors in different climes, a social strategy normative in one place may appear a species of madness in another.

Politicized Admissions

It's interesting to see them quantify the leftist prejudice against certain elements of society--apparently being in 4-H or high school ROTC programs is a black mark against applicants to elite schools. What these schools want to enroll is eager conformists and ass-kissers (as well as the lucrative legacy students, that is, the rich whites who stupidly finance this whole charade). I remember reading elsewhere that at a typical Ivy League school fully half of admissions are justified by affirmative action, legacies, or athletic scholarships--only half made it on merit. That's quite a heavy burden of corruption and quality dilution for any school to bear. http://www.mindingthecampus.com/originals/2010/07/how_diversity_punishes_asians.html

A Couple of Pieces

A couple of laudably uncharacteristics articles from the NY Times.   Here is a demonstration of how the government can exceed its usual mandate of merely wasting obscene amounts of other people's money (the great commonality of Washington and Wall Street) and enter into a new business: wasting other people's lives. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/21/opinion/21fleming.html?src=me&ref=homepage   And here we have an odd political perspective: a Times article that is relatively objective about the teachers unions (objectivity paints an ugly picture) and shows by what sly maneuverings Obama has attempted to reform their priorities to achieve a some reasonable balance between their selfish unionist obsessions and educational quality. Personally, I think Obama will push the unions further than they've ever been pushed before--because he can and because, by doing so, he may be able to score a rare political victory. After all, who else can they turn to? http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/23/magazine/23Race-t.html?hpw

The Pied Piper's Song

If we really wished to induce the young to pursue science and engineering, we would more effectively convey its seductions. Instead of merely grinding them through the fundaments, we would also introduce some of the grand challenges and possibilities.   Here, for example, is a concept I just learned about--one which may be absolutely vital within the next 20-30 years--an attractive time horizon for current students: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reversible_computing Many other possibilities lurk on near or far horizons: the promise of nuclear fusion, of discovering the "god particle" in a particle accelerator, of building a space ladder with nanotechnology, of computational neural interfaces, autonomous vehicles, gene therapy, tissue engineering.   If we had a pied piper who knew how to sing this song...

Neutered

 http://www.us.mensa.org/Content/AML/NavigationMenu/Join/SubmitTestScores/QualifyingTestScores/QualifyingScores.htm

These are the qualifying scores for various tests to join MENSA, the "high IQ" society. Notice how the current versions of the SAT, ACT, and GRE are no longer considered representative of intelligence. This is because the socialists watered them down into feel-good tests. Result: admittance into college and grad school no longer takes intelligence directly into account. The calculation by the socialists is that if you don't measure intelligence, you shouldn't have to apply affirmative action preferences to stupid minorities since the stupid will be almost indistinguishable from the intelligent. Thus we arrive at the point the socialists have been pursuing all along: promotion by political connections and considerations instead of by merit.

If you look at the bottom of the page, the military has also dropped IQ measurement from its aptitude tests.

Stripping IQ measurements from society reduces economic efficiency by failing to sort people into different professions according to their abilities. Of course, it also deprives individuals of this form of self-knowledge, which may lead them to pursuits above or beneath their natural aptitudes; in other words, it impedes their paths to realizing their full potentials. But, it's like every other form of political correctness. It's a lie. This time the lie is in the form of concealing the truth. Lies lead to more lies, and to inefficiency, and to the corruption of societal morals.

I wonder how many people are even aware of this development or have any sense of its implications. I suspect few professional educators know of it. Consider: our prime geopolitical, economic, and military competitor, China, is heading in the opposite direction, raising standards in its educational system, requiring the demonstration of both effort and intelligence for admission into its professional programs. The U.S. is decadent, eaten away from inside by weakness of will evidenced in endless give-aways that encourage dependence, weakness, stupidity, irresponsibility--led by the socialists, but passively tolerated by the capitalists and the independents.

Our only hope geopolitically is that China will follow Japan and implode. This appears unlikely. China possesses a more primitive psychology which manifests in shameless, unthinking nationalism. It also remembers past imperial power and desperately seeks the high respect that imperial power once commanded. Nor is it a dependent nation, as Japan has been for two generations. Also, it believes it has won its last five wars (against Japan, the Kuomintang, the U.S./"U.N."/S. Korea, India, Vietnam).

Confrontation merely enkindles its self-confidence. The Chinese are engaged in a highly disciplined attempt to raise their nation to the first position--not just in the region (already achieved), but in the world. And they seem to understand that strength of will is as important as any other factor in the competition among nations. This is the decisive difference between the U.S. and the pretender to the throne: strength of will. Here the will is directed at the "end of suffering", physical, psychological, spiritual. In China, for its leaders at least, it is the will to power that trumps all other priorities. But, power can only be achieved through struggle, and struggle means pain. And it can only be sustained through struggle, and struggle means pain. "Therefore," say the socialists, "all struggle must be abolished, and all competition too." Nor would Mr. Hu object if America were to lose its place by forfeit. 

How Deep is the Deep End

http://isteve.blogspot.com/2009/09/dual-discipline-systems-in-tucson.html This is pretty impressive, I didn't know you could go that deep. Maybe this concept should be tried with our criminal justice system: not to the victims of crime or the taxpayers who fund the system, but, more importantly, to the misunderstood criminals themselves. Second degree murder? 4-6 years for blacks, 10-15 for whites--until whites succeed in achieving a ten-fold increase in their convictions for murder to match the rate of blacks convicted of murder. In all spheres, be it remembered, the burden is upon the white race to match black achievement, not the other way round--that would be racist.

Educational Mishaps

This is so absurd as to be comical: http://isteve.blogspot.com/2009/08/inanity-of-teacher-training.html

Teacher's Unions

This book review is about as clear and concise as it gets on this issue: http://www.vdare.com/pb/worm_review_19.htm

The double monopoly system inflicted upon all Americans is particularly unfortunate for the primary clientele of the Democratic party (the poor). Yet, ironically, that is the very party defending the status quo with religious fervor. The middle classes also find themselves largely at the mercy of this tyranny--but, predominantly middle class public schools perform much better than those the poor typically find themselves shipped off to. The result is a trap of mediocrity for the middle and a trap of idiocracy for the poor.

End the monopolies that make our education system a trap for the majority of children. This is not difficult in concept or in execution. It simply requires the will to facilitate upward mobility by encouraging and supporting merit. In other words, outlaw teacher's unions and permit families to choose their preferred schools (whether they be public, private, parochial, home, or otherwise). A voucher valued at a level comparable to public school spending ought to be offered for those not attending public school. Also, it would be needful to impose reasonable regulations on all schools to safeguard the children and taxpayer's money.

Shocking Figures

I consider all of the these numbers shockingly low. Note the consistency of the cognitive gaps across different socio-economic and educational backgrounds. Remember, the numbers below are misleading in the sense that the higher the income or education of their parents, the higher the percentage of people take the SAT. If 50% of each group took the test, the differences in scores would be larger. This misleading element is also true of the racial categories--they systematically underestimate the IQ differences because the higher the race's IQ level, the higher the percentage of people take the SAT. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:1995-SAT-Education2.png http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:1995-SAT-Income2.png More idiocy in action: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/04/education/04education.html

This is just another move in the socialist levelling agenda.

Building Idiocracy

http://www.vdare.com/sailer/090406_graduate_school.htm What is particularly shocking is that we allow incapables to become doctors and dentists. Dead patients and squandered resources result. For the rest, it's certainly inefficient to promote less intelligent individuals into the professions when more intelligent people are available and could perform the work more effectively. Part of the waste is borne by the affirmative action beneficiarcies themselves. Note the estimate that half of blacks who enter law school never become lawyers. This is hardly surprising given the two hurdles they face: 3 years of law school, then the bar exam (which does not give racial credits). I would imagine that black medical school graduates face similar challenges. In the end, affirmative action is a crude form of covert welfare for those minorities who suffer from cognitive and cultural deficits. But, these deficits are not the excuse provided by the policy's apologists: they claim discrimination pervades our society (including the design of all standardized and IQ tests) and can only be sufficiently redressed by recourse to legally-mandated racism against those races who manifest higher intelligence and higher rates of economic success. Of course, one obvious irony here is that the Jews in America have faced uninterrupted racism throughout the last century (the form of the racism evolved from being in favor of whites initially, then in favor of blacks and hispanics), and rose to power in spite of it. Are the supposed benefits affirmative action contributes to social cohesion in this country worth the economic, social, and psychological costs of this transparent lie? And, if diversity is of such monumental importance that it overrides considerations of intellect and diligence, why doesn't Harvard admit lazy, half-witted whites to complement the diversity provided by all the lazy, half-witted blacks and Mexicans it admits? The implicit premise underlying these admissions policies is that certain races cannot engage in intellectual competition on an equal footing with whites and Asians--and, if this is the case, the choice faced by decision-makers would be whether to lower the standards for the intellectually sub-standard races or to exclude them from those educational institutions which confer the most power upon their graduates. Unfortunately, the imperative of lower standards seems to extend to the top of our government: witness Justice Clarence Thomas, who has been the least competent Justice on the Supreme Court since his confirmation, and Judge Sotomayor, who will finally offer Thomas some competition for this sad distinction.  So we witness the continuous corrupt degradation of the fine old ideal of individual merit, the ideal to which we owe most of the Western world's achievements and global leadership, the ideal that raised the moral value of the individual to a Judeo-Christian plane profoundly superior to the nihilistic oriental fantasy of the preemptive value of the group.

The Commencement of Life

A practical defense of a liberal arts education: consciousness achieved and sustained; the necessity and inescapability of worship as the source of purpose and the guide to thought and action. The best Commencement address I've heard or read (by an oceanic stretch):
http://moreintelligentlife.com/story/david-foster-wallace-in-his-own-words

Affirmative Action Numbers

Here's some hard evidence on the huge qualifications gap between white and black law school applicants--which gap leads ineluctably to the bar passage gap discussed in the last post:

"In the 1996-1997 admissions cycle, some 2,646 white applicants placed in the top 7.7 percent of LSAT-takers and had college GPAs of 3.5 or better. These credentials are very good, obviously, but not phenomenal; the average student who was admitted to Boalt Hall this year had an LSAT in the 97.7 percentile and a GPA of 3.74. And yet a mere 16 African Americans in the United States and 45 Hispanics had records that strong! In this elite group of applicants, whites outnumbered blacks 165 to one. If we relax the standard substantially and look at students in the top sixth (83.5 percentile or better) on the LSATs and a GPA of only 3.25, 7,715 whites and just 103 blacks qualify. In this broader elite, there were 75 whites for every African American." (See Diversity and Meritocracy in Legal education: A Critical Evaluation of Linda F. Wightmans's "The Threat to Diversity in Legal Education."; Response to Linda F. Wightman, New York University Law Review, vol.72, p. 1, 1997 Constitutional Commentary March 22, 1998).

The differences are even more astounding when you consider that many self-identified blacks and hispanics are actually mixed race (like Obama). Adjusted for the difference in the sizes of the white and black populations in America that 165 to 1 still comes to 30 to 1. If there were as many blacks in America as whites, there would still be 30 times as many highly qualified whites as blacks. This is obviously not a convenient fact socially. Inequality creates tensions and affirmative action is imposed by the elites to keep the people pacified. They will use this strategy for so long as it produces pacification. Of course, if it ever ceases to work, instead of treating the symptoms of pathology (racial inequalities in achievement levels), they might then adopt measures to treat the pathology itself (lower black IQ).

I've drawn up a rough statistical comparison of LSAT scores by ethnicity extrapolated from numbers from this report: Law School Admission Council, LSAT Technical Report 98-04, March 1998. The most recent scores are virtually identical to those in this report. The left hand column is LSAT scores, the numbers in the next 4 columns represent the percentage of each ethnicity who equalled or exceeded the matching score. 

median	152	151	146	142
SD	9	10	9	8
LSAT Scores	White	Asian	Hispanic	Black
142	86	84	70	50
143	84	82	65	45
144	82	79	60	40
145	79	76	55	35
146	76	73	50	30
147	73	69	45	26
148	69	65	40	22
149	65	60	35	19
150	60	55	31	16
151	55	50	28	13
152	50	46	25	10
153	45	42	22	8
154	40	38	19	6
155	35	34	16	5
156	31	31	13	4
157	28	28	10	3
158	25	25	8	2
159	22	22	7	1.7
160	19	19	6	1.4
161	16	16	5	1.1
162	13	13	4	0.9
163	10	11	3	0.7
164	8	9	2	0.5
165	7	8	1.7	0.3
166	6	7	1.4	0.2
167	5	6	1.1	0.1
168	4	5	0.9
169	3	4	0.7
170	2	3	0.5
171	1.7	2	0.3
172	1.4	1.7	0.2
173	1.1	1.4	0.1
174	0.9	1.1
175	0.7	0.9
176	0.5	0.7
177	0.3	0.5
178	0.2	0.4
179	0.1	0.3
180		0.2

Only half of LSAT test takers actually go to law school and these attendees tend to be in the top half of each ethnicity's scoring distribution. This means that a 163 will place a white in the top 10 percent of test takers, but only about the top 18-20 percent of law students. Given that 152 is the median white score, it's fair to assume that few whites with sub-152 scores attend law school. So 152 is effectively the minimum expected from white applicants as far as admissions officers are concerned. If this minimum were imposed on blacks, just 10% would make the cut at any law school. About 15% of law students attend top 20 schools, which are those with nationwide reputations and prestige. This corresponds to a minimum LSAT of 165 for whites and asians. Only 0.6% of black law students score that high. On merit, they would represent less than 0.1% of the student populations at top 20 schools--in reality they are closer to 7%. A 70 to 1 ratio of charity cases to merit cases is impressive. This is a religion forbidding doubts. The black minimum score, then, is 156 at these schools--a full standard deviation below the white minimum. Of course, this makes sense insofar as the median black score on the LSAT is a standard deviation lower than the white median. Coincidentally, the black-white IQ gap has stood at a standard deviation for generations. The education system in this way achieves a superficial unity at the expense of fundamental inequality, de facto and de jure.

On merit, blacks would run to 0.25% of students at the top 50 law schools (which combined graduate a third of law students). And the study quoted at the top of the post estimated that, depending on the predictive model used, between 2% and 3.4% of all law students would be black if admissions were color-blind. Her methodology is quite generous to blacks. To estimate race-blind admissions rates she looked only at LSAT scores and undergraduate GPA. The thing is, white students at any given college have higher IQs than their black peers (due to undergrad affirmative action). I guarantee that people with higher IQs are more likely to take difficult classes than lower IQ people. Result: white and black GPAs are not comparable. An "A" in precalculus hardly carries the same signification as an "A" in multivariable calculus. She certainly overestimates the black representation that would be expected from a more thorough merit-based admissions process. But, even if you accept an average of her numbers, 2.7% is much lower than the 13% of the American population blacks represent. It's a 5 to 1 shortfall. This exactly matches my statistical estimates in the table above: if blacks had to meet the white minimum of 152 to get into any law school, only 10% would make it, compared to 50% of whites. This is slightly misleading, though, since only 10% of test takers are black and my table is based on test takers, not population numbers. By my numbers, 10% of the 10% of test takers who are black would make it--which means they would compose 2% of law students, a 6.5 to 1 shortfall.

The analysis I've done here showing the effect of affirmative action on law school admissions applies in similar fashion to undergrad admissions and admissions to any competitive graduate or professional programs. They are all based, to a significant degree, on pure (eg, SAT, LSAT) and applied (GPA, courseload) cognitive ability. The IQ differences between groups predicts to a high degree of accuracy, as shown above, the academic qualifications that characterize each ethnic group. I do not think most Americans have any notion of the magnitude of the assistance given to affirmative action cases. Even supporters of this racial strategy might be privately grieved by it. My purpose here was to pull out a variety of numbers to give some perspective on the issue.