News from the front: The Achievement Gap

A friend of mine emailed me an article from Forbes Magazine. Simply titled The Achievement Gap, the article examines some of the quantified data about societal attitudes that address some of the possible reasons for the huge discrepancy in the academic performance of whites and Asians on the one hand, and blacks and Hispanics on the other.

You can read the whole article yourself, but there were some highlights that caught my eye. First was the article's take on the "acting white" attitude that has been blamed for so much academic malaise on the part of black students. There was one study that said, nope! The whole "acting white" theory is a bunch of nonsense, because we found that well-performing black students say they have just as many friends as badly-performing black students. Did you catch that? The study was conducted by asking students if they have any friends. As the article said, they might as well have asked the students if they were virgins. What the hell else did the researchers think the kids would say? After a more realistic study was done, it turns out that yes, many black (and hispanic) students are afraid to try hard in school on pain of being ostracized by their peers.

There was also an interesting computer game experiment done using purple and green employees. You can read the specifics of the experiment yourself, but suffice it to say that a catch-22 quickly developed. The Purples stopped trying harder because they thought it wouldn't do any good, and the employers stopped hiring Purples because they wouldn't try harder.

Finally, the most controversial part of the article (for me anyway). You may have heard about this experiment, where resumes were sent out - some had "black sounding" names like Jamal and Ebony, and some had "white sounding" names like Kristen and Brendan. The "white sounding" names got a much higher callback rate. I have a little issue with this experiment. Did all the white sounding names sound like Kristen and Brendan? Were I an employer, and I received a resume from an Earl or a Cletus - which are also "white sounding names" - I must admit that I might be loathe to give a callback to them either. To me, these names do not reflect race; they reflect culture. I for one have made no qualms about the fact that I detest these ridiculous faux-African names that black parents have been giving their children for the last 30 years or so - the name Shanequa tends to be an archetypal example. The record holder in the annals of my memory continues to be a high school football player from the Sacramento area whose first name was Syd'Quan. Now, for all I know, Syd'Quan could be the greatest, nicest guy you ever could meet, but his name could very well turn off prospective employers before they could find out about these positive attributes. You could also be a hard-working courteous person who dresses like a slob or a thug. Either way, a prospective employer is not going to look past the way you dress, just like he is not going to look past your name that reflects a lower-class upbringing, and the lower-class values that unfortunately too often accompany that upbringing.

What can I say? Life is unfair... get used to it.

Good Day to You, Sir