There’s a difference between “racist” and “biased”. IMO, that’s what Bill is saying.

(To be clear, the difference I’m standing on here is racist implies it intentionally targets one race, biased in this context means while it may inadvertently impact one group, that is not the intent.)

Standardized testing is biased towards those with better educational opportunities….not any particular race. It just so happens one “race” is far more likely to have fewer educational opportunities on average….but that’s not the test’s fault or design, nor the student’s, and is not MEANT to target anyone by race. It just measures what you know….what you’ve been taught.

When it comes to SATs, they don’t take into account the educational opportunities people may not have had, and so aren’t a great measure of a student’s ability to learn, but are a measure of what they’ve learned. As such, they are a good metric for colleges to use in admissions, but are also sorely lacking when it comes to identifying ability. That means they should not be the ONLY measure used in admissions, but are still a useful tool for colleges.

I’m all for color blind admissions, if they measure ability as well as wrote knowledge, finding a way to measure how well they made use of the opportunities to learn they were presented….no matter what their skin color or economic status. So far, I don’t believe any such measure exists.

Really, I’m all for free jr college for anyone. It’s cheap, $150 a semester the last time I went, probably double that now, still a bargain. Most people drop out before year 3, so that’s a great way to allow everyone the opportunity for higher education without the expense…and frees up 4 year colleges to eliminate year 1&2 and teach more people who might graduate.

@newtboy,

One of Mayers examples is calling out headlines about SAT's being inherently racist as false. Isn't that something you've told me you felt strongly about? I know we had discussion on including race in college admissions, and you against a race/color blind admission process as that was too pro-white. Seems it's not wrong on at least that point to say Maher's ruffling feathers with the left?

You mentioned SAT scores, no? They clearly DO benefit one group, rich whites.
You said "If one has a color blind computational method of creating a qualification score for candidates, how do we most fairly use that score to choose candidates." I pointed out that we don't have any such method, offered some of the reasons why the SAT is biased, and made suggestions of some things that must be taken into account to create one.

Edit: any method that ignores the exceptional efforts required in overcoming the pitfalls of being non white in America in order to be color blind, by definition, cannot be used fairly.

Yeah, that's honest, move to a profession where one single specific type of performance is the entire job, then claim it's possible to rate other jobs the same way. If the job can be boiled down to something as simple as how many times you can score a basket in one hour and NOTHING else matters, that works. There are very few professions like that, and educational opportunities should be nothing like that, especially when there's no unbiased test to determine intelligence, educational ability, and work ethic.

Side note: there have been some who suggested affirmative action in sports, requiring a certain number of white players on teams. Indeed, there were white leagues that fought tooth and nail to not let even the most talented non whites participate. Just sayin....

Race is considered, period. The argument is that being non white should be considered as a positive, an obstacle being overcome, rather than a negative, a biased excuse to deny opportunity.

@newtboy
Short sighted tribal reasoning was electing a lying cheeto with anger issues because it wore red.
Fair enough

"Objecting to using race as one of many criteria for admission in favor of a single test that clearly benefits your group..."
I see the misunderstanding, I specifically did not ask for a test benefiting a group, but instead specifically asked for one that did NOT. I'll quote myself again:"a color blind computational method of creating a qualification score for candidates."

Since the school admission examples seem to be encouraging misunderstanding, let's change fields. The NBA draft doesn't come down to a single score, but it does have a best effort by professional experts to select the top candidates based upon ability and projected ability at the sport of basketball. By all appearances, that process could be said to "clearly benefit 'a' group", but because I am confident the process is color blind and selecting candidates based upon ability I like it.

To introduce race as a consideration instead is racism, period. You can argue that fighting racism with racism is justified or even desirable, but at least have the honestly to call it that.

@newtboy said;
"You wish to ignore all racial discrimination and racial obstacles except that single instance you can point to where it doesn't come out in your favor, then suddenly racism IS a problem that needs eradicating...."

No I don't. I never said that, you're the one that said anyone objecting to affirmative action is like that. At least I presume that's what you meant by: "short sighted, purely tribal reasoning"

I question the process for applications for jobs, grants, university/college or other places. If one has a color blind computational method of creating a qualification score for candidates, how do we most fairly use that score to choose candidates.

My view: Sort the candidates by qualification score and take the top ones.

Tell me if I understand your view right or not.
I understand your view as: Some times or to some extent, higher scoring candidates should be disregarded for other lower scoring candidates based upon race.

Please correct me if I misunderstand that.

Also, anywhere else that race is similarly systematically used to discriminate against people should of course be equally corrected. Again, I'm not American, are there other parallel examples of law and process that check for your race and replace you with lower scoring people because of it? You accused me of only looking at "the kind that harms white guys", but the reality is I only know of this example of law and regulation written specifically addressing race as something that must be used to raise/lower the scoring of candidates. Are there other direct examples?

From the outside looking in though, requiring diversity of genders and races by law is the issue.

If we simplify student quality down to only their SAT scores, what is the fair and equitable method of picking the 100 students that get admitted for the upcoming year?

Here's what I think a color-blind non-racist equal opportunity minded admission process looks like. Sort the students by SAT score and admit the top 100.

Looking at the comments from the left, by example the Daily Show video jabs above, the process I described is considered a rollback of hard fought civil rights.

???

Why is it that the Videosift crowd is generally competent enough to call bullshit on "no, all lives matter"-rhetoric, but not enough to see through this type of nonsense? It's the exact same fallacy - yes, men do suffer in modern society, and yes, white people are mistreated by cops, but that's not a reasonable argument against feminism or against Black Lives Matter.

There's a decent quote by Anatole France on this kind of simpleminded 'equality in name only': "In its majestic equality, the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal loaves of bread." Trying to create equality on paper, and be color-blind or gender-blind or money-blind or whatever you humanist fuckheads are arguing for, just cements the actual inequalities in society, all because you don't want to 'focus on differences'.

If you folks that are color blind want to see in color without spending $400 there is a solution, albeit a very temporary one.

Hit acid.

No seriously. A good friend of mine is red/green color blind and when we used to hit acid a lot in our 20's he could suddenly see every color. He could pick out the red in the sunset, the green of the grass.

These glasses though, I'm gonna have to tell him about them. People spend $400 every day on regular glasses or shit, fancy shades. $400 seems a pittance to see the world as it is meant to be seen.

*promote

My son has red-green color blindness.
I read about these and got them for him this spring---He loves using them---bright sunlight is best---

They're damned expensive, but...

I saw this this morning and nearly posted it. It makes me want to start a charity to provide them for poor color blind people.

In the first image I saw both as matching grey pills the whole time - neither looks even slightly tinted to me. Is anyone else getting that? I have no color blindness at all and the cube illusion works just fine. Weird.

*viral - a campaign for a set of paint colors easier to tell apart for the color blind.
As for the glasses they won't work for everyone - they filter out and remove parts of the color spectrum, to make color blind people see the colors a bit more clearly.
http://enchroma.com/how-it-works/

Tags for this video have been changed from 'vsauce, perception, color, blind, questions' to 'vsauce, perception, color, colour, blind, questions, qualia, explanation gap, language' - edited by messenger

His now ex-wife never told him he was color blind.

( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MV_Blue_Marlin ) Turns out it was blue at one point. It has a sister ship called the Black marlin... also orange. (his wife hated him too) =)