From: gln@cs.arizona.edu (Gary L. Newell)
Newsgroups: rec.sport.basketball.college
Subject: Re: Prop 48...
Date: 24 Jul 92 21:57:25 GMT
Organization: U of Arizona CS Dept, Tucson

In article <1992Jul24.185846.14062@jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu>, u_nique@jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu (Jerray Wei) writes:
>I don't buy any of this culturally biased stuff either.  People have advantages
> and disadvantages wherever they come from, but the basic skills needed to
> survive in this country don't change.  You need to be able to add 1 + 1,
> or if you aren't great at that, you need to be able to write proper English,



 Since I've had an opportunity to witness what I perceive to be your ignorance
when it comes to the issue of cultural bias before, I thought it might be
nice to try and point out what I feel are the flaws in your "logic" with respect
to this "culturally biased stuff". 

 Now let's see, you start out with the stmt, that "the basic skills needed to
survive in this country don't change" with respect to where an individual
comes from. Do you really believe this? Do you think that the basic skills
required of say a rural Arizona native American are the same as for a
middle class wasp in say the suburban northeast? Do you honestly think that
the day to day problems of an inner-city african american are so similar
to those of say a white southern baptist in rural Georgia? How about the
different experiences of a female and male in this country - they result in
no measurable difference in terms of "needed survival skills"? 

 You claim that all that is needed on the quantitative portion of the exam is
 "to be able to add 1 + 1" - really? How many questions on your SAT 
consisted of an isolated mathematical formula which simply needed to be
solved? If memory serves me, all of the formulae I needed to solve were
put in the form of "real-life" problems - whose "real-life" becomes an
important issue when looking at cultural bias. 

 You speak of needing only to know how to write in "proper English" but
seem unable or unwilling to recognize the obvious bias in that statement
itself. Whose "proper English" Jerray? Do you beleive that the language
used by inner-city youth is insignificantly different than that used by
middle-class youth in suburban areas? How many inner-city blacks do you
think are on the committees which design the questions for the SAT? How
many inner-city Hispanics? Native Americans?  I dare say that if an SAT
test were to be designed around the culture of the low-income, inner-city
youth, then results on such an exam would be significantly different.

 In order to believe as you do, one would need to deny that there exist
significantly different sub-cultures in today`s america. One need not
travel to DC or South Tucson, or an Indian reservation to realize that such
a belief is ill-founded and seemingly ignorant of the reality of today's 
america. 

 I suppose one could say "differences exist but they are insignificant
with respect to test results". If so, then the direct implication is that
african americans, and native americans and hispanic americans (to name a few)
are somehow inferior to white americans in terms of intelligence, as a race
since after all, they score *significantly* lower on tests such as the SAT.
Now if you believe that, then so be it, you are by definition a racist (you
may not burn crosses on your black neighbor's lawn but you do believe that
one or more races are inferior to one or more others). 

 If we agree that low-income youth are frequently given inferior educations
in the US, then we need to realize that their "culture" is different than what
we view as the "norm" or "proper" and we need to measure based on what
is truly is their norm and what experiences and behaviors are an intrensic
part of their culture. Unless we do, then we test with a bias which seems to me
to be normed on middle/upper class white predominantly male america.


					gln