When you watch liberals long enough, one of the things you start to realize is that the most radical ideas don’t take very long to move from the fringes to driving forces in the Democratic mainstream. So when you hear some unbelievably crazy idea on a liberal forum or on Twitter, recognize that in 5 years, you will probably hear Democratic congressmen talking about it. You’ll also see a certain level of resistance to the idea from the supposedly “moderate” Democrats, but the second it can be forced on the American people, most of those people will come on board as well.
Well, one of these crazy ideas is that racism is the explanation if black Americans (or any minority group) don’t measure up to other groups on any kind of arbitrary standard. Of course, it doesn’t work the other way. No one thinks it’s racist that 74% of NBA players are black, but according to the newest member of AOC’s “Squad,” “systematic racism” must be at the heart of any differences on standardized tests or the SAT.
According to Fox News:
Freshman Rep. Jamaal Bowman, D-N.Y., attacked standardized testing as racist. Bowman also shared a link to the National Education Association (NEA) website about the “racist beginnings of standardized testing.” The NEA is the nation’s largest teachers union.
The NEA website lists 1838 as “the beginning” of standardized testing in America in their timeline of the history of said tests.
The NEA page shared by Bowman claims in the first paragraph that “the day’s leading social scientists, many of them White Anglo-Saxon Protestants, were concerned by the infiltration of non-whites into the nation’s public schools.”
Standardized testing is not uniquely American by any means. China holds the oldest recorded use of standardized testing.
The racist beginnings of standardized testing. https://t.co/TIC77KFEBq
— Jamaal Bowman (@JamaalBowmanNY) March 2, 2021
The whole poorly reasoned NEA article can be adequately summed up with this excerpt:
This dictum among universities to identify the brightest students as reflected by test scores did not bode well for students from communities of color, who were—as a result of widespread bias in testing—disproportionately failing state or local high school graduation exams, according to the National Center for Fair and Open Testing, also known as FairTest.
…Today, a reform movement is growing across the country to resist testing abuse and overuse, and to promote authentic assessment.
In some communities, according to FairTest, parents, students, education support professionals, and teachers are boycotting and opting out of tests. Also, demonstrations, rallies, forums and town halls focusing on testing reform have been organized.
Of course, if there is no standardized testing, there is no way to “promote authentic assessment.” What they really mean by “authentic assessment” is that a bunch of liberals assess where people belong based on how much they like those particular groups.
Instead of declaring that standardized tests are bad if black Americans don’t test as well, maybe we should be asking why that is and trying to address the problem so those kids will benefit. For example, maybe we should be asking why Asian Americans are outscoring everyone else on the SAT, including white Americans. Does anyone think it’s because the test is biased in their favor? Maybe instead of saying the tests are bad because they don’t tell us what we want to hear, we should be looking at the highest performers and asking what we can learn from them? Whether you’re talking about a person or a group, that’s how you get better, and playing the victim is how you get worse.
John Hawkins is the author of 101 Things All Young Adults Should Know and you can follow him on Parler here.
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