Lowest Rung Problem with No Good Solutions

George Rebane

To solve a problem, first you need to correctly define it.

The 1aug22 WSJ had an entire section that examined ‘Why Black and Hispanic Workers Get Stuck on the Lowest Rung’.  In these pages we have covered related aspects of this issue over the years.  Last year noted scholar and political scientist Charles Murray (reviled by progressives) published Facing Reality: Two Truths about Race in America (2021), which I reported on extensively in ‘Equity Denies Reality’.

The WSJ looked at the lowest rung problem from several angles, with lots of stats showing that the country’s 12.4% Black population is not matched in the 8% of entry level jobs held by Black workers.  Apparently, in the literature these are called “front line workers”, a politically correct euphemism for those on the lowest rung of the employment ladder.  And very few of our larger companies employ even 10% of Black workers.  From there the record gets murkier with smaller shares of front line minorities being promoted to higher positions in mid-management and top slots in corporate leadership.  The unstated thesis of this reportage is that we are falling short on the equity scale in America’s workplaces if we don’t achieve pro-rata population shares of Black and Hispanic workers at each level on the corporate ladders.

Unfortunately, these analyses all ignore some seminal factors needed to understand this employment issue – these being intellectual capacity and intellectual ability.  All the articles in the section make the tacit but questionable assumption that all people have an equal intellectual capacity from which, through education and training, various intellectual abilities can be acquired.  Everyone having equal intellectual abilities flies in the face of government data as reported by Charles Murray and others.

It should be clear that an individual’s capability to acquire intellectual abilities is determined by his intellectual capacity.  Intellectual capacity, also known as ‘cognitive ability’, has various metrics, the most popular being IQ now suffering from bouts of political correctness.  Over populations consisting of all racial and cultural cohorts, average IQ has been normed at the average value or mean of 100, with a standard deviation of 15.  (In a bell curve 68% of the distribution lies between +/- one standard deviation of the mean.  That means that 68% of humans have an IQ ranging from 85 to 115.)

The figure below is from Murray’s Facing Reality.  As can be seen, there is a relative paucity of ‘Latin’ and ‘African’ people, i.e. workers overall, and of those even fewer in the higher cognitive ability (intellectual capacity) region.

This data says that if pro-rata equity is going to be enforced, then companies will need to hire and promote minorities who do not measure up to the existing intellectual standards required to fill upper-level jobs.  The obvious result of that is an expected decline in corporate performance wherever such mandates are implemented.

The woke extremists will continue to claim that there is no difference between cognitive abilities based on race, that the government and academic data is somehow biased and deficient.  But the reality is overwhelming when we take in the K-12 academic performance of the various races cum cultures.  Blacks and Hispanics continue to perform significantly lower than the Asians and European, that happens to be an easily discernible fact also in the workplace.  One can argue that all this is due to the minorities getting the short-end in our public schools, but that is not a factor in the present discussion.

However you come down on our public education and its delivery to, say, whites vs minorities, that is not the point.  We are here discussing ONLY the existential results of the schools’ output as it enters and survives in the workforce.  It would be beyond silly to presume that minority workers as a whole do not bring with them the deficits they demonstrated while in school.  And so far, corporate and government post-school remediation programs have been an utter failure in both their acceptance by the minorities and their effectiveness.

Now that doesn’t mean we should give up and accept race-based promotions or keep the minorities on the low rungs of the workplace.  But it does mean that continuing to do what we have been doing and expecting different results guarantees that we as a society are behaving insanely.  And you can bet the farm that not acknowledging the real dimensions of the intellectual capacities vs abilities reality will continue to prevent us from correctly defining the problem which we as a country have to solve.

Comments

[Scott O]

"But it does mean that continuing to do what we have been doing and expecting different results guarantees that we as a society are behaving insanely."
Oh, but the Dems are hard at work being 'progressive'!
Here's an innovation:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/oregon-scraps-math-english-high-school-graduation-requirements/ar-AAN9Jku
Don't bother to even try to teach them anything - just hand them a diploma.
And they expect the corps and businesses to do likewise in promotions. Just hand it to them.

[Bill Tozer]

Headline quote that has stuck with me for a week.

‘Black kids deserve better than fatherless homes and low expectations’

https://nypost.com/2022/07/30/black-kids-deserve-better-than-fatherless-homes-low-expectations/

[Scott O]

The Five allows a lefty to be on the show - she doesn't disappoint:
“But we don’t have the money,” said Pirro.
“We do have the money!” responded Tarlov. “We print money–”
Yes indeed - we print money. Lots of it. All we need and more. Just print it.
Could have sworn all these illegals were going to boost our economy. But it looks like we'll have to just start printing more "money" to take care of them.
https://www.mediaite.com/tv/lone-liberal-on-the-five-gets-interrupted-by-every-co-host-in-less-than-three-minutes/

[Don Bessee]

Thought it was the onion at first but the teachers unions insanity is racist and fails to deliver a usable education in spite of the outrageous cost per student we pay -

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/careersandeducation/san-diego-schools-say-giving-tests-is-racist/ar-AA10lJW6?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531&cvid=6840d3617aaf4029a3795bc43645a150

;-)

[Scott O]

All the illegals coming in are mostly past the age of going to a school or if they are young enough they mostly speak no English and have to learn that before learning anything else. And of course the left will point to these millions of folk that will end up at the bottom rung of the employment ladder as "proof" of white racism.
White and Asian males that bust their ass to better themselves will not take kindly to other folk considered "under-served" to be given higher paying jobs just so there can be "racial equity".

[Scott O]

Tests are "rooted in racism" ????!!!
Maybe a little drug testing is in order with the school trustees.

[Bill Tozer]

Worst article of all time?

NY Times goes to war against parents.

‘The Times has a long history of striving for excellence, and in this pursuit they’ve outdone themselves with an exciting new entrant in the competition for Worst Article of All Time. Apparently, the Democrats’ strategy going into the midterms is to gaslight their base into believing concerns over their children’s education, wellbeing, and safety during COVID are nothing but an initiation into a dark underworld of cult-like anti-vaccine radicalism. We’ll see how that works out for ’em.’

https://intellectualtakeout.org/2022/08/new-york-times-goes-to-war-against-parents/

[Gregory]

The Critical Race Theory game is simple... if there are disparities by race on a test, the test is racist.

[Scott O]

The parents saw the important people like Obama and Newsom party openly without any masks while their children all had to obey or else.
The left and the Dems can't put that back in the bottle.
There is growing divide between the educated 'haves' and 'have-nots'.
And the interesting thing is the haves will have spending of a lesser amount on their behalf than the have-nots. And once the have-nots go into massive debt with worthless degrees and find the haves making far more money, they will demand the govt pay their debts and somehow magically get their income up to equity with the haves.
We are already far into this nightmare and it won't end well.

[Gregory]

Now, Critical Race Theory is talked about ad infinitem... but not the opposite... Traditional Race Theory.

I'd say the traditional story is that no matter the race, with effort and effective teaching, anyone can learn. I recall Thomas Sowell talking about his surveys of the university library on Friday nights. Black students were nowhere to be seen (much to the professor's personal dismay), there were a smattering of white students and the rest were all Asian.
"They WORK".

[Scott O]

Gregory 6:35 - But noticing it is racist.
Anyway - the Dems will fix everything with some really cool speeches and money give-a-ways.

[Don Bessee]

Ooooopsie just confirmed what everyone already knew was going on and why the kids suffer in the long run -

“We are here. We’re working to be have your back. You need to know we have your backs,” he continued, bragging about how woke school board members are working from the “inside” to advance these radical left agendas.

“And we’re working in the best strategic spot because we’re on the inside or working from the inside. And it’s from my point of view, I’ve spent not quite two years to earn credibility and to earn trust. That is a long, slow process. But I’m not the only one in the state of Florida,” Edwards continued, asserting that there are coalitions “formed to protect.”

He continued, seemingly lamenting that too many teachers and administrators and the “machinery” have accepted all of the pro-students and pro-parent standards embraced by the DeSantis administration. However, he said school board members such as himself are “not accepting” it anymore

DeSantis-backed school board member Bridget Ziegler, wife of Republican Party of Florida Vice Chairman Christian Ziegler, is among those on that particular school board and told Breitbart News that Edwards is among those who demonizes parents for voicing their frustrations.

“Tom Edwards and Radical Liberal Activists push a narrative blaming parents for the heated tone at School Board meetings, claim that indoctrination isn’t happening, and call frustrated parents who are fighting to protect their children ‘domestic terrorists,'” she said.

“He and his radical activists proclaim to be part of the ‘moderate majority’ in attempt to fool the public. Meanwhile he’s out there boasting about being WOKE, being strategic and working on the ‘inside’ to form Coalitions to advance his WOKE Agenda,” she added.

In a March interview with Breitbart News, Ziegler, who has remained at the helm of the school board fight prior to the national awakening, explained that leftist school board members across the country adhere to a playbook to roll out their radical agenda items in an attempt to maintain a monopoly in the education sector.

“When you get up there and are elected, you’re automatically part of this association and they tell you that your job is to support the superintendent. [It’s] not about protecting, supporting, representing taxpayers or focus on financial stewardship or … it as very much about no dissenting, very much groupthink, get in line,” she said.

She later told Breitbart News Saturday that “There is a playbook, and, what I think so many people have now realized, as the result of the great parent awakening after COVID, the same playbook that happens in Sarasota County happens across the state and happens across the country.”

“It’s largely based on indoctrinating local policy officials all the way down to professional development [given] to the educators, and that trickles down to indoctrinating our students with a very left, progressive agenda,” she continued.

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2022/08/05/florida-school-board-member-brags-about-members-being-woke-were-working-from-the-inside/

;-)

[Bill Tozer]

The Sandstorm: Do Teachers Really Need A Union?

“But mostly, the convention was all about Randi Weingarten – AFT’s supreme leader and most vocal lobbyist – who said many outrageous things. Before the convention began, she tweeted the results of a poll which shows that “nearly 9 out of 10 teachers say schools have become too politicized.” Not realizing that she’s a big part of the problem, Weingarten claimed, “AFT members were on the frontlines of the first wave of the pandemic, but in many ways the last year was even harder” due to “mask wars, culture wars, the war on truth, or the devastation in Uvalde.”

This has become a persistent theme for Weingarten. In a June press release titled “Educators are at a breaking point,” She said that “teaching has never been an easy job” but the added stress of “the injection of politics into our classrooms has done a real number on our educators.” Talk about projection! As the American Enterprise Institute’s Robert Pondiscio and RJ Martin note, Weingarten’s comments about the politicization of education would be far easier to stomach if she practiced what she preached. Instead, “she routinely utilizes her perch atop America’s second-largest teachers union to opine on virtually every political topic imaginable. For instance, on June 30 Weingarten slammed the ‘extremist right-wing majority’ on the Supreme Court for changing how the EPA regulates greenhouse gas emissions. Six days earlier, she thundered that Roe V. Wade was overturned by ‘extremist judges’ and was ‘a threat to freedom everywhere.’ A day earlier, Weingarten released yet another statement attacking conservative justices for ‘callously and cravenly imposing its view of who has rights’ after they struck down a New York gun control law.”

Weingarten has also urged parents and teachers to vote against politicians who are focused on things like “book banning, culture wars and injecting division into our classrooms, rather than investing in mental health resources, literacy programs and efforts to reduce class sizes.”

Additionally, Weingarten was instrumental in keeping schools shuttered during the time of Covid, even influencing CDC policy on the subject. She has also denied the existence of Critical Race Theory in schools, while having Ibram X. Kendi, probably the most vocal and aggressive CRT proponent in the country, speak at an AFT conference. His talk was touted as, “Hear from Dr. Ibram X. Kendi in this free-ranging discussion with student activists and AFT members on his scholarship and on developing anti-racist mindsets and actions inside and outside classrooms.”

When Weingarten wasn’t talking at the AFT shindig, politicos like Sen. Elizabeth Warren and radical “Squad” member Ayanna Presley took the floor.“

https://blog.heartland.org/2022/07/the-sandstorm-do-teachers-really-need-a-union/
————————
‘Randi Weingarten blasts 'right-wing extremists' for fighting 'culture wars' in conference speech’

The president of the American Federation of Teachers claims students won't become critical thinkers if 'right-wing extremists' have their way

https://www.foxnews.com/media/president-of-the-us-largest-teachers-union-blasts-right-wing-extremists-fighting-culture-wars
——————————
Forget Randi the Ranting Rager Weingarten. Let’s hear from the President of the nation’s LARGEST teachers union, shall we.

‘National teachers union president says 'radicalized Supreme Court' delivered a 'gut punch' against abortion rights, separation of church and state’

https://www.businessinsider.com/teachers-union-president-blasts-radicalized-supreme-court-abortion-gay-rights-2022-7

Hmm. Nothing in her testimony about book learning, reading, writing, or arithmetic. Nothing in her rants either…except school choice, guns and abortions, and we will say gay.

[Scott O]

re Gregory 6:14 - I was astonished decades ago that people would accept as a rule of law that if a company did not have the proper ratio of certain skin colors employed then the company was in violation and could have action taken against it.
They could prove they had taken all manner of steps to be fair or even preferential towards non-whites and it would mean nothing.
It has only gotten worse.

[The Estonian Fox]

"And very few of our larger companies employ even 10% of black workers."

Among the few: All NFL teams; all NBA teams; all 100-meter track teams.

Why are blacks so prominent in these sports? Takes a lot of practice time to be proficient at that high level. Knowing (practicing) body biomechanics must be at a high level. So at least some blacks put in the practice time & have knowledge of body positioning (in football, you have to be at the right place at the right time to catch a ball) to succeed.

Evidently, carrying over the same amount of practice time to the mental aspects of book-learnin' hasn't caught on. Though there are a few predominantly black schools that are high-performers. You would think that the teacher unions would be the first to document the checklists for success of the high-performers, and spread those protocols throughout the land. At least, I would think that.

[Bill Tozer]

The Estonian Fox. Midnight basketball had its successes.

[Don Bessee]

Emery, Emery, Emery?

;-)

[Bill Tozer]

I certainly hope we are the enemy of the teachers. They shut down our schools. They have destroyed learning. Their stupidly is only surpassed by their harm to our children. The lowest rung is the teachers. Educators they are not.

‘Teachers Union President Randi Weingarten Claims Conservatives The Enemy Of Educators’

https://thepoliticalinsider.com/teachers-union-president-randi-weingarten-claims-conservatives-the-enemy-of-educators/

[Paul Emery]

Don, Don, Don?

[fish]

Posted by: Bill Tozer | 06 August 2022 at 08:39 AM

The Estonian Fox. Midnight basketball had its successes.

Not so much in super progressive Brentwood, California.......

https://www.mercurynews.com/2022/08/11/one-dead-three-wounded-in-east-bay-shooting-outside-24-hour-fitness/

[Bill Tozer]

i suppose the only solution the Left has is breaking the law.

'American Bar Association Scraps Controversial Diversity Proposal After Blowback'

Law professors warned that proposal would encourage illegal race discrimination

https://freebeacon.com/campus/american-bar-association-scraps-controversial-diversity-proposal-after-blowback/

[Bill Tozer]

Don't let 'woke math' ruin your child's education

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/restoring-america/community-family/dont-let-woke-math-ruin-your-childs-education?

[Bill Tozer]

Don’t Reform Higher Education. Rebuild It

‘Conservative people have been sending their children to liberal schools.’ But they don’t have to anymore.

https://thefederalist.com/2022/08/12/dont-reform-higher-education-rebuild-it/
————-

[Bill Tozer]

‘Teachers Unions Politicized U.S. Schools, Not Parents’

https://intellectualtakeout.org/2022/08/teachers-unions-politicized-u-s-schools-not-parents/
——————-
$190,000 payout for Antifa-supporting teacher to resign has critics fuming over union clout
Teacher was secretly recorded saying he had 180 days to turn his students into “revolutionaries.”

https://justthenews.com/nation/states/center-square/190000-payout-sacramento-antifa-supporting-teacher-resign-has-critics

[Bill Tozer]

GOOD NEWS FROM THE WORLD OF ACADEMIA

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2022/08/good-news-from-the-world-of-academia.php

[Bill Tozer]

VA Lt. Gov. Winsome Sears: Education ‘Is A National Security Crisis’

https://www.dailywire.com/news/va-lt-gov-winsome-sears-education-is-a-national-security-crisis

[George Rebane]

BillT 155pm - Sears nails it. Thanks for digging it up Mr Tozer.