I just saw an episode of the GameShow Deal Or No Deal. They had as the contestant Wesley Autrey Sr.
Wesley is famous because, a while back, an epileptic man fell on the subway tracks in New York. Without hesitation Wesley jumped on the man and held him down (the man was having a fit) while the train went over them. Heroic? Yes.
Wesley is Black by the way.
Thing is, I cannot help but wonder whether the fuss being made about this man would be as great if he happened to be White or Asian. I suspect not. America has a thirst for Black Heroes which doesnt just stop with presidential candidates. This is a slap in the face for every White and/or Asian. They are lesser people in the eyes of the very society they created and maintain.
What this does to blacks also is legitimate heroes like Wesley will be degraded - like my lukewarm response to his fame. I dont think I am psychologically abnormal in this way. More knowledgable? yes. Abnormal? no.
A group of people in a "free" country get all the breaks - if they cannot qualify for jobs - we throw out the people who can qualify, not giving a wan-etioted damn about their lives. But lay out the red carpet when it comes to our special group.
Ditto Education.
And to make things worse, our special group commits sky high crime against the rest of us. And they get defended and pampered in spite of it. Crime is not just a simple word - as many benignly benighted suburban Oprah-watching housewives might think. Assault can change a young man or womans sense of safety for life. Rape, even worse. We walk the streets disempowered with our heads down when crime - especially crime from a privileged class - is lauded and accepted.
Now, to repeatedly emphasize - Wesley did a great thing. I dont know for sure if I would have the same response or not if he was of another race. Maybe Im just cynical about heroes. But I suspect I would be more enthusiastic, or at least less antagonistic, otherwise.
Its a defense mechanism. When you understand economics and politics and such esoterica, at least for a libertarian like me - problems in the West come down to underperforming minorities, liberals and feminists. As these folk stymie me at every turn via perversions of law and society - in defense I must, at least in my mind, stymie them. In things that have entertainment value (our love of heroism is at least part entertainment), I will mentally prohibit myself from enjoying it freely. Its a kind of mind-suicide if I do not.
Things arent always fresh to someone who thinks about it. The reason I have to try extra hard to get a good job, is in large part because I am prevented from freely conveying to an employer my innate job skills via Cognitive Tests. A large chunk, over and beyond this, is how I would have to waste 4 years of my life in college because employers are paralyzed at the idea of giving a job to someone without formal qualifications - because they may be open to lawsuits by minorities. Its a truism that Microsoft is not able to hire a college drop-out like Bill Gates today.
Many readers will say I am making too much of it. I dont ask that you share my sentiments - I have my own personal weighing of factors that will differ from others. I only ask that you acknowledge that it is a legitimate point of view.
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Things arent always fresh to someone who thinks about it. The reason I have to try extra hard to get a good job, is in large part because I am prevented from freely conveying to an employer my innate job skills via Cognitive Tests. A large chunk, over and beyond this, is how I would have to waste 4 years of my life in college because employers are paralyzed at the idea of giving a job to someone without formal qualifications - because they may be open to lawsuits by minorities. Its a truism that Microsoft is not able to hire a high school drop-out like Bill Gates today.
I'm not so sure about this. It should be fairly obvious to any employer that someone who is a physics major and has a 1480 combined GRE score is an intelligent person. But employers are looking for that piece of paper.
Even without Duke vs. Griggs Power, I believe it would be quite difficult to get ahead without a college degree. High-end employers will assume that anyone who is a college dropout, who hasn't completed college, or who never attended college is non-conformist and unreliable, regardless of IQ. I think lingering Victorianism and "bourgeois values" pervade corporate America. Businesspeople are not necessarily the rational h. economicus that they are commonly made out to be.
Corporations, in general, are looking for a conformist and someone who they perceive as reliable more than anything else. They want somebody who sees success as earned, rather than a product of genetics and/or social circumstances. If possible, they want to avoid someone who thinks its OK to smoke a joint every now and then (this supposedly indicates nonconformity and unreliablity).
In summary, the biggest obstacle for high-IQ people who don't have the piece(s) of paper to go along with it, is corporate attitudes, not the Duke decision, disgusting as that decision is.
Oops, thats Griggs v. Duke Power Co.
Hmmm...
Firstly - I disagree 100%. Nothing Ive read or considered points towards what you say being a large part of the reason. Anecdotally many Microsoft Employees are millionaires.
Empirically, before the 1964 'civil rights' laws - 90% of large companies used Cognitive Tests while in the 1990's the number had plummeted to 20-25% (according to "The IQ Controversy:The Media and Public Policy" by Mark Snyderman and Stanley Rothman). The degree wasnt a new thing before the '60s so why the flip-flop then?
Note that I havent read the book, so I might be taking it out of context somehow.
You could be right. Employers may be focused on the other factors I speak of because they cannot directly test for IQ, and don't really know what to do when someone puts their SAT or GRE scores on their resume.
In any case, I think both old-fashioned, Victorian-type ideas and newer politically correct ideas are incredibly stupid, disconnected from reality, mean-spirited, and destructive. Victorianism may have been OK for the 19th and early 20th century, and PC for the late 20th, but this is the 21st century. The moralistic ideas of both the Left and social Right are outdated and inferior, and need to be replaced with real science.
Birch,
IQ differences would always be a fault line in society, homogenous or no.
I put my SATs on my resume a few times. Bombed each time.
I figure employers want smarties, but they dont want them to know they are smarties - in other words they want the illusion of control that comes from being the one administering the test and "choosing" the best applicant.
Sigh.
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