I'm always talking about individuals,
You are hopping back and forth between statements about individuals and statements about entire races, apparently for cheap rhetorical advantage. Your various invocations of statistical performance "rates" on various standardized tests, graduation numbers, etc. are all statements about minorities
as groups.
Neither did you. You simply assume any variation is due to bias.
I have not made
any assertion about what portion of a given disparate outcome is due to test bias, anywhere in this thread. Have I?
Where I have pointed to bias as a relevant factor, I have provided various supporting facts for such a presumption (suspicious underrepresentation in the upper echelons, history of blatant discrimination, expert appraisal of IQ tests, etc.).
BTW, equivocation is a weak response even when you don't have to tell blatant lies to accomplish it.
I assume the opposite. I don't see how one assumption is superior to the other.
The assumption that the test is unbiased is not supported by
anything, and is contradicted by the facts which support the presumption of bias: the suspiciously disparate outcomes, the history of overt racism, etc. By law and with good reason, the burden is on advocates of any such test producing disparate outcomes to justify its business utility, or scrap it as discriminatory.
If a test is biased, show me how.
Tried that with the IQ test, to no avail. So, too late. I've already written you off as a bigot, and so reject the implied standard of debate.
Furthermore, the difference in performance between the races shows up too often to be simply dismissed as due to bias without some evidence.
In the first place, most of the instances of disparate outcomes you cite (IQ, SAT, etc.) are well-known examples of culturally biased tests to begin with.
Yes, I am only concerned with the effects of policy on individuals, not "populations" which are really nothing but somewhat random groupings of individuals.
There's nothing "random" about it, unless you are going to argue that races do not exist.
As you yourself have pointed out, individual variation is going to outweigh the variation between these racial groups anyway; so what's the point?
For individuals to be treated fairly, and not discriminated against because of their race. If individual variation truly outweighs interracial variation, then an unbiased test will produce an outcome that is only mildly disparate. To get a strongly disparate outcome, you have to use a biased test that will dampen the individual variations and exaggerate the racial component. Thus, when strongly disparate outcomes are observed, the presumption is that the test was biased.
To observe a strongly disparate outcome, and also insist that the test was unbiased, is to assert that individual variations are dominated by group variations. You can't have it both ways.
Is race an important factor in human endeavers, or not?
The relevant thing here is that
racism is an important factor in human endeavors, which makes race an important consideration regardless of what the actual, innate variations in ability or whatever might be.
Our Declaration of Independence boldly declares that all men are created equal. Not that every race is equal, but rather every man.
And the Constitution goes on to define a certain race as unequal, and our nation proceeds to treat individuals from that race on that basis for generations. Even after the Constitution is fixed in this respect, overt, systematic racial oppression is applied to these races for many more generations. This is what actually occurred.
Any policy that treats individuals differently based upon their ancestry is wrong and a violation of our fundamental human rights.
For example, an employment test that is biased in favor of takers from a particular ancestry? That would be wrong and a violation of fundamental human rights, no?
And since you've invoked the founding documents and legal principles, I'll remind you that the law states that the burden is on defenders of tests which produce disparate outcomes to justify their business utility. In accordance with these lofty principles, you are required to demonstrate exactly why this test can't be scrapped or replaced with a test that does not produce disparate outcomes.
So those who disagree with you or have a different philosophical viewpoint are suffering from some form of pathology.
No, just those who become bigots for a particular inanity.
Although I'd say that most people who post here, as well as a good portion of the mods, are suffering from various social pathologies.
Such an arrogant sense of superiority, makes me wonder who's the narcissist around here....
Here's a hint: it's the ones who are blithely indifferent to oppression of others - and overtly supportive of it when it benefits them - and that advance ridiculous fictions in vain attempts at appearing high-minded.