No, the SAT Isn’t Racist

By John McWhorter. Excerpts:

"lately, evidence has mounted, steadily, that the SAT is in fact useful in demonstrating students’ abilities regardless of their economic backgrounds or the quality of their high schools. Some studies show scores correlate with student performance in college more strongly than high-school grades, and that without the standardized test data it is harder to identify Black, Latino and lower-income white kids who would likely thrive in elite universities."

"the idea getting around in the education school world and beyond that it is “white” to cherish hard work, objectivity, the written word and punctuality."

"this sense of which whitenesses Black people will supposedly struggle with — math, objectivity, etc. — is the seedbed of university departments’ current conviction that attracting more Black majors and graduate students means loosening requirements. Hence classics without Greek or Latin, musicology without playing an instrument and physics without “white empiricism.”

The people promulgating ideas like these are well intentioned. They think of themselves as clearing away outdated notions of merit, which sometimes do bear re-examination. But all of it together constitutes a general cultural mood that alarms me. The SAT as racist, objectivity as white privilege, making academic training easier to attract Black majors and graduate students — there is a family relationship between them. Namely, an assumption that it is graceless or unfair to require Black people to grapple with detail, solve puzzles and make sense of the unfamiliar. At least, we are not to be expected to engage in such things nearly as much as, say, white people.

But what is Blackness, then, if not these “white” things? It would seem that the idea is that we are a Dionysian people, given to intuition over deduction. (Perhaps this also includes a certain relationship to rhythm?) In any case, we apparently shine especially bright when we offer our “lived experiences,” most valuably when they concern our oppression.

I’m sorry, but I find this a diminished, not to mention depressing, and downright boring racial self-image. It just doesn’t correspond with so very much that Black people do, and are, and seek and always have."

"I just cannot square a conception of Blackness that includes those people while asserting that exactitude is white, or that submitting Black people to standardized tests is a racist microaggression. No coherent admissions assessment would use the SAT as the sole measure of an applicant’s potential. However, the elimination of such tests from the process is less a favor to than an insult leveled against Black intelligence. I am glad to see the fashion fade."