Networks for the best jobs are not a myth…and aff action programs don’t cancel their impact. A story from a few years back (I cite in my book but don’t have the link in front of me), found that up to 45% of new middle management and above jobs post-recession (2009 recession) were being filled through letters of reccomendation from existing emplyees on behalf of aspiring employees, and that this disproportionately harms POC, women of all colors and even working class white guys who didn’t go to the “right schools.” Companies even pay bonuses for internal recruiting and that favors white guys from upper middle class backgrounds. Other studies have found similarly over the past decade. These networks even exclude POC from the best blue collar jobs, not just corporate types.
As for test prep, yes there is free prep but test prep does not cancel out years of unequal resources and unstandardized curriculum, or unstandardized family economic profiles. If test prep actually could make the difference, that would just prove even more the absurdity of the tests as an indicator of real ability. And of course they are absurd indicators. Only about 11% of the difference between any two students in their first year of college, for instance, can be predicted by SAT scores…they are useless and college admissions should not be viewed as a trophy for your prior performance. Colleges have their own missions and purposes, which include the building of community. They don’t exist to simply aggregate all the Mensa kids in one place, regardless of race.
As for crime rates, you cannot justify disproportionate police violence against Black folks with that argument. All studies show that even after controlling for crime rates at the precinct level, stop and frisk and use of force is disparate against Blacks. I have cited these studies with links in prior pieces here at Medium. If you were a person of integrity you would go find and read those pieces but of course you will not. Fact is, to use crime rate differences as an excuse for what police do in any given interaction would literally allow you to justify any level of depravity against Black people…so long as the actions line up with some aggregate crime rates you can say “no big deal.” That’s sick. By that standard, since all (or most all) the crime in Black neighborhoods in Birmingham in the early 60s would have been committed by Blacks, since that’s who lived there, nothing Bull Connor’s cops did to Black people would be evidence of racism to you. You use statistics to justify your own racial hostility to Black communities. ANd you don’t use them very well. But thanks for sharing.
