Thread by @SteveEnglishbey

Now. From Mel Siff's "symphony of muscle actions" to a more controversial topic. But is DOES relate to individual and organizational human development.

https://twitter.com/sfchronicle/status/1431282616829767682

Look at these charts and see the changes from 2020 to 2021. There are some obvious changes, i.e., demonstrably fewer whites and Asians in 2021 vs. 2020.

[And keep in mind that this school is and has been one of THE premier schools as regards demonstrated academic excellence]. Why the relatively drastic racial change?

Well, the very simple [and accurate] reason is that they went from a MERIT driven value to a more "equitable" value. Simply put, the assessment as to who the school should allow to enter the school was fundamentally CHANGED.

Meaning that rather than take kids ---REGARDLESS of race, ethnicity, or gender-- on how well they graded out on objective measures like test scores, they instead chose a lottery wherein ANYONE, regardless of testing, could enter the school.

Why the change? Well, simply put ,this is twitter after all!] , the main reason has a lot to do with the concept of....."equity." [I'll return to this idea shortly].

But, leaving aside this concept [for the moment], let me engage in a bit of a thought experiment.

Let's say that I am the CEO of an athletic organization. As such , what is my MAIN goal might one presume? Well, I think most would argue that my main focus would be that of trying to develop ways to maximally promote those things which would yield optimal player DEVELOPMENT.

THE basic question: What do I need to do that will yield the greatest degree of potential TALENT? And how do I go about quantifying and qualifying that talent?

Obviously, to do this I need very qualified coaches that can assess this talent equation, AND I need ways to try to quantify this talent.

Leaving aside the importance of finding good coaches to good qualitative assessment, I certainly need and very much can use quantitative assessments.

In the baseball/softball context, these kinds of quantitative assessments include things like, batting average, on base %, Hr's, pitching velocity, spin rates, strike outs to walk ratios, etc., etc.

And whether it is qualitative [via scouts etc qualitative analysis] ,or quantitative analysis, NONE....ZERO....of these assessments have to do with .....race, gender, ethnicity, etc.

And why in the hell would they pertain to these utterly irrelevant/arbitrary categories? They do not have a DAMN thing to do with my basic goal of optimizing development of players.

In THIS context, I could give a fuck as to what color these players are. Or where they come from. What the hell do I care? I'm trying to develop an organizational ethic based solely on MERIT!!

Well, yes, that all sounds well and good. Sounds much like the basic American traditional ethics of hard work, merit, equality [those who work hard will rise],perseverance, etc.

BUT. Understand your critics are claiming that ALL the things you have cited ----objective assessment via quantitative analysis, hard work, "grit", deferred gratification, merit, indeed ANY objective standards, are all .....RACISTS CONSTRUCTS.

And, as such, the only legitimate remedy is ....."equity."

In the current context of "woke" extremism , "equity" essentially means .....equality of .....OUTCOMES.

Thus, to get back to the Lowell ex., the fact that Asians have consistently outperformed all other groups is , from an "equity" perspective, UNACCEPTABLE. And, from that perspective , RACIST!

Equity demands that --in the specific case of Lowell--that they should , in effect, LOWER, their standards, so as to accept ...via a lottery...who can go to that school.

Now, to finish this thought experiment, imagine me as the CEO charged foremost with developing talent [understanding that my investors are giving me money based on their assessment of future returns].

And ...instead of basing my calculations on things like merit and objective analysis [that are bereft of considerations of race, ethnicity,etc] , I instead rely on measurements based on ..."equity."

This kind of analysis [an equity ----"equality of outcomes"] .....applied to the the NFL or NBA could be a big problem.

Why? Well think about it. Equity demands "equality" based on..."disparate impact."

So, in the NFL and NBA , according to equity theory and it's legal cousin "disparate impact" analysis, both have FAR more black players [about 7% of the pop.] vs. white males [about 30 % of the pop.].

Is THIS kind of utterly superficial, irrelevant, IGNORANT, non-meritorious judgements that we, as a culture, should use to judge talent?

You think China----our greatest rival--is using this standard!!!????

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