http://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/the-dead-end-of-disparate-impact

Contrary to the Supreme Court's assumption in Griggs, the comparative power of IQ extends even to relatively uncomplicated positions requiring modest skills, such as clerical or retail work. What this means is that hiring on the basis of intelligence — as opposed to other, non-cognitive personal attributes or talents — will almost always produce better-performing workers.

As for alternatives to written tests, it is revealing that no relevant research findings were adduced (either by New Haven or in the amici briefs for the city's case) to support the assertion in Ricci that alternative job screens can achieve better results while promoting diversity. Although studies show that written tests of job knowledge are robust predictors of performance in public-safety jobs like policing and firefighting, "assessment center" procedures like those touted in the Ricci briefs rarely achieve comparable validity. And even when such procedures reduce adverse impact, the effects are usually too modest to satisfy legal standards. All told, there is essentially no credible evidence that "better" selection methods — ones that are equally or more valid but have less adverse impact — exist or can be readily devised.

This is not for lack of trying. An entire cottage industry is now devoted to refining personnel selection with the goal of increasing work-force diversity without compromising an employer's search for the most able employees. This quest has spawned a voluminous literature; the basic approach in nearly every case is to de-emphasize the academic and analytic measures on which minorities lag behind in favor of other abilities that yield smaller or non-existent racial differences.

This work has produced uniformly disappointing results. Except in highly specialized circumstances or in staffing for the least competitive jobs, adopting alternative screening methods that minimize the significance of abilities related to intelligence almost always results in the selection of less capable workers. The reason is simple: The paucity of non-Asian minorities in competitive positions reflects real differences in human capital and skill. Thus changing entry requirements to create a more diverse work force, including scrapping existing civil-service exams, will generally not result in a more qualified work force. For now, the diversity-validity tradeoff remains the iron law of personnel selection.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=1987645&forum_id=2Reputation#21027760)

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=1987645&forum_id=2Reputation#21027860)

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1795443

"The combination of well-documented racial differences in cognitive ability and the consistent link between ability and job performance generates a pattern that experts term “the validity-diversity tradeoff”: job selection devices that best predict future job performance generate the smallest number of minority hires in a broad range of positions. Indeed, the evidence indicates that most valid screening devices will have a significant adverse impact on blacks and will also violate the 4/5 rule under the law of disparate impact.

Because legitimately meritocratic (that is, job-related) job selection practices will routinely trigger prima facie violations of the disparate impact rule, employers who adopt such practices run the risk of being required to justify them – a costly and difficult task that encourages undesirable, self-protective behaviors and may result in unwarranted liability."

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=1987645&forum_id=2Reputation#21028252)

most people in a given profession have similar iqs--and EVEN THEN we see how much it matters--but the clustering means it probably matters even more than we think.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=1987645&forum_id=2Reputation#21029959)

edit: nm. i guess this seems obvious in retrospect. how would we even go about measuring the on-the-job performance of 80 iq astrophysicists against their more able colleagues?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=1987645&forum_id=2Reputation#21030066)

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=1987645&forum_id=2Reputation#21049226)

You have to ace the case interviews, but those cases themselves are designed to weedout people without analytical ability.

They always ask for your test scores

This is why the industry will continue to succeed.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=1987645&forum_id=2Reputation#21033779)

CLS needed her LSAT score to keep their median high, so they waved her in.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=1987645&forum_id=2Reputation#28446974)

but I'm not the only one...

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=1987645&forum_id=2Reputation#21049291)

If they just used a intelligence test to hire professors at Penn she would not come even close.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=1987645&forum_id=2Reputation#21049424)

lol. stfu, retard.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=1987645&forum_id=2Reputation#28448880)

http://middleburycampus.com/article/wax-lecture-stirs-controversy/

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=1987645&forum_id=2Reputation#28448844)

http://www.middbeat.org/2013/11/21/today-black-people-are-lazy-and-gays-are-bad-parents/

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=1987645&forum_id=2Reputation#28448973)

http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB110471317183614902

Some Truths About Black Disadvantage

By AMY L. WAX

Updated Jan. 3, 2005 12:01 a.m. ET

Bill Cosby's repeated suggestion that the behavior of some American blacks impedes group progress has transgressed the long-standing taboo against "blaming the victim." Defined by sociologist William Ryan in 1971 as an attempt to explain inequality "by finding defects in the victims of inequality," victim-blaming is virtually banned from polite discourse. The time has come for that to change.

The disdain for anything that smacks of blaming the victim is based on a fundamental confusion. No one can deny that black Americans have endured a history of sustained and grievous mistreatment. Those wrongs have wreaked immeasurable harm. The key question confronting society is not how the harms occurred. Rather, the crucial issue is how to reverse them.

A central tenet of the law of remedies is that someone who harms another person -- the wrongdoer -- must undo that harm. Justice requires that the culprit right the wrong by restoring the victim to his rightful position -- the state he would have enjoyed had he never been wronged. In distinguishing between liability and remedy -- between causing harm and undoing harm -- the law also recognizes that reality can fall short of the ideal. The wrongdoer may quite literally lack the power to make the victim whole. The assailant cannot replace the eye he has destroyed. The murderer cannot bring the dead to life. Full justice for the victim may simply be out of reach.

There is a special case in which the victim's injuries can be healed -- but not, unfortunately, by the culpable party. Rather, in a cruel twist of fate, the victim is the only one who can wholly undo the harm he has suffered from others' wrongful actions. The victim must restore himself to the rightful position.

Consider the parable of the paraplegic. A reckless driver runs over a pedestrian, leaving him unable to walk. The driver pays for the pedestrian's treatment and physical therapy, but recovery will require a long, exhausting, and painful effort. The victim is angry. It's not his fault, so why must he face an overwhelming, uphill struggle? But there is no help for it. Although the driver can and must pay, he cannot guarantee success. He cannot make his victim walk again.

The parable illuminates the present dilemma of black disadvantage. There is no question that the social problems blacks face today are the outgrowth of slavery and gross oppression. Unfortunately, centuries of bias have distorted the victims' behavior and values. Bad habits take on a life of their own, impeding the ability to grasp widening opportunities as society progresses, discrimination abates, and old obstacles fall away. The victim himself has changed in ways that place him beyond the reach of outside help alone.

Enduring injuries to human capital are now the most destructive legacy of racism. Evidence suggests that soft behavioral factors, including low educational attainment, poor socialization and work habits, paternal abandonment, family disarray, and non-marital childbearing, now loom larger than overt exclusion as barriers to racial equality. But society's power to address these patterns is severely limited. Short of outright coercion, it is literally impossible for the government or outsiders to change dysfunctional behavior or make good choices for individuals. No one can force a person to obey the law, study hard, develop useful skills, be well-mannered, speak and write well, work steadily, marry and stay married, be a devoted husband and father, and refrain from bearing children he cannot or will not support. These decisions belong to individuals and families.

The quest for justice blinds us to these hard truths, fueling the demand that those who created the problem solve it. Because the ideal is that society should fix what's broken, everyone wants to believe society can. Indeed, it is often assumed that everything can be made right just by reversing course. If discrimination is the culprit, then eliminating it is the cure. If racism is to blame, purging racism will do the trick. This is the myth of reverse causation.

* * *

The law recognizes that reverse causation doesn't always work. Liability may diverge from remedy. The one who caused the problem cannot necessarily solve it. That something is fair does not mean that it is possible. Others can help, but there are some things people can only do for themselves. What do these insights mean for thinking about racial inequality?

First, accepting a key role for victims does not really "blame the victim" because it implies no exoneration of the wrongdoer. Slavery and discrimination, not blacks themselves, brought us to the current predicament. That means that the government must do what it can to eliminate racial disadvantage. Given the nature of the problem, however, its role is necessarily modest. The key reforms must come from within individuals and communities.

True racial justice may not be achievable. Is it fair to charge blacks with the weighty task of self-improvement when others' wrongs have made their burden so great? The answer must be no. But that doesn't change reality. Just as the careless driver can bankroll recovery but cannot make the paraplegic walk again, the government and society can supply resources and create opportunities but cannot return blacks to their rightful place. Try as they might, they cannot fully restore the victims' capacities. Only the victim can heal himself.

Third, rehearsing the history of racial oppression, although important for moral clarity, is of little use in addressing current inequalities. In seeking solutions, we must look forward rather than dwell on the past because the way out of the present dilemma may not resemble the path in. Trial and error, aided by an open mind and a willingness to do what works, should be the order of the day. Above all, the road to true equality begins at home.

Finally, the persistence of racial disadvantage does not mean that society has failed to do enough. The greatest need at present may not be more government spending and new programs but a conversion experience. The victim must see that, although others have wronged him, his fate lies in his own hands. Justice may be forever elusive, but success is the best revenge.

Ms. Wax is Professor of Law, University of Pennsylvania Law School.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=1987645&forum_id=2Reputation#28448927)

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=1987645&forum_id=2Reputation#28450380)

a lynchmob would be knocking on the WSJ's doors and they'd cave like they scared, little cuckPIGs they most certainly are.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=1987645&forum_id=2Reputation#28450575)

Short of outright coercion, it is literally impossible for the government or outsiders to change dysfunctional behavior or make good choices for individuals. No one can force a person to obey the law, study hard, develop useful skills, be well-mannered, speak and write well, work steadily, marry and stay married, be a devoted husband and father, and refrain from bearing children he cannot or will not support. These decisions belong to individuals and families.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=1987645&forum_id=2Reputation#28450887)