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Nathan Cofnas and accusations of racism — 26 Comments

1. DEI kills, Jason Arday found dead.

2. And yep…looks like Arday has rewritten his last chapter. No happy ending to this story…probably never could have been.

3. Even if Cofnas is or has been racist, it doesn’t change the fact that what he wrote and exposed about Jason Arday was wrong.

4. I listened to much of the first clip. Cofnas doesn’t sound “racist” at all. He’s dealing with facts.

   @John, 4:52 p.m.: Why was exposing Arday “wrong?” Or did I misunderstand your comment?

5. Grok, ol’ sidekick, did Rev Wright say black children’s brains are different than European children’s brains?

   Grok snippets:

   Yes, in a 2008 speech, Rev. Jeremiah Wright described differences in learning styles between African/African-American children and European/European-American children that he linked to left-brain vs. right-brain cognitive approaches.

   In his April 27, 2008, address to the NAACP in Detroit, Wright said (paraphrasing and quoting from contemporaneous reports and transcripts of the speech):

   • European and European-American children “have a left brained cognitive object oriented learning style,” which he described as logical, analytical, and focused on learning from objects. He noted that the U.S. educational system was largely based on this.

   • African and African-American children “have a different way of learning. They are right brained, subject oriented in their learning style. Right brain that means creative and intuitive.” He said they learn from a subject/person rather than an object, and linked this to oral/creative cultural traditions.

   Rev Wright said “different does not mean deficient” – and tried to explain why “..black kids wouldn’t stay in their place. Over there behind the desk, black kids climbed up all on them. Because they learn from a subject, not from an object. Tell me a story. They have a different way of learning.”

   That speech – Jeremiah Wright Speech to Detroit NAACP Dinner. I’m not sure if I had ever heard a racist speech before that night.

   So, Nathan Cofnas is accused of racism because he ‘..argued that in a strict, systemic meritocracy, Black professors would “disappear from almost all high-profile positions outside of sports and entertainment” due to what he asserted were genetic differences in intelligence.’ Capitalizing black is also racist, IMHO.

6. Jason Arday found dead at 3pm Friday in Battersea, London.

   The weird mourners — do they have their DEI martyr?
   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWt06TjAisA

7. “if universities are to successfully fulfil their truth-seeking mission, academics’ right to explore offensive or controversial topics must come before considerations of hurt feelings.”

   That would be true, if universities were the least bit interested in truth, rather than in indoctrination.

   Rev Wright’s assertion fails the ‘results test’. Overall, Africa is a basket case and was so long before the arrival of Europeans.

8. @Kate: I listened to much of the first clip. Cofnas doesn’t sound “racist” at all. He’s dealing with facts.

   Here’s the line which got Cofnas in the most trouble:
   _____________________________________

   Under a color-blind system that judged applicants only by acadmic qualifications blacks would only make up 0.7% of Harvard students.

   –Nathan Cofnas
   _____________________________________

   Given the disparity between black vs white/Asian SAT scores* I wouldn’t be at all surprised if that were statistically true for whatever reasons.

   Yet that can’t be said without cancellation.

   Why?

   *https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=171

9. It is obvious apartheid actually worked. But our suicidal empathy has doomed us all. Race realism at this point cannot save us.

10. huxley:

    But Cofnas didn’t make up that line. It was Harvard’s statistic; he merely quoted it.

11. @neo: But Cofnas didn’t make up that line. It was Harvard’s statistic; he merely quoted it.

    That’s no excuse. 🙂

    True, but Cofnas highlighted it in an anti-DEI context.

12. huxley

    Here’s the line which got Cofnas in the most trouble:
    _____________________________________

    Under a color-blind system that judged applicants only by acadmic qualifications blacks would only make up 0.7% of Harvard students.

    –Nathan Cofnas
    _____________________________________

    Given the disparity between black vs white/Asian SAT scores* I wouldn’t be at all surprised if that were statistically true for whatever reasons.

    neo

    But Cofnas didn’t make up that line. It was Harvard’s statistic; he merely quoted it.

    Here is some supporting evidence, from the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education.
    The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education:The Widening Racial Scoring Gap on the SAT College Admissions Test

    If we raise the top-scoring threshold to students scoring 750 or above on both the math and verbal SAT — a level equal to the mean score of students entering the nation’s most selective colleges such as Harvard, Princeton, and CalTech — we find that in the entire country 244 blacks scored 750 or above on the math SAT and 363 black students scored 750 or above on the verbal portion of the test. Nationwide, 33,841 students scored at least 750 on the math test and 30,479 scored at least 750 on the verbal SAT. Therefore, black students made up 0.7 percent of the test takers who scored 750 or above on the math test and 1.2 percent of all test takers who scored 750 or above on the verbal section….

    In a race-neutral competition for the approximately 50,000 places for first-year students at the nation’s 25 top-ranked universities, high-scoring blacks would be buried by a huge mountain of high-scoring non-black students. Today, under prevailing affirmative action admissions policies, there are about 3,000 black first-year students matriculating at these 25 high-ranking universities, about 6 percent of all first-year students at these institutions. But if these schools operated under a strict race-neutral admissions policy where SAT scores were the most important qualifying yardstick, these universities could fill their freshman classes almost exclusively with students who score at the very top of the SAT scoring scale. As shown previously, black students make up at best between 1 and 2 percent of these high-scoring groups.

    This was published in 2006. The JBHE had a similar article circa 2000.

13. Glen Loury (Black Economis professor at Brown) once said that he had this deep fear that if a legitimate IQ test could be administered, that blacks would perform poorly. Although I don’t believe that all races and subsets of race have the same median IQ, I wonder what would be the upside vs the downside to having this knowledge. Is it something we should pursue? To what benefit? For the record, I’m ½ English and ½ Ukrainian. (Unusual comb for sure) Does anybody have any knowledge of this topic?

14. I previously commented and got an error message. When I tried again it said I had already posted this comment. Ideas on what I did wrong? If anything.

15. @chazzand: Although I don’t believe that all races and subsets of race have the same median IQ, I wonder what would be the upside vs the downside to having this knowledge. Is it something we should pursue? To what benefit?

    Aye, there’s the rub.

    I’m all for following the data and seeing where it leads, but I do grasp the social concerns of such discussions.

16. chazzand
    For the record, I’m ½ English and ½ Ukrainian. (Unusual comb for sure)

    Granted, there are not a lot of people of Ukrainian descent in the US. I come from an area with a lot of people of Central-Eastern European descent. I worked as an aide in a hospital owned by a physician husband-wife pair who were of English and Ukrainian descent, respectively. Also on the staff were a nurse, the Ukrainian-descent sister of one of the physicians—and her English descent husband. Also on the staff was someone born in Ukraine, who by virtue of working as a prisoner in Germany in WW2 was able to come w his wife to the US after WW2. (He would NOT discuss growing up in Ukraine during the Holodomor.) His daughter married a guy of 1/2 Italian, 1/2 Irish descent.

    Here in TX a neighbor is of 1/2 Ukrainian 1/2 Panamanian descent. I knew his parents well.

    Sum: there may not be a lot of people of Ukrainian descent in the US, but they have blended into the melting pot quite readily.

17. The Armed Forces have been testing recruits for over 100 years. The initial attempt at testing for WW1 had some flaws, to say the least.Race, Region, and Education: An Analysis of Black and White Scores on the 1917 Army Alpha Intelligence Test.

    As noted above, median black scores were substantially higher
    in the North than they were in the South. And as Montagu pointed
    out in 1945, median black Alpha scores in the five highest northern
    states were higher than median white scores in nine southern states.
    The questions posed in this study are why these regional differences
    existed, and what are the implications for the hereditarian theory
    of intelligence espoused by Yerkes and others after the 1917 Army
    testing program?

    Those initial tests had a decided urban/rural bias.

    While the testing of recruits got off to a rocky start, in the long term, testing has had some successes for the Armed Forces.

    For example, testing helped identify who would make a good pilot, regardless of educational attainment. Consider these three examples of high school graduates who became pilots in the Army.

    1. Baseball great Ted Williams (he may have been an obsessive so-and-so who had difficulties when not hitting a baseball, but no one who knew him well doubted his intelligence.)
    2) A guy who married my mother’s cousin also became a pilot with only a high school education.
    3) A generation later, a hometown peer joined the army and became a helicopter pilot. Only a high school education.

18. I suppose this is where we mention Igbo and Shaker Heig. Plus the gap of 400k words. Plus single parent families.

19. It is obvious apartheid actually worked.
    ==
    Worked toward what end?

20. Richard Aubrey
    I suppose this is where we mention Igbo and Shaker Heig. Plus the gap of 400k words.

    While Shaker Heights requested that Igbo come there, Shaker Heights disagreed with his recommendations, so did not try to implement them.

    Fifteen-twenty years later, articles appeared about Shaker Heights which indicate that the black-white achievement gap that Igbo dealt with had not changed. Perhaps Shaker Heights should have tried Igbo’s recommendations. At least Shaker Heights could have then said that Igbo’s recommendations didn’t work, instead of outright rejecting his recommendations without trying them out.

21. Art Deco , apartheid had functioning civilization , for blacks and whites, black run Africa is a sh!t hole by any measure. Of course left run American cities are trying to catch up.

22. Gringo. People have tried to dismiss Igbo and the others i mentioned. Which leaves them with what? Kind of an own goal.

    Gr

23. Art Deco , apartheid had functioning civilization , for blacks and whites, black run Africa is a sh!t hole by any measure. Of course left run American cities are trying to catch up.
    ==
    The functioning civilization antedated apartheid legislation.
    ==
    The core cities aren’t in worse shape than they were fifty years ago and a majority of the black population lives elsewhere.

24. Apartheid was named in the late 40s by the Afrikaner Party ,but existed de facto long before. And yes ,you are wrong on African cities , they are dumps. Africa is now a waste of a perfectly good continent .

25. Was the “right-brain left- brain ” observation meant as a metaphor, or in anatomical terms?

26. Apartheid was named in the late 40s by the Afrikaner Party ,but existed de facto long before.
    ==
    No, it did not. There was a specific set of policy measures adopted after 1948 which had not been in place before. There were two other measures of interest adopted between 1910 and 1948, one which restricted the purchase of land and types of tenure for the black population and one which removed propertied blacks from the common voter roll in the Cape Province.
    ==
    And yes ,you are wrong on African cities , they are dumps. Africa is now a waste of a perfectly good continent .
    ==
    I never remarked on city life in Africa at large, merely that there were cities in South Africa prior to 1948. They did not require apartheid measures to prosper.
    ==
    Africa in general has seen notably improved levels of literacy and public health since 1960, but only slow growth in per capital product.
    ==
    You yapped about core cities in the United States and my remarks were in response to that. R

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