Comment by XCabbage
3 months ago
Indeed, it didn't have race-based questions, which I don't think anyone claimed. Rather it had totally arbitrary questions, not related to merit in any plausible way, and a score cutoff that made it highly likely you'd fail if you hadn't been tipped off with the correct answers.
For instance, there is a 15-point question for which you have to answer that your worst grade in high school was in Science, and a separate 15-point question where you have to answer that your worst grade in college was in History/Political Science; picking any of the other options (each question has 5 possible answers) means 0 marks for that question. Collectively, these two questions alone account for one eighth of all the available points. (Many questions were red herrings that were actually worth nothing.)
But then the same blacks-only group that had lobbied internally to get the questionairre instituted (the National Black Coalition of Federal Aviation Employees) leaked the "correct" answers to the arbitrary questions to its members, allowing them to get full marks. Effectively this was a race-based hiring cartel. Non-blacks couldn't pass; blacks unwilling to join segregated racial affinity groups or unwilling to cheat the test couldn't pass; but corrupt blacks just needed to cheat when invited to and they would pass easily, entering the merit-based stage of hiring with the competition already eliminated by the biographical questionairre.
(A sad injustice is that blacks who wouldn't join the NBCFAE or cheat the test, and so suffered the same unfair disadvantage as whites, are excluded from the class in the class-action lawsuit over this whole mess. Since the legal argument is that it was discrimination against non-blacks, blacks don't get to sue - they lost out because of their integrity, not their race, and they have no recourse at law for that.)
See the questions at https://github.com/kaisoapbox/kaisoapbox.github.io/blob/main... or read an account of the story at either https://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/the-faas-hiring-scandal-... (short) or https://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/the-full-story-of-the-fa... (long).
I don't understand how this isn't a giant public scandal. Is there something I'm missing here?
The test wasn't explicitly discriminatory, just the way that it was used. And the way that it was used is disputed. The facts are still being litigated. All the coverage is from opinion pieces or right-of-center newspapers.
https://archive.is/lDyOB
It would also be damning of recruitment patterns across American institutions. Getting ahold of prestigious or lucrative opportunities often requires pressing unfair advantages that other applicants don't even know exist, by design. My personal anecdote: my SAT score was higher than yours (statistically-speaking, this statement is correct 9 times out of 10, maybe slightly less considering the audience); my alma mater's ranking is lower than yours. I was not privy to he means required to capitalize on my performance. No one bats an eye at this; if the guidance of the adults in my life and my own ambition didn't drive me to a better school, that's tough luck. Never mind that the incidence of this sort of situation has a likewise racially-biased bent.
Perhaps if these sorts of tactics, or even just circumstances, weren't so prevalent, then they wouldn't seem like such a good idea to purposely replicate.
No one is gullible enough to believe that, if the alleged is true, it would be the first time that unscrupulous methods were used to advantage a particular group in recruitment for jobs or education, right? Or that, when it has happened, it has been primarily used to advantage black applicants?
I don't think the WSJ was the only place reporting on it, and I don't think the fact that you consider them to be "right of center" means their coverage might be anything but factual here.
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It was a public scandal, which is why Congress passed a law in 2016.
Comments moved to:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42944203
Whose interests would it serve for it to be a giant public scandal? Which of those groups have the resources to make it one?
I’m amazed that no one seems to have been indicted. Was this not fraud?
could equally likely be misrepresentation of the facts given the current climate, judicial courts are important because you have to prove your claims in a rigorous fact finding and disputing session, rather than the court of public opinion