Truth, utility & education

Katharine Birbalsingh, headteacher of Michaela Community School, says the Black Lives Matter movement is a distraction. I think her claim is defensible – albeit because it raises an issue many of us would rather ignore.

The Times quotes her:

The problem with getting angry about racism is it’s distracting. It leaves you with less energy to help you succeed, like working hard.

This alerts us to a nasty conflict – between beliefs that are true and those that are useful. It is true that black people face discrimination: for example, the ONS says that Black Britons earn 7.7 per cent less than their white counterparts even controlling for factors such as qualifications and occupation.

Telling Black pupils this is, however, not necessarily useful. It might demotivate them. Better instead to tell them that they can succeed if they work hard. Sure, even if they do so they’ll face tougher lives than their white counterparts: they’ll be less well-paid, more likely to be harassed by the police and more likely to face abuse, especially if they are women in the public eye. But it is likely that - on average - they’ll have better lives if they take Ms Birbalsingh’s advice than if they don’t.

In this sense, Ms Birbalsingh is right. Racism is indeed distracting. Telling pupils about it is to tell the truth. But not all truths are helpful. We have a dilemma: do we tell young people the truth, or do we equip them to improve their lives? As Hayek put it in 1976:

It is...a real dilemma to what extent we ought to encourage in the young the belief that when they really try they will succeed, or should rather emphasize that inevitably some unworthy will succeed and some worthy fail. (Law, Legislation and Liberty, vol II, p74 in my copy)

This conflict between truth and utility isn’t, of course, confined to what we tell children. We see it in other contexts. For example, people who overestimate their abilities are more likely to get good jobs than those with more truthful assessments of their skills. This doesn’t always benefit them at the expense of the rest of us. It can sometimes be a social good, as Richard Nisbett and Lee Ross said:

We probably would have few novelists, actors or scientists if all potential aspirants to those careers took action based on a normatively justifiable probability of success. We might also have few new products, new medical procedures, new political movements or new scientific theories. (Human Inference: Strategies and Shortcomings of Social Judgment)

Similarly, whilst many of you might think religious belief false, it is useful in the double sense of making people happier and more resilient in the face of bad fortune.

And as Donald Davidson wrote:

Both self-deception and wishful thinking are often benign. It is neither surprising nor on the whole bad that people think better of their friends and families than a clear-eyed survey of the evidence would justify. Learning is probably more often encouraged than not by parents and teachers who over-rate the intelligence of their wards. Spouses often keep things on an even keel by ignoring or overlooking the lipstick on the collar. ("Deception and division", in Jon Elster (ed), The Multiple Self).

Untruths, then, can be useful in many contexts. Ms Birbalsingh’s attitude to racism is thus justifiable – at least for someone in her position.

But, but, but. Isn’t the purpose of education to tell people the truth? The truth, as Rawls said, is the first virtue of systems of thought.

Such a view is naïve. In a capitalist society, the function of schools is not primarily to impart rationality and knowledge. It is to habituate pupils into the ways of capitalism. Schools are, as Louis Althusser said, part of the ideological state apparatus. Within this function, talk of racism is indeed a distraction.

Comments

[botogol]

"the function of schools is not primarily to impart rationality and knowledge. It is to habituate pupils into the ways of capitalism. "

is at the heart of the difference between state and independent schools. the state views education as a tool to change the world, the independent sector views education as a springboard for making a success in the world, as it is.

[CreamOnTop]

In the wider context also charges of racism imply no demand. It's a binary charge you can be a genocidal maniac or someone using the wrong nomenclature for a Chinese meal.

In some ways it makes it easy for corporates and moderates and even some conservatives to support BLMUK - detached from its US context and clear demands.

I think some good may come of it and am not against but will the current profile yield real change?

[TickyW]

On the other hand, a disadvantaged "striver" who fails to receive their just economic deserts due to barriers erected by racism, among other prejudices, may be encouraged to blame themselves for their failure.

The ruling classes maintain their privilege by inducing those without money or power to internalise negative views of themselves and to blame themselves. An example of this is the UK's current social security benefits system, which appears to be built on an assumption that the poor are feckless, lazy, and undeserving ("skivers" in short).

Allowing the likes of Toby Young to claim he deserves his relatively exalted economic and social position because he is genetically superior is another manifestation of how the Right encourages the excluded to blame themselves for their exclusion.

IMHO, these fallacies need to be energetically called out. BLM, in its way, does this and provides a counter narrative to that deployed by the ruling classes so as to keep black people down.

Truth and utility are not as incompatible as Chris suggests (I hope)!

[Ralph Musgrave]

And that's the thousandth article I've read on racism that doesn't bother to define the term.

[Blissex]

«Similarly, whilst many of you might think religious belief false, it is useful in the double sense of making people happier and more resilient in the face of bad fortune.»

There are two main aspects to religious belief, the "church" aspect (belonging to a group) and the "faith" aspect (having metaphysical beliefs).
The advantage of "church" is obvious: they act usually as mutual support group/insurance pools.

That of "faith" is not so obvious, but I reckon it is related to “more resilient in the face of bad fortune”: it motivates people to escape from local maxima in the optimization landscape, often to lower local maxima, but sometimes and spectacularly to higher ones, by making them act in irrational ways.
The rational thing for dissenters was to conform, but (some of) those who escaped to New England won big. The "faith" aspect produces new meme mutations, or "raises the temperature" in what OR people call "simulated annealing".

[E Hart]

It is no distraction - the whole issue is predicated on it. Birbalsingh's response to it is behaviourist window-dressing - a perhaps worthy, but futile response, which manages rather than addresses the issue. If you are not part of the main, you are in trouble and it doesn't matter how many degrees you might be waving around. That's why you find aeronautical engineers serving kebabs and biochemists working in recruitment. Doing your own bit is not enough. Society as a whole is not like music or sport where merit and scope - long denied - now aren't. Discrimination in the wider context is paradoxically only visible by its absence. This is one of the reasons why quotas are a good idea. If the workplace genuinely mirrors wider society, what better reason could you have for engaging with it?

[Sam]

This is absolutly off base - black kids don't need to be told racism exists. They live it. Oppression isn't a truth that needs to be revealed to minorities, it's a lived experience that most implicitly understand and others learn the words and grammer to describe and explain it to yourself and others. Unless you are incredibly lucky or sheltered or privilidged you won't need to be told demotivating truths - they are apparent to you even if it's unarticulable. It's just an absolutely ridiculous comparison to try and make.

A closer analogy would to the argument about sex education. Does telling kids about contraception make them more likely to have sex? Does telling kids about oppression make them less likely to succeed? That's really not the point - it gives them more tools to analyse the world. For oppressed people, maybe it makes them more likely to organise together and fight back. A lack of consciousness in an oppressed group is only useful to their oppressors.

[Blissex]

«more likely to organise together and fight back. A lack of consciousness in an oppressed group is only useful to their oppressors.»

What if the rational expectation is that they will be defeated? If tokenist "meritocracy" however flawed is the only possible escape route for a few from poverty and deprivation, then fighting it is worse then fatuous. Let the "hunger games" continue, managed by Tony Blair and his successors.

But what if the rational expectation is that it is fatuous to fight the oppressors but it is understain or just wrong? Not even trying then becomes unnecessary surrender.

[Dipper]

"the ONS says that Black Britons earn 7.7 per cent less than their white counterparts even controlling for factors such as qualifications and occupation."

I'm pretty sure that you (Chris) posted that there is also a gap between state-educated and privately educated too.

This stuff is complex and I'm not convinced, as in I'm completely unconvinced, that averages help. There are no average white people. Everyone is different. Using a racial average is to say that your situation is somehow balanced by that of another who just happens to have the same skin colour.

[Dipper]

@ TickyW

'Allowing the likes of Toby Young to claim he deserves his relatively exalted economic and social position because he is genetically superior is another manifestation of how the Right encourages the excluded to blame themselves for their exclusion.'

I'm pretty sure that he doesn't argue anything of the sort.

[Dave Timoney]

The problem with Birbalsingh's argument is that it implies an equivalence between the true and the useful: that confidence might be as rewarding as understanding. But is there any evidence for that?

It's easy to find examples of people who have been rewarded through hard work and a refusal to acknowledge the barriers put in their way, but these people are by definition exceptional.

But the argument of the anti-racism movement, like the feminist movement, is not that we should recognise excellence wherever it may flower, but that we should provide equal treatment for the dull & the modest.

The point about BLM is that it is arguing for systemic change, not for the recognition of the occasional superstar. In contrast, Birbalsingh's argument is actually about the cream rather than any minority. She is motivated by class, not race.

[Robert Mitchell]

The assumption of ergodicity, and an ignorance of fat tails, permeate this blog entry.

[The truth]

Actually when you adjust for intelligence there is no evidence of discrimination

We’ve known for a generation that blacks have a mean intelligence lower than whites. So it’s hardly surprising blacks earn less (on average) even on an education adjusted basis.

I’d wager Jews earn a similar sized premium (on average) even adjusting for education.

[Richard]

I don't buy this argument. When injustice is clear then many people react by getting angry.
Anger at injustice is an important motivator for change. If we try to ignore injustice because it helps society run more smoothly, and individuals to accept the status quo because it's easier for them, this is just storing up trouble. Political protests have achieved rebalancing of societal power in the past, and this has been a good thing.

[MJW]

CreamOnTop alludes to an important point; claims of racism can range from egregious wrongs that must be addressed, to trivial, highly subjective (barely even there) gripes like some 'microaggressions'. This is true of all social grievances.

The Grauniad contains endless grievance porn phoned in by professional purveyors who rehash their preferred varieties each week, demanding resources to be allocated in their given direction (as they are paid to do). Society lacks the resources and the cognitive bandwidth to address them all as if they were useful, especially as some make competitive or contradictory claims. Addressing some may even be harmful to overall society e.g. police engagement with criminal gangs. So, it's entirely sensible to judge their usefulness. Throwing resources behind stopping police officers murdering innocent black people is infinitely more useful than throwing resources behind efforts to stop white people wearing cornrows in their hair (especially when the next monster of the week will be white people wearing dreadlocks etc...).

[ltr]

We’ve known for a generation that blacks have a mean intelligence lower than whites....

[ Crazed racism. Here we have definitive crazed racism. ]

[The truth]

@ltr

Even if we don't want to talk about it we have had the evidence for 26 years:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bell_Curve

[Donald Smith]

@dipper

Kind of agree with you for once. Tell people about the correlation between race and wages, but also tell them it is an average and explain what that means.

Also, tell them that working harder will, for most people, allow them to do better than they would otherwise. Maybe you need to work a bit harder than the white guy or the rich guy, but the difference is not such that it makes it impossible to get on.

And tell them that some discriminated against groups earn, on average, more than average. Tell people how white working class kids do as well.

[ltr]

We’ve known for a generation that blacks have a mean intelligence lower than whites....

[ Crazed racism. Here we have definitive crazed racism. Sickening, dangerous, always lying racism. ]

[Paulc156]

A belief that innate differences make some groups inherently superior to others is generally taken to be the core idea of racism. So even if you were inclined to doubt racist explanations for why stark ethnic and racial inequalities persist in employment, housing and the justice system. (Black and Muslim minorities have twice the unemployment rate of their white British peers and are twice as likely to live in overcrowded housing etc). You'd have to be immune to persuasion to also ignore numerous surveyed opinions repeated over time...because we can see from such surveys (European Social Survey) that a significant minority of British people hold biologically grounded, racist views.
https://www.europeansocialsurvey.org/data/themes.html?t=immigration

Then you look at the many field experiments to investigate discrimination in practice, in the job market,for example. Researchers typically send matched written applications from fictitious minority and majority group applicants to advertised vacancies. The responses unequivocally show discriminatory responses.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jan/17/minority-ethnic-britons-face-shocking-job-discrimination

Taken together with the government's own audit of disparities in employment, educational and living conditions you'd need ostrich like traits to question whether racism in the UK is a major problem.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/race-disparity-audit

[ltr]

We’ve known for a generation that blacks have a mean intelligence lower than whites....

[ Yes, be aware of and get angry at such degenerate lying racism. And overcome. ]

[Blissex]

“We’ve known for a generation that blacks have a mean intelligence lower than whites....”
[ Crazed racism. Here we have definitive crazed racism. ]

But that's not racism, it is simply stating a misleading or wrong factoid, that can be used to racist purposes, but not just.

Racism is to make the leap from that misleading or wrong factoid to "therefore we need to discriminate against all blacks, because no black can be better than the average for blacks, and being better is all that matters".

Also discrimination can well be motivated by a sense of racial inferiority, as well as one of superiority, and usually is motivated by neither, simply by opportunism.

While there is no evidence of a superior race (except perhaps the koreans/japanese), or of an inferior race, if one were found I would accept that, but I would still oppose racism.

For example if it were found that, due to the harsh environment they have had to contend with, eskimos were "better" as to "intelligence", stamina, alertness than most whites, being indisputably a superior race, I would anyhow oppose discriminating against whites on those grounds, for example by reserving to eskimos the vote, or entry to Oxbridge, or election to the Commons, on at least three grounds:

* What matters to "liberals" are individual qualities, not the race averages driving race prejudice.

* As to individual qualities, "racial superiority" is just one factor; even if eskimos were proven to be racially superior to whites, there would lazy eskimos, dishonest eskimos, and conversely motivated whites, honest whites, ...

* Regardless, even members of the "inferior" white race would deserve representation, and the ability to represent others, or to access some educational opportunities because those are rights that should not depend on racial superiority, but on a shared sense of being human, whatever the level of intelligence or resilience etc.

Calling "racism" claims as to statistical properties just devalues anti-racism, because it is so transparently based on prejudice itself.

The main argument is that "humanity" transcends claims of racial superiority, even if they were true.

[Blissex]

«The main argument is that "humanity" transcends claims of racial superiority, even if they were true.»

That "humanity" argument can be based on "reciprocity" (a core human value, and not just human apparently), as in "you recognize I am human, and I do the same to you". Discrimination, whether racial or not, is the partial or complete negation of that.

Or simply on real power relationships: modern democracy is in essence based on the notion that anybody who can shoot with a musket "deserves" the vote.

[UserFriendly]

How about we work at getting to a society where the amount of effort and talent actually does have some effect? All we have now ids an oligarchy reproduction scheme where all that matters is who you know..

[ltr]

“We’ve known for a generation that blacks have a mean intelligence lower than whites....”

[ Crazed racism. Here we have definitive crazed racism.

Get it! ]

[MJW]

@Paulc156

People generally don't have preference to be poor, but they may have preferences for behaviours strongly correlated with poverty. Poverty/overcrowded accommodation issue is correlated with large families and relative economic inactivity by females (crudely: Mum stays at home with 8 kids).

Kids are expensive, the UK has never had intentional policy of subsidising people to have lots of kids they struggle to pay for. A century ago overcrowded, large poor white families were common, now it's rarer (outside the workshy stereotypes on poverty porn TV). Such conditions more predominant amongst immigrant communities who retain cultural preferences.

Race baiting charlatans sometimes ascribe this to structural racism, but the absence of subsidies for large families is universal and predates mass immigration post WW2. There is also some evidence the more integrated immigrants become fertility drops, females become more economically engaged and wealth rises. So usefulness of tackling this 'racism' is dubious, encouraging integration into society/economy that attracted the immigrants in first place is probably more useful.

Other 'structural racism' claims stem from concentration of ethnic minorities in London. Higher cost of living applies to all in London, but if you do UK wide economic analysis London skews racial analysis. Same happens with age cohorts. Ethnic minorities have lower average age than white population, this has major implications for wealth levels, but if deliberately overlook age and all kinds of dubious and potentially useless claims can be made.

[Blissex]

«People generally don't have preference to be poor, but they may have preferences for behaviours strongly correlated with poverty.»

That happens but it is usually related to religious or other metaphysical beliefs, that is people who quite "rationally" maximize other goals than material wealth, e.g. "purity".

«Poverty/overcrowded accommodation issue is correlated with large families and relative economic inactivity by females (crudely: Mum stays at home with 8 kids). Kids are expensive»

Actually for most of humanity's history kids have been *relatively* cheap and the correlation seems to me the other way round: sons (stronger workers) have been the primary retirement (etc.) asset of women, and the more sons a woman has the higher the chances of her being prosperous in older age, in a wide range of situations. Many women stopped having children or so many children when they could build up financial assets for retirement (a lot less risky to life and health than bearing children).

Most women have 3 main options: accumulate pension assets in the form of valuable sons ("tiger moms"), accumulate pensions assets as financial securities ("career women"), or give up on the retirement goal and maximize their reproductive success by having "hot player" sons who have a lot of random children around ("ghetto moms").

In the case of some minorities with limited prospects as to increasing the value of sons as pension assets, limited prospects as to careers for women either, the best option might be to have many children to maximize reproductive success and/or have many if low-value pension assets. This also happened to rich families too when infant and youth mortality rates were high.

«the UK has never had intentional policy of subsidising people to have lots of kids they struggle to pay for.»

But the english elites have had intentional policies of immense subsidies to boost property prices, to protect finance and property jobs, and to subsidise the educational prospects of the middle class (e.g. grammar schools, university grants in the past).

[Dipper]

@ ltr 'We’ve known for a generation that blacks have a mean intelligence lower than whites....'

... and those same measurements show caucasians have a lower mean intelligence than Jews and Chinese.

Personally I don't think much of those IQ measurements. Science is about experiments, and experiments require something well-defined which we can measure with suitable and proven methods. I don't see that 'intelligence' is well defined, and I don't see that an 'IQ test' is telling us anything significant. But, on the other hand, nature doesn't cafe what you or I think. There may be some genes that individually or collectively determine some aspect of brain function. Those genes may be more or less present in some races, or sub-races, or whatever. I don't know. I'm not sure anyone else does.

I don't see why the idea that some races should have a propensity for a particular physical ability is okay, but the notion that some races have a propensity for some mental thing is racist nonsense. Perhaps you could educate me on that.

I'd also say, in passing, quite a lot of Covid 'science' fails the test of being proper experimental science. We don't have a proper definition of what a 'Covid case' is, and we don't have appropriate tests to give us the kind of resolution of the current and past prevalence we would like.

[D]

@ltr the stats discussed are adusted for education etc....

[Blissex]

«@ltr the stats discussed are adusted for education etc....»

But the "tests" are not. Moreover the correlation with the degree of prevalence of "tiger moms" (a cultural factor) is just too striking.

BTW while it is hard for me to accept that there are "superior" or "inferior" races, or claims that if they existed that should matter, I do reckon that there are superior or inferior *cultures*, at least according to some important metrics; to the point that some developing countries consciously tried to adopt even the outer forms of "superior" cultures, like the way businesspeople dress.

As to culture and "IQ"/school tests I have read somewhere the following remarkable points about "social care" children in the USA:

* Black children assigned to white families (read: "mothers") have the same outcomes as white children (see BH Obama).
* The same black children that then are re-assigned to black families (read: "mothers") have a large drop in outcomes.
* If they are re-assigned to white families their outcomes get back to the same levels as white children.
* The same for white children...

Nature or nurture? At the aggregate level nurture seems to do do nearly all the work.

I wish there were more statistics about black children assigned to asian families, or asian children assigned to black families.

[ltr]

“We’ve known for a generation that blacks have a mean intelligence lower than whites....”

[ Crazed racism. Here we have definitive crazed racism.

Get it! ]

[Robert Mitchell]

One lie they told me in school was that more education meant higher income. So I went through 6 or 7 years of post-secondary education, but my market income is way lower than average. I'm just an outlier to be scrubbed from the data to maintain the false narrative, I guess.

[MJW]

@ Blissex

Fertility correlates with economic opportunities for women, when women are able to earn fertility drops. Kids were only cheap when families could generate sufficient surplus to keep them till they could keep themseleves, hence high infant mortaility prior to modern medicine and welfare. People in the UK today are unlikely to be having large families as an economic strategy, even recent immigrants. It's a personal or cultural preference, which is why the Govt's failure to ever subsidise it cannot be racist. Your 'Ghetto Mom' option sounds like those who select a life of welfare dependency and the resulting inequality as an alternative to working.

[Blissex]

«One lie they told me in school was that more education meant higher income. So I went through 6 or 7 years of post-secondary education,»

There are diminishing returns, especially in the UK where they stop at the Masters levels, because employers often reckon that Doctorates confer an "ivory tower boffin" attitude.
What most UK employers want is docile bulk headcount (often offshore or immigrant) for cost-centres or incentive-driven hustlers for profit-centres, and need only a tiny number of "creative geniuses", and those had better be from Oxbridge.

[Blissex]

«Fertility correlates with economic opportunities for women»

And those for their sons, and inversely so: the higher the opportunities the fewer they need children to build pension assets.
"The Economist" once pointed out that for affluent women children have gone from a capital investment to a durable consumption expense in competition with a better car, a kitchen upgrade, etc.

«Your 'Ghetto Mom' option sounds like those who select a life of welfare dependency and the resulting inequality as an alternative to working.»

The "ghetto mom" strategy is perfectly rational if the economic opportunities for those women and their sons are not as good as for other women, and most "ghetto moms" do work, for low paid and insecure jobs that don't allow building up other pension assets.

If you want "ghetto moms" to have a low fertility rate because you want to shrink the growth rate of minorities, offer them the security of good old age state pensions, then most of them will also regard children as expensive durables.
In every country this has been done it has worked very well to reduce fertility rates, from Japan to Italy.

[The truth]

So my original comment was deleted, which shows the lack of commitment to actual truth from the blogger. Maybe it is racist, maybe not, but it is backed by research which I cited

Anyway to reiterate the link between race and mean intelligence has been know for a generation. With whites about average, blacks below average, east asians slightly above, and Jews well above. Here is the book but there are many other studies since:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bell_Curve

Not only is this backed by research and statistics but it explains why black countries underperform too. The data is adjusted for education too. So it’s hardly surprising equally educated blacks don’t do as well (equally educated Jews do better).

I’m also not sure how a higher mean intelligence makes one race superior, in anything other than intelligence. And a mean says nothing about an individual.