Brown v Board of Education 50 years later.

[Raptorman]

http://tinyurl.com/vplah

But are Black children overrepresented and misclassified? In a 2000 La Griffe du Lion article titled THE POLITICS OF MENTAL RETARDATION: A TAIL OF THE BELL CURVE we find this gem.

With the development of the IQ test by Alfred Binet in 1905, it became possible to quantify intellectual shortcomings. The test dramatically altered methods of diagnosis and classification, and soon became the principal tool for diagnosing mental retardation. By mid-century two of the three criteria for defining mental retardation, cognitive deficiency and age of onset, could be accurately determined, but the assessment of adaptive behavior relied largely on subjective evaluation. Today, the assessment of adaptive behavior still remains fuzzy enough for the diversicrat to work his miracles.

In 1959, AAMD set the IQ threshold for mental retardation at < 85. The civil rights movement of the next decade forced psychologists to rethink this boundary, because half the African American population fell below it. In 1973, responding to this concern, AAMD (by then AAMR) changed the threshold for retardation from IQ < 85 to IQ < 70. The boundary moved south by one standard deviation! The proportion of blacks below the threshold instantly dropped from about 50 percent to 12 percent. Subsequent refinements made it still more difficult to meet the criteria for retardation.

When Binet in 1905 produced the first IQ test, it promised to revolutionize the diagnosis and treatment of mental retardation. A half century later it came under attack for reasons Binet could not have imagined. Could any of the pioneer psychometricians have foreseen Larry P. v. Riles (1979), a California class-action suit that focused on IQ testing of young black children? The court held that IQ tests were not valid for African Americans. It banned California from using the tests for placing black students in classes for the "educable mentally retarded" or equivalent categories on the grounds that the tests were biased. After a series of appeals, the district court ruled that no special education related purposes exist for which IQ tests could be administered to black pupils. Though only a California ruling, the case began a political assault on st andardized testing that has spread beyond the IQ test to college entrance exams, promotional exams and more.

You read that right, to keep from having to classify over half the [censored] in America as retarded they lowered the bar!

[Alex]

It truly is pathetic...

[TheCoon]

Sad to admit, but dumbing down the system for blacks and hispanics has wrecked the public school system in America.

[fjack]

It is not only the school system that has suffered, it is also the work place that has suffered. Look at all the city, state and federal black employees. Have you been to the post office lately, a city hospital, dial 911 for a joke, look at the subway workforce. Picture what the Fire dept. will be like five years from now when they won't have any standards. How about the police dept. that has changed it standards as to allow certain type of 'run ins' with the law to be overlooked. Will they allow gang bangers to become cops? How would you like your neighborhood to be control by bipeds that are incapable of speaking, let alone making any life and death decisions? We cannot not compete if we are obliged to hire things that cannot conform, handle or understand the job that has been handed to them just because they are a majority.

[Alex]

They should not have lowered the standards to accomodate the black population whom half of which had I.Q.s below 85. If you have an I.Q. below 85, then I don't consider you to be intelligent academically, but that doesn't mean that you can't be a good person.

They're just afraid of looking bad. Sorry to say this but you can't deny facts and statistics. Eh, you are what you are...