The NYT has a long article, To Be Black at Stuyvesant High, on a young heroine of diversity, Rudi-Ann Miller, who practically singlehandedly has kept multiculturalism alive at Stuyvesant H.S. by being one of only 40 African-American students out of 3200 at NYC's premiere exam-only public science and math school.She has also had enough of the grumbling at Stuyvesant that black students do better in the college-admissions game because of their skin color.
Rudi will have to assuage her hurt feelings next year at Yale.
Hey, wait a minute, what kind of African-American girl born in the 1990s is named Rudi anyway? Isn't there some foreign country where "Rudie" is close to being the national nickname?
If you followed the complaints of Henry Louis Gates and Lani Guinier about how Harvard's affirmative action slots tend to go to students who are not the descendants of American slaves (i.e., to Barack rather than Michelle Obama), you won't be surprised to find out from later on in the article that Rudi attended through seventh grade Campion College in Jamaica, a Jesuit school that her father, a Jamaican accounting executive recently relocated to the New York area, calls the finest in that country. (Campion College's website boasts that 14 of its graduates have gone on to win Rhodes Scholarships.)
A commenter notes:
As a Stuy alum who had many Black friends, I find it disappointing that the article didn't inquire further into the community of Black students who do make it to Stuy. While there is of course diversity within the Black community, I can testify that most are either the children of immigrants or products of inter-racial relationships. This is relevant because it shows that many are either of higher socio-economic status, or similar to the potpourri of second-generation immigrants who dominate the school. The real issue is why there are so few from the entrenched black communities, in Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx who aspire to attend Stuy.
One reason is offered in the article:
Sometimes, Mr. Blumm said, blacks and Latinos who do well enough on the entrance exam to get into Stuyvesant are lured away by prestigious private high schools, which offer them full scholarships and none of the issues that even elite public schools have to contend with, like tight budgets and overcrowding.
By the way, is this the first statistical graph to be published in this century where blacks are represented by the color black? I thought there was some sort of Rule of Randomizing colors where one one graph blacks are, say, white, and whites are brown, and Chinese are green, and Mexicans are red, and then on the next graph blacks are blue, whites yellow, Asians purple, and Latinos white? I dunno, this graph could be setting a dangerous precedent by making it easier for readers to make sense out of racial data.
Posts
97 comments:
"As a Stuy alum who had many Black friends"
One is generally only friends with people the same age. If there are only 40 Blacks in this 9th-12th grade school, that means ~10 per grade, vs. 790 non-Blacks per grade.
If a person has "many" Black friends at such a place, they are fetishizing interracial friendship, seeking out Blacks to be friends with, rather than letting it happen organically.
I guess that makes this commentor with "many" Black friends a bone-a-fide Good Person, eh?
Now, how would those private schools know what those minority students scored on the entrance exam. I'd be surprised if kids of any background who were doing that well weren't already attending private elementary schools.
As for Rudi-Ann, how did her father come by the last name Miller? Not a typical name for an ex-slave owner.
And what about that entrance exam. Is it more challenging that the SAT? Could it be used as a SAT replacement?
I laughed at seeing Fernando Santos's story illustrated with a photo of the subject in the Modern China classroom amid blurred out faces
The meritocratic rat race, it just brings a tear to one's eye. Or else!
Am I right to infer from the graph there that there are only ~750 Whites at the school today?
This being NYC, deduct the inevitably-large-share of Jews, and White-Christians may only be in the 15% range at the school. Yikes!
Why do upper middle class white families in NYC like private school above every public option?
Half Sigma gave some reasons why there aren't many Jewish students at Stuyvesant. Summary: most of the Jews who live in the city (suburbanites aren't eligible) are either (a) wealthy (kids go to private schools); (b) young college graduates (they move to the suburbs when their kids start school); (c) Orthodox/Hasidic (kids go to religious schools); or (d) prole (kids can't pass the entrance exam).
"As for Rudi-Ann, how did her father come by the last name Miller? Not a typical name for an ex-slave owner."
I've met a black person by the name of Miller. It is not a common black name by any stretch of the imagination, but not unheard of either.
It looks like the school is predominately approximately 70% Asian in NYC where they comprise only 11.8% of the population.
The opportunity lies open for anyone willing to write "Unpacking the Invisible Backpack of Yellow Privilege" to explain this disparate impact. Obviously these largely poor to middle-class recent immigrant family Asians are unfairly benefiting somehow.
On black Millers in the NBA
andre miller
oliver miller
As I noted at Siggy's, it's quite possible that a non-trivial percentage of the Asian students at Stuyvesant are half-Jewish.
From the article:
A co-worker, also black, “said the exam is built to exclude blacks because it’s heavy on math, and black people can’t do math,” Mrs. Miller said.
Wow. Racial reality pierces the veil at the New York Times.
Siblings Reggie and Cheryl Miller
Her mother, Annmarie Miller, a nursing assistant at a hospital in the Bronx, recalled a cousin’s reaction when she mentioned Rudi’s pick: “You have to be Chinese or Indian to get in there.”
About 10-15 (?)years ago, a bunch of black profs at Harvard came together to face an unpleasant fact: more than 2/3 of their black students were 1st or 2nd generation Caribbean or African immigrants. That is, most of the beneficiaries of affirmative action were not descendants of American slaves, thus undermining the whole premise for AA.
"it's quite possible that a non-trivial percentage of the Asian students at Stuyvesant are half-Jewish."
'08 Stuy grad here. I don't have access to the relevant hard data, but I can assure you that the vast majority of Stuy Chinese+Koreans are fresh-off-the-boat types from Flushing or the various Brooklyn Chinatowns such as Sunset Park. Few multiracial specimens in evidence.
"I've met a black person by the name of Miller. It is not a common black name by any stretch of the imagination, but not unheard of either."
Not exactly what I was getting at. There are blacks with all kinds of last names not derived from former masters. Miller is often a German name which would enhance ability to do math in a subpopulation not known for excelling in this area.
Cromwell shipped a couple thousand Irish slaves to Jamaica and that's where the name Miller probably comes from. I've never been to Jamaica but from what I understand they seem to love the Irish.
The most striking thing about that graph is the inverse relationship between white and asian admission.
A real zero sum game.
You still have 'selective entry' high schools in the USA?
In Britain we had selective 'grammar schools' - which did a damn good job educating poor but intelligent working class kids, until the Labour Party destroyed them in the 1970s - the only effect was to wreck working class life chances whilst benifitting private schools.
The model the socialist wreckers chose, ironically, was the 'typical' American high school.
"The most striking thing about that graph is the inverse relationship between white and asian admission.
A real zero sum game."
Perhaps the whites can afford private schools that get them the results they want. You'd best remember that whites in New York are going to be disproportionately Jewish. They're a smaller population to begin with so if these students who certainly aren't getting dumber were going elsewhere or living elsewhere that'd explain the changeover just as nicely.
Wiki covers Stuyvesant High and the entrance exam that's used for admittance to several of their specialized high schools pretty thoroughly. Lo and behold, there are test prep courses for the exam which does look a lot like an SAT type test.
Even more important, had most of iSteve readers been living in NY as 8th graders, we all probably could've tested into one of the slightly less competitive schools. ;0)
OT
More misallocated resources:
Obama announces 'African-Americans for Obama' in 2012.
First a floundering FIRE economy, now this. Are there actually any Blacks who don't plan to vote for Obama anyway?
He could have called this effort 'Let's Stick it to Whitey Again in 2012'. Not sure why he didn't.
If New York has maintained a truly race-blind admissions policy (and I still have my doubts), then I give them a lot of credit for holding firm against the "spirit of the times."
"But, my guess is that this was just an elaborate framing device to write an article that in effect says: Oh my God, LOOK AT ALL THE ASIANS!"
Bravo.
"A real zero sum game."
Affluent white kids get admitted or could get admitted but parents are dead set on sending them to one of the many elite private schools in NYC.
A more complete way to look at things is a lot of whites are choosing not to go to Stuy.
Is it possible that eligible white students simply don't want to go to such an Asian-heavy school? Anecdotal evidence suggests that possibility.
No one ever seems to notice that whites are suffering as well. Look at the upswing in Asian admissions and the dropping share in white admissions. If you add to the hart omitted the "Jewish" label, and my guess is that Anglos are about as rare at Stuy as Hispanics.
re: "African-Americans for Obama"--reminds me of the Saturday Night Live bit, How's He Doing
to one of the many elite private schools in NYC.
you're talking super wealthy here - but I know someone who makes high six often with bonuses, 7 figures and lives in NYC - they send their kids to one of public schools you have to test into - and lets not forget the carved out elite public school districts on the upper west side, park slope in BKLY, etc.
we had selective 'grammar schools' - which did a damn good job educating poor but intelligent working class kids,
Peter Hitchens often writes about this. The left's purpose isn't to help anyone but themselves, that should be obvious by now.
What will be the greatest irony?
1. That egalitarianism leads to importing millions of immigrants, which then goes on to show the falsity of egalitarianism?
2. That believing in Darwinism may be a worse Darwinian survival strategy than not believing it?
How long until Holder's justice department decides that mentioning the existence of affirmative action around a potential beneficiary becomes harassment or contributing to a hostile environment? Pretty much every prominent black goes apeshit when the subject comes up.
"Isn't there some foreign country where "Rudie" is close to being the national nickname?"
= why I love Steve Sailer.
This comment on the article was one of the top readers' picks and also an NY Times editors' pick:
"One reason for the problem is explained in the first paragraphs of the article, when one of Rudi's relatives comments that the elite school test is biased, because it requires advanced math skills and "Black people are not good in math." Clearly, something is wrong, if black adults are buying the premise that blacks are not capable of doing math and science. Sadly, the relative was echoing the white, racist view that blacks have poorer cognitive abilities than whites.
Stuyvesant should not -- must not -- dumb down its admission standards to create a racially balanced student body. Stuyvesant and other elite public schools are the chief road via which talented, working-class kids can go on to Yale and other top universities. And yes, admitting kids who do not achieve required test score will result in a dumbed down program. I saw it happen at Brooklyn College in the 1970s, after open enrollment began. The bottom was not lifted up; everyone else was pulled down.
That some black kids are in fact qualifying for Stuyvesant is evident in the fact that many such gifted students end up in private schools on scholarship - as happened to a talented black student in my son's 8th grade class. The rest of the problem lies in attitudes, and middle-school. Kids who are talented in math should be prepped for test by the public school system, not Kaplin at $750 per course. We should make teaching black kids that they are, in fact, "good in math," our first priority."
Would be awesome to give this commenter a budget and a 100 random black kids and let her get them up to Stuyvesant standards in math. Let her take all of junior high to do it and see how that goes.
Stuy High, Brooklyn Tech, and The Bronx High school of Science all take the same exam. Students most likely choose between them based on how close they are to that school. That means the racial profile of the three schools probably reflects local populations. In particular Stuyvesant gets a lot of Asians from Chinatown and Queens. It may also be that Asians that are indifferent geographically chose Stuyvesant to go with the herd.
It is also worth noting that that Edward R Murrow in South Brooklyn has an equally excellent reputation and has lots of South Brooklyn Eastern Europeans, including Jews, since that is where many live (why spend 2 hours on the train when you walk 5 miles to school?). The three schools that use a test to get in are not the whole story of NYC selective public high schools.
The Times tends to be a Manhattan local news paper with pretentions so they naturally concentrate coverage on Stuyvesant.
The "Rudie" that the Clash and others sang about comes from "rude boy". So maybe it doesn't apply to girls. That just raises the question of why parents would name a girl "Rudi". On the other hand, girls taking boys names isn't completely unheard of, and there have been a number of examples where a tipping point was reached and it was completely abandoned for boys.
"I thought there was some sort of Rule of Randomizing colors where one one graph blacks are, say, white, and whites are brown, and Chinese are green, and Mexicans are red, and then on the next graph blacks are blue, whites yellow, Asians purple, and Latinos white? I dunno, this graph could be setting a dangerous precedent by making it easier for readers to make sense out of racial data."
If the Rule of Randomizing Colors actually applied, whites would come out white at least some of the time, which they never do. Not even in this graph.
And not a single mention in this article about how Asians seem to be driving out all the other races, not just blacks and Hispanics. Why is nobody concerned that whites have gone from over 80% of enrollment in the 70's to 30% today. I've seen this dynamic in local SF Catholic schools with a reputation for good academics. Chinese, the clear majority of whom are atheist, view Catholic schools as good value for their kids, especially in places where the public schools have a large NAM population and a left wing, Diversity obsessed school board. The stronger the reputation of a Catholic school, largely the result of a highly competent, devote white faculty, the more Asians who will apply. But Asian parents are minimally involved in the PTA and contribute zip in time or resources, above the nominal tuition. And they push, push, push their kids to compete, compete, compete. Eventually all the real Catholics leave because the school turns into an academic concentration camp once the percentage of Asian students rises above 25%.
So what's in it for the Catholic church any longer? What's interesting is that Catholic schools in the richest Diosces, the ones without money trouble, have the smallest Catholic enrollments in their schools, while the schools with the largest Catholic enrollment are heavily Hispanic and thus most likely to be on the edge of insolvency. There is an argument to be made that the Catholic chuch should end its parocial school mission in the United States, since Chinese are only taking advantage and putting nothing back into the religious community and Hispanics are evolving toward Black behavioral and cultural norms, rather than virtuous, communitarian Catholic ones. In otherwords, Hispanics are not spiritually, culturally, and economically capable of sustaining the Mother Church. Such people are more suited to either storefront worship venues providing no social services, or megachurches where the expense of operation can be passed on to white parishioners and wealthy doners. Hispanics are also ripe for conversion to Islam -- it's only a matter of time as more and more Catholic churches are forced to close their doors in the poorest communities and Islamic charities see barrios as a good place to invest their petroleum largesse.
1.1 million Americans are surnamed 'Miller'.
10.4% are Black
85.8% are White
Interestingly, 'Miller' ranks #558/1,000 on the list of 'Blackest Surnames'
#550 thru #560
Bowers
Sherman
Rose
Buckley
Newman
Sharp
Garrison
Kirk
Miller
Farley
Henson
Some time ago I used Census data to compile a list of the Blackest surnames in the USA (from which the above is taken). It turns out 'Washington' is by far the Blackest.
Nobaody here seems to find it interesting that Blacks are getting Rhodes scholarships.
I thank god everyday that I wasn't born a chinese.
One is generally only friends with people the same age. If there are only 40 Blacks in this 9th-12th grade school, that means ~10 per grade, vs. 790 non-Blacks per grade.
If a person has "many" Black friends at such a place ..
You ignore the obvious possibility that not all of the persons friends are from this one school.
About 10-15 (?)years ago, a bunch of black profs at Harvard came together to face an unpleasant fact: more than 2/3 of their black students were 1st or 2nd generation Caribbean or African immigrants. That is, most of the beneficiaries of affirmative action were not descendants of American slaves, thus undermining the whole premise for AA.
And yet AA remains solidly intact. It's almost as if its central premise was a load of hooey.
In fact the Supreme Court, in it's recent imaginings about what the Constitution means, has opined that being exposed to non-white people is good for whites, and that this is sufficiently good grounds for AA. The days when AA was based on giving a helping hand to the descendants of former slaves are long gone.
Steve,
you should consider a new thread on the recently proven link between IQ and portfolio performance
A study published in the December issue of The Journal of Finance has indicated that the portfolios of investors with higher intelligence quotients fare better than those of their less-intelligent counterparts, The New York Times reports.
Although I.Q. scores are seen as a controversial measure of intelligence by some, the study determined that those higher on the ladder had more diverse investments in their portfolios and tended to invest more in the stock market. The authors of the study concluded that higher-scoring investors were more apt to follow “basic rules of successful investing.”
"One is generally only friends with people the same age."
Not necessarily. I had friends across all grades in high school. This will especially be the case if you're heavily involved in extracurriculars like sports, drama, etc., or if you're in advanced classes that typically draw students from higher grades.
"If a person has "many" Black friends at such a place, they are fetishizing interracial friendship"
Also not true. One friend who's a member of a particular demo can lead to many more friendships with others in the same demo, without "fetishizing" such friendships. In high school and college I became friends with a ton of Asians through one initial Asian friend. Same with gays.
Blackest surnames
A list of the 'blackest' given names would be more...interesting. Not to mention 'vibrant'.
"And yet AA remains solidly intact. It's almost as if its central premise was a load of hooey."
The central premise IS a load of hooey. The point of affirmative action is to disadvantage whites in favor of non-whites, not necessarily American non-whites. It's not unlike the constant campaign for more education spending to close the gap. The public school system in most states is the most lucrative of minority jobs programs. More funding means more resources to hire a relentlessly growing population of unintelligent people who cannot sustain themselves in the private economy.
Same deal with Head Start -- studies showing that it imparts no advantage to minority per-schoolers are so numerous as to be cliche -- yet the program imparts tens of thousands of high paying baby sitter jobs with federal benefits to blacks and Hispanics. So you can't stop it. Likewise, as soon as Obama-care kicks in, it will be rendered unstoppable by the courts since stopping it will have disparate impact.
I've known Jamaican blacks, and British blacks as well. Very different from American blacks in all important respects.
Of course addressing why this should be so would require an examination of culture rather than of genetics.
"is this the first statistical graph to be published in this century where blacks are represented by the color black?"
Nope. The color in the graph is not black, it is deep purple.
@sweet Hart
It turns out 'Washington' is by far the Blackest.
sigh.. i am from an old WASP elite family and have one of 'those' names.. also, its not unusual to find 'tyrone' 'Reginald' etc, in the family tree...
In eastern cities, its assumed that any white = ethnic name.
"Affluent white kids get admitted or could get admitted but parents are dead set on sending them to one of the many elite private schools in NYC."
"Is it possible that eligible white students simply don't want to go to such an Asian-heavy school? Anecdotal evidence suggests that possibility."
Yes, and SCIENTIFIC evidence suggests that Asians are smarter than whites, so which is it? Anecdote or science?
.The Times tends to be a Manhattan local news paper with pretentions so they naturally concentrate coverage on Stuyvesant.
interesting side note about brooklyn Tech. Bruce Ratner - the time's development partner and one of the most destructive, corrupt developers in the city- tried to get city to hand over Brooklyn Tech to him - if you could see its location you'd understand why - and he was going to stick the students in one of his crappily slapped together office towers....
He didn't get away with that one.. but he did try.
I had one good black friend at Stuyvesant, and I was friends with him because we both liked to play chess with each other in the 10th grade, and not because I was trying to impress anyone with my racially diverse group of friends.
"This being NYC, deduct the inevitably-large-share of Jews, and White-Christians may only be in the 15% range at the school. Yikes!"
Classy.
As the article said, whites make up 15% of the NYC public school system. By contrast they are 25% of Stuyvesant high school. So they are over-represented.
I was a stuy graduate, and one thing I remember is that most of the black kids were very impressive people. The one black kid in my homeroom was a straight A student who also played on the football team and extensively volunteered in his church stuff.
By contrast there were many asian kids who seemed to struggle, especially in humanities subjects. I felt they were kids who had attended summer-long courses on the entrance exam and spent hours doing logic puzzles, all of which will drastically increase your chances of getting in stuyvesant, but will not enable you to write a history paper (especially if your not a native English speaker)
Of course they have Millers in England and Scotland. Who do you think milled the grain?
Pretty much every prominent black goes apeshit when the subject comes up.
A 6'6" black guy actually knocked me out (from behind) after I reminded him that AA got him into college. Not my fault; he started trash-talking after I floated a shot over him in the lane.
“basic rules of successful investing.”
You mean an index fund?
Stop your messing around
Better look to your future
A message
To you, Rudy
The Specials, straight out of Coventry, did it better.
"A study published in the December issue of The Journal of Finance has indicated that the portfolios of investors with higher intelligence quotients fare better than those of their less-intelligent counterparts"
Investors ain't what they used to be. Computer trading dominates profit making now -- clever algorithms figure out various sloshing modes in the market and continually invest or divest based on high probability of various subtle secular trends. Not only that, in finance, correlation is causation. If you're a big enough player you can nudge the market, then benefit if the market overreacts.
all of which will drastically increase your chances of getting in stuyvesant, but will not enable you to write a history paper (especially if your not a native English speaker)
if there is one thing I have noticed, it is orientals very often learn by rote and utterly lack creativity.
I paint (realist stuff, not bs )
I can usually pick out an oriental's painting in a group show...
THey often get technique down but it lacks vigor and personality.
of course there are whites who do this as well - especially classically trained ones but with orientals its par for the course.
@ guy who went to Stuy
i heard it actually hurts admission chances at ivies.. vs. say, going to public school in the burbs (for whites at least)
truth wrote, "Yes, and SCIENTIFIC evidence suggests that Asians are smarter than whites, so which is it? Anecdote or science?"
That's really got to hurt knowing you are using the technology of inferior beings on a daily basis.
"whites make up 15% of the NYC public school system. By contrast they are 25% of Stuyvesant high school. So they are over-represented".
Consider private schools. According to this (Table 10), 38% of 'Whites' in NYC attended private schools in the late '90s, vs. ~10% of Nonwhites.
Whites accounted for 60% of NYC private school enrollment. Most of the Whites attended private schools that were nearly all-white (Table 13).
The numbers might be a wash, factoring in privates.
Alas, though, the point is not whether White-Christians are 'over- or under-represented', but just that there are so few of them. What if an elite school in Copenhagen, say, had only a ~15% share of North-European-Chrisians?
"Why is nobody concerned that whites have gone from over 80% of enrollment in the 70's to 30% today"
Oh, that. Don't mind that. Some call it 'change', but many among us like to call it 'hope'.
The Promised Land of 100% Diversity approaches.
Everyone says there is this RACE problem
The problem is we don’t understand the CARS.
Everyone says there is this RACE problem
The problem is we don’t understand the CARS.
"That's really got to hurt knowing you are using the technology of inferior beings on a daily basis."
When did I call anyone inferior?
I passed the test to get in to Stuyvesant and I lived three blocks from it. However, I wound up going to Bronx Science (an hour each way on the subway) because Stuyvesant did not accept girls. That changed the year I graduated (1968). Lousy timing.
1. What percentage of Asian students at this school are south Asians (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh)?
2. What percentage of the white students are Jewish?
3. How many are italian-americans or Irish-Americans?
Hail,
One is generally only friends with people the same age. If there are only 40 Blacks in this 9th-12th grade school, that means ~10 per grade, vs. 790 non-Blacks per grade.
But you don' t know that that commenter graduated in 2010. As late as 2000 the school seems to have had twice as many blacks, which considerably lowers the odds of a non-black having had "many" black friends.
And of course, "many" might mean he had two actual friends and was merely acquainted with another half a dozen.
Silver wrote:
"As late as 2000 the school seems to have had twice as many blacks"
Fair enough: from 1% of the student body now, from perhaps 2% in 2000, and perhaps as much as 5% in 1990 and 8% in 1980 -- or so I'd estimate from eyeballing the graph, there.
I'm rusty on statistics, maybe someone more-better-versed can answer this: Assuming that a student has 20 randomly-selected 'friends', what are the odds of at least three of them being Black in a school with a 1% student-body? A 5% Black student-body? An 8% student-body?
Peter Hitchens often writes about this. The left's purpose isn't to help anyone but themselves, that should be obvious by now.
The Fabian Society's shield (featuring a wolf in sheep's clothing) should have been a pretty good clue.
"Fair enough: from 1% of the student body now, from perhaps 2% in 2000, and perhaps as much as 5% in 1990 and 8% in 1980 -- or so I'd estimate from eyeballing the graph, there."
Did you look at the wiki entry about the cutoff scores? It said the minimum for Stuy has adjusted upward to 561 while the least competitive of the 8 or so schools using the same entrance exam in NY accepts 480. I'd look at demographics across the board if I were more curious. Those types of students who scored at what once was the minimum for Stuy may have ended up at the 2nd most competitive school.
There is also an exception to the verbal score for mathematically gifted students whose parents don't speak English at home. This probably wouldn't affect enrollment at Stuy though it does seem an odd exception in a crowded place like NY.
But if these Hindus have extremely low IQs how come they are overrepresented in the most meritocratic school in NY?
angel cake, if they went to indian schools initially they are probably 1-2 years ahead on math and english, one NYT writer, who's hindoo, 's parents were amazed that NY teachers/test said he was brilliant in math, because in Inja he was below average.
At any real injun school, the standards are like 1908 UK or America before PC
Anon wrote - Hmmm, so NY hindus are overwhelmingly low caste descendants of the indigenous black Dravidians of India. Interesting. But if these Hindus have extremely low IQs how come they are overrepresented in the most meritocratic school in NY?
--
Caribbean Indians, Y-Haplogroup H1 are related to gypsies and not related to Dravidians, Y-Haplogroup-L1.
The 10% South Asians are from Brahmins and Merchant Castes, Y-Haplogroup R1A, who are a small minority in the NY Indian diaspora. None of the 10% South Asians in Stuy are from Caribbean Indians, who are 50% of the NY Indian diaspora
"I had one good black friend at Stuyvesant, and I was friends with him because we both liked to play chess with each other in the 10th grade, and not because I was trying to impress anyone with my racially diverse group of friends."
If you imagined that black friend of yours reading your blog today, you might not be so gratuitously insulting when you wrote about blacks. It's one thing to be honest about HBD; it's another to call blacks "dumber" and similar.
This may be the best secondary school in the country. More people gained admission to Harvard from this school than Exeter, Andover, Boston Latin and Trinity.
Assuming that a student has 20 randomly-selected 'friends', what are the odds of at least three of them being Black in a school with a 1% student-body? A 5% Black student-body? An 8% student-body?
Your logical error is in assuming that a persons friends are drawn exclusively from the the student body at the school they attend. That's an unlikely scenario in a place like NYC.
Steve, I'm surprised you don't know about the de facto AA program at Stuyvesant. S has a summer program that gives "marginal" minorities a better shot at admittance. If blacks did not have this program, I don't think any would be admitted.
without affirmative action, blacks would be segregated by lack of intelligence.
african black IQ 70!!!
"Your logical error is in assuming that a persons friends are drawn exclusively from the the student body at the school they attend. That's an unlikely scenario in a place like NYC."
Maybe, but the way the commenter phrased it sounds to me like a definite connection between 'I was a student there' and 'I had Black friends' is implied.
He wrote:
"As a Stuy alum who had many Black friends, I find it disappointing that the article didn't inquire further into the community of Black students who do make it to Stuy. While there is of course diversity within the Black community, I can testify that most are either the children of immigrants or products of inter-racial relationships".
It seems he is definitely talking about 'the Stuyvesant Black Community'.
Assuming that a student has 20 randomly-selected 'friends', what are the odds of at least three of them being Black in a school with a 1% student-body? A 5% Black student-body? An 8% student-body?
But friends aren't randomly selected.
Let's put it another way: assuming that the odds of any random person being friends with someone surnamed Gunderson are 1/100, what are the odds that this person is friends with a second person surnamed Gunderson? It's hard to say, but the answer is certainly far greater than 1/100, because once you're friends with the first Gunderson the likelihood of being friends with a second - a sibling, parent, child, spouse, or other relative - increase significantly. Or maybe you just live in a part of the country that's home to lots of people named Gunderson.
Oh, surnames aren't distributed evenly across the country? Nope, and neither are students in classes - another reason why a white student at a school with few blacks might still have lots of black friends without 'fetishizing the race.'
Tom is a student at Stuy. He becomes friends with Darnell. Through his friendship with Darnell he becomes friends with LaTasha, Tanaqui and Barack. Happens all the time.
Or Tom is on the basketball team.
"This may be the best secondary school in the country. More people gained admission to Harvard from this school than Exeter, Andover, Boston Latin and Trinity."
Enrollment at Phillips Exeter: 1050
Enrollment at Andover: 1102
Enrollment at Stuyvesant: 3295
Enrollment at Boston Latin: 2383 (but with 6 grades instead of 4)
The total enrollment at Stuyvesant is only 400 or so less than the 3 other schools combined (assuming 1600 of BL's students are in grades 9-12), 3752 to 3295.
http://apps.societyforscience.org/sts/71sts/finalists.asp
The 40 finalists in this years Intel Science Talent competition were recently announced. Going by their names 19 are east asian and 7 are south asian/indian. One is hispanic from Texas. No Italian- or Greek- or Muslim-'or French- or Scandinavian- Americans represented. Only one Anglo name in the list and it's a girl.
New York and California dominate as usual with 10 finalists each.
More Clash. Bleah. Why is it that we are so provincial in music? Though foreign films don't make much money, there is a serious film community that appreciates that stuff. And there is a respectable market for literary translations. If anything, foreign music should be popular in American since lyrics don't really matter for a song to work. Yet, it's like non-English pop music doesn't even exist as far as most Americans are concerned. Take Dalida. Wiki says she was a huge star with tons of hit records, but I never even heard of her until I stumbled upon her on youtube.
Parole Parole
I forgot to mention that 2 of the Intel finalists are from Stuyvesant and both are Chinese. Both are girls I think.
I am guessing from the names that upto 5 of the 40 finalists are Jewish.
Hail,
I'm rusty on statistics, maybe someone more-better-versed can answer this: Assuming that a student has 20 randomly-selected 'friends', what are the odds of at least three of them being Black in a school with a 1% student-body? A 5% Black student-body? An 8% student-body?
As was pointed out, friends aren't randomly selected. Given one black friend in such an environment, a second or even third is much more likely than random chance.
The odds of one even one black friend are not very high at 2% black (1/50), but I'd raise them to ~1/40 to allow for the fact that making friends takes two to tango, and the black kid is presumably going to make no headway among the 10% or so of non-blacks who, for various reasons, are totally closed to it. That's still not high odds but the main point is that it's a non-zero probability, so as low as it the odds are, the event happened and it didn't require someone on a mission to befriend blacks.
And "more-better-versed"? Bit rusty on grammar, too, I reckon. :)
I am guessing from the names that upto 5 of the 40 finalists are Jewish
Given how elastic the definition of "Jewish" has become, it is perfectly possible that 35 out of the 40 are "Jewish".
Matthew wrote:
"But friends aren't randomly selected. ...Tom is a student at Stuy. He becomes friends with Darnell. Through his friendship with Darnell he becomes friends with LaTasha, Tanaqui and Barack. Happens all the time."
Matthew, in other circumstances, you may have a point.
The problem here is that it implies there is a 'Black Community' at this high school. Again, there are ~10 Blacks and ~790 Nonblacks per grade, as per the NY-Times article.
Let's assume, of those 10 Blacks, five are boys and five are girls. Generally, one is 'friends' only with people of the same sex. Your supposition is that in the 10th grade, say, the five Black boys huddle together, clinging to each other for social support. In that case, becoming friends with one is would be like becoming friends with all, it's true. This seems particularly unlikely in general, but especially because many or most of these Blacks seem to be of foreign origin, as in the profiled girl (Jamaican). They share little in common with U.S.-Blacks, so often, and probably not much with each other.
I think that to be friends with Blacks, in a 1%-Black population of this nature, would be rather close to statistical randomness. The alternative is to posit that the social lives of each of those five Black boys per grade revolve principally around the other four Black boys of their age (and maybe a few of the other 15 Black boys at the school in other grades), and not much around the other ~400 Nonblacks of their age at the school. I don't think this is realistic.
To the Anonymous discussing statistics:
If I have 50 'friends', and am choosing them randomly from a population that is 1%-Black, the probability of choosing at least five Blacks would be 0.2%, according to this.
This is assuming the person was a recent graduate, it's true. If the commenter's period of attendance was in the years around 1980 (making him approaching 50), when the Black population was ~8%, a pure random-draw to get five or more Black friends out of a friend-pool of 50 would have a 37.1% probability.
At 8%, of course, the argument put forward by Matthew will start to hold more weight, though.
Anyway, we are left with three possibilities, as I see it:
(1) The commenter is lying, for the typical SWPL-PC reasons, about having 'many' Black friends (Note: seemingly, these Black friends were at Stuyvesant too, see here, and note also the use of the past-tense 'had', not the present-perfect 'has had', implying that the writer's frame of reference is to his school days). This also fits with the rest of his comment about the need to uplift the Black Community in NYC.
(2) The commenter is telling the truth, and got his 'many' Black friends by befriending one. and then being introduced to others (Matthew's scenario above). I find this exceedingly unlikely if the commenter attended in the 2000s, as I wrote above.
(3) The commenter is telling the truth, and got his 'many' Black friends by seeking out Blacks to befriend, again for SWPL-PC reasons.
I tend to believe that the reality is a combination of #1 and #3, especially if the commenter is under-40 years old.
Anon wrote:
"The odds of one even one black friend are not very high at 2% black (1/50), but I'd raise them to ~1/40"
Giving it a 1/50 assumes the person has only one friend ('trial' in probability), which is unlikely, i.e. you are answering the question "What it the chance a person's only friend is Black?"
One typically has quite a few 'friends' in high school, though, even if just in passing. So we need a lot of trials, in which case the odds of at least one Black friend go way up.
For the life of me I can't remember my statistics from my own school days on how to deal with multiple trials to calculate probability, though. Fortunately, I find this probability calculator. In this case, input the %-Black in the first box (.01), the number of total 'friends' one has in the second box, and the number of Black friends one wants to find the probability of having in the third box. Calculate. Look at the bottom probability, "Cumulative Probability: P(X great or equal to ___" to find the chance of having at least that many Black friends given those conditions.
Your supposition is that in the 10th grade, say, the five Black boys huddle together, clinging to each other for social support
But...they do. All experience indicates that people with similar characteristics will congregate, and for blacks being black means a great deal. It even matters to Rudi-Going-to-Yale. Anyone who attended a high school with even a small number of blacks can tell you that the lunch room always had a "black" table.
And I see no reason to continue with the notion that students never have friends in other grades. At least half of my high school friends were in other grades. Extracurricular activities and elective classes will draw students from several classes. All freshmen take Freshman English, but an Art I or French I or programming class may have freshmen, sophomores, and juniors. If nothing else, students are especially willing to cross grade lines when it comes to dating.
Anyway, it's hard to continue arguing with a guy who thinks that high school friends are only from the same grade, and from the same sex, and are drawn completely at random as if from a deck of cards.
His high school must've been a very strange place.
"who thinks that high school friends are only from the same grade, and from the same sex, and are drawn completely at random as if from a deck of cards."
Now there's fertile ground for a math joke, if I don't say so myself.
Along these lines:
"I like my friends like I like my statistical samples: Completely randomly selected".
It's got me laughing, anyway :)
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