Grading By Race

To be honest, I've been expecting this for quite some time:

The ongoing efforts to implement diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in higher education might soon include naming and shaming professors who tend to give lower grades to minority students, one scholar warned.

Roy Baumeister, a psychology professor at University of Queensland and professor emeritus at Florida State University, published an op-ed titled “Fighting Systemic Racism on Campus” on May 10 in Psychology Today.

“Make sure your current grading practices are consistent with prevailing social justice expectations at your institution. Once a university algorithm labels you a racist, it will be difficult to shed that label,” Baumeister wrote.

Baumeister argued grade disparities between black students and their peers could be the result of racial bias on the part of professors, or simply be construed as such; with that, should grading data be made public, black students may “avoid” professors who give lower grades to minorities and scholars may be labeled racists.

“Supremely valuable to them would be information about how to avoid the worst traps and pitfalls, such as apparently racist professors who may mark them down based simply on their race,” Baumeister wrote.

Baumeister also asserted it appears “hypocritical” for professors to claim that disparities in outcome between races are the result of discrimination, while issuing disparate grades to racial groups.

All this would do is condemn an entire race of students to academic, and perhaps career, mediocrity.  If you wanted to convince people that black and brown people aren't smart enough to compete against Asians and whites, you could do no better than to advocate for such a policy as this.

And if you think that this isn't coming to K-12 in the very near future, you're being somewhat struthious.