Early SATs had questions like this:
RUNNER is to MARATHON
(RUNNER : MARATHON)
is the same as
A) envoy : embassy
B) martyr : massacre
C) oarsman : regatta
D) referee : tournament
B) martyr : massacre
C) oarsman : regatta
D) referee : tournament
E) horse : stable
In this case, C is the correct answer.
First of all, why is this a clear reflection of biased testing? Because only people of a certain class have ever encountered a “regatta” and know what it is (I sure didn’t). So if there are questions that privilege upper class individuals (and because wealth is racialized) what these crafty test makers concluded was that those students who were of a certain economic and ethnic background happened to be “less intelligent” all because the questions were ethno- and culturally- centric. Obviously such blatant favoring of particular classes and ethnic groups (i.e. upper-class white Americans) no longer occurs in the test.
Yet this is still of relevance. Not only did decades of such views on Black students or of students of lower classes change how society saw and treated them, but it has lent itself to a historical conception of the aforementioned groups; ideas like this only added to already negative stereotypes of these groups and stereotypical views can become so ingrained that even after knowing the tests were skewed these underlying ideas of such groups never really go away. This is just one miniscule example of why history is not really over after the events pass because they remain a part of the inner conceptions of both actors involved.
In this case, C is the correct answer.
First of all, why is this a clear reflection of biased testing? Because only people of a certain class have ever encountered a “regatta” and know what it is (I sure didn’t). So if there are questions that privilege upper class individuals (and because wealth is racialized) what these crafty test makers concluded was that those students who were of a certain economic and ethnic background happened to be “less intelligent” all because the questions were ethno- and culturally- centric. Obviously such blatant favoring of particular classes and ethnic groups (i.e. upper-class white Americans) no longer occurs in the test.
Yet this is still of relevance. Not only did decades of such views on Black students or of students of lower classes change how society saw and treated them, but it has lent itself to a historical conception of the aforementioned groups; ideas like this only added to already negative stereotypes of these groups and stereotypical views can become so ingrained that even after knowing the tests were skewed these underlying ideas of such groups never really go away. This is just one miniscule example of why history is not really over after the events pass because they remain a part of the inner conceptions of both actors involved.
In the same token the British may no longer be colonizing South Asia, and the United States is no longer enslaving African Americans; but both of these practices brough with them conceptions of the aforementioned people, whether it was that they were “backward”, “savage”, “uncivilized”, “unintelligent” (etc.) and while the practice went away these conceptions did not necessarily disappear. They were in fact still relevant in the subsequent treatment and general view of these persons colonized, enslaved, or not. such conceptions can be carried over decades, even centuries, and this is why history is never “over” – it remains relevant and very much alive.
Consciously yours,
Malcolm [Exorcise the Demons]
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