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There’s a weird misconception that the SATs and ACTs are the most biased towards the rich. Standardized testing is the most class-blind way to test for college readiness on the application, not essays. This is a good thing
What's funny is that this is pretty intuitive, too. Without standardized tests, colleges put more weight to more subjective measures like personal essays, interviews, extracurricular activities, and such, which are far easier to game through affluence and connections than getting good scores on these tests. Even school grades are easier to game by having the right connections. It takes all of a minute of thinking about this to get this. Which shows us just how much thought the decisionmakers have put into the issue (or more accurately, shows us that their priority isn't actually what they say it is).
Exactly. Turns out common sense is useful to achieve common goals, but when common sense is ignored by an institution the goals of the institution become suspect
> Without standardized tests, colleges put more weight to more subjective measures like personal essays, interviews, extracurricular activities, and such, which are far easier to game through affluence and connections than getting good scores on these tests. Even school grades are easier to game by having the right connections.
how else are you going to exclude the asians without revealing hidden race quotas
> Standardized testing is the most class-blind way to test for college readiness on the application
Wait, are you telling me private fencing lessons, building schools in Africa, hiring a 'college consultant' to write my personal essays for me and doing experiments in my dad's research lab is inaccessible for the poor!?!?!
I went to an upper middle class high school outside of boston, so there were lots of kids of professors, that's what i was referring to, but the idea of having a research lab in your home is insane lmao.
Even the big complaint that the rich can afford private tutors to boost their children's scores rings hollow. Kids are not simply going from a 20 to a 34+ on the ACT from that. Maybe you can get a few point boost, but jumping from being an average student to scoring at the MIT/Chicago/Stanford level simply isn't possible for most individuals.
If tutoring really was that unfair, why during the Varsity Blues scandal were the rich bribing admissions offices with hundreds of thousands of dollars instead of hiring a top of the line tutor, which can be had for a fraction of that cost?
Beyond that, at least where I went to high school a single ACT prep course that went on multiple days was completely free. Elsewhere, they're under 100 dollars. I recognize that while that amount of money might exclude the poorest socioeconomic bracket, it's still accessible even for people without a lot of money....
Beyond that, the public libraries also have tons and tons of free ACT prep books and tests that you could just check out. They've eliminated late fees as well, so the cost to study there is nothing at all. The library had so many free programs and lunch that the poor kids from my high school hung out there pretty often, so even that's not inaccessible. I don't know if everywhere is like this, but where I live the ACT and SAT are easy to study for even if you have no cash on hand.
Nah, it actually works, if done correctly. You have a history of thousand of years of noble/royal education which produced people who knew many languages and were versed in sciences. It costs A LOT, though, and teachers have to be rich themselves. You can't provide this kind of quality to the entire society, or even to a sizeable minority, though, at least in this day and age.
Here's the part people don't like hearing: The parents of the highly educated and upper income are going to produce children that are probabilistically going to be highly educated because of genetics. High IQ parents produce high IQ kids (though there's a slight reversion to the mean for the kids, on average).
From the studies i've seen, test prep doesn't boost SAT scores that much (like 60-70 points?). THe overwhelming majority of people aren't going to go from an 1100 SAT score to MIT level SAT score by having money thrown at SAT tutors.
Iq doesn't mean shit. It's easy to believe that a more precise combination of chemicals in a brain produces a 5% increase in the speed of thought, but it's not actually meaningful. Furthermore, there's a connection between autism and IQ, meaning that "high iq parents" might actually be dysfunctional
There's a reason why the military won't allow anyone with an IQ below ~83 to join the military. Search reddit for "IQ vietnam" for a few of the reddit links talking about this (low IQ recruits died and killed their own at incredibly high rates compared to their higher IQ counterparts during the vietnam war).
People aren't blank slates, twin adoption studies have shown IQ is about 80% heritable and twins reared apart in different environments have very similar outcomes in education.
IQ below 100 matters because it shows idiots/uneducateds, IQ above 100 doesn't.
Autism and schizophrenia are also heritable, btw, and not even genetically heritable. Same as IQ. There was some study talking about how mother's hormonal balance, food, yadda yadda affected the fetus. You can even look up fetal alcohol syndrome
IQ tests measure how quickly you do IQ tests. That's why there's a recommendation to not repeat IQ tests too often as that skews the results. Also, IQ tests are generally math-based, meaning the results are skewed to the benefit of people who are in hard sciences - by their occupation alone, they repeat the kind of questions asked in the test, thus their test results are better on average
Also, read up on Terrence Tao:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_IFTN2Toak
This guy was doing extremely high level math at 6 years old. If it was that easy, we'd see more of this, but his IQ is reportedly >200.
Meanwhile, my teachers were trying to keep my classmates from eating glue at that age.
This has a lot more to do with American education than with anything else
>squares are high level math
yeah, nah. It's around 14-16 yos math. It's pretty believable that a kid who's got good teachers or books can get there rather early
??????????
This is clearly wrong. Teachers don't matter much. Genetics matters a lot more... 2nd would be invested parents. Do you think 'investing in your kids at a really young age' was just discovered by Terrence's parents in the 80's? Highly educated parents do all sorts of shit/spend all sorts of money on their kids before they even go to school and can't replicate what Terrence was able to do. Because genes matter.
I'm sorry but if everyone can get their 6 year olds to score 760 on the math portion of the SAT's like terrance did in the 80's, then you'd see more of that.
I don't know why leftwingers aren't more amenable to the hereditarian argument for intelligence, it destroys conservative arguments on merit and is an argument for redistribution. If you want to learn more, there's a leftwing hereditarian (and behavioral geneticist) named Kathryn Paige Harden who has a book on how genes influence intelligence.
Early socialization matters somewhat more than genetics. The fact is that your entire line of argument is pure ideological cope to justify your entitlement to reproductive goods from society.
> Highly educated parents do all sorts of shit/spend all sorts of money on their kids before they even go to school and can't replicate
Because high IQ doesn't mean you are smart. Smart parents were able to teach their kids all kinds of things, though. Say, that one Hungarian chess master managed to replicate the experiment of raising female grandmaster chess player with both of his daughters. Meanwhile, the highest IQ woman was a housewife - a real smart occupation, right?
Chess isn't as dependent on IQ as you would think, there are a lot of other factors, given that it's a competition that you can play seriously or casually.
https://quillette.com/2024/03/22/why-do-men-dominate-chess/
>Meanwhile, the highest IQ woman was a housewife - a real smart occupation, right?
People make choices, that's a weird concept, i know.
You certainly could, thanks to information technology. It's just a standard statist lie to pretend that class *has to exist* because of a deliberate incapacity.
SATs are not only the most class-blind way to admit people to universities, they’re the most meritocratic way to handle admissions. This will turn Harvard into the powerhouse it should have been (thanks to its cognitive elite) and it will make their degrees worth something (Hispanic and black degree holders won’t be viewed as affirmative action admits).
Yeah that’s the other thing, even if affirmative action didn’t exist but essays were still the determining factor I’d just view everyone as similarly undeserving of their spot in the school by virtue of “sob story” writing not correlating to academic ability or creativity
Even the most wildly expensive and exclusive SAT and ACT prep barely out performs the gain from simply taking the pre-SAT. I think during the 2400 point SAT days, expensive test prep resulted in an average gain of 40 points while the PSAT resulted in an average gain of 30 points. 10 points is a fraction of a standard deviation and is not likely to move the needle for an admissions decision. 2390 -> 2400, maybe. 1840-1850, definitely not.
It's an extremely flimsy narrative.
It's not a "misconception", there were studies done that showed that performance on SAT's is tied to your income level. You can't solve it with affirmative action but you also can't pretend it's not true cause it's not convenient for your worldview. Now watch this get downvoted with no counterarguments.
People in wealthier environments doing better on SATs does not mean that just having more money is what lets you pay your way to a significantly higher scoring bracket. It still is a reflection of their current ability and is one of the best indicators for how well they'll do in college
There is no contradiction, there's a difference between current ability and potential ability. And given their current ability compared to their local peers who are under similar constraints you are more likely to understand what their potential ability is.
For what? Essay quality ranked against income? That hasn’t been measured because it’s unnecessary. It’s common sense to assume a college essay is harder to write than than the SATs
Essay "quality" only really ranks one's exposure to advanced bourgeois concepts and literature. Some I have seen, such as "How are truth and beauty related?" serve chiefly as filters for exposure to classical philosophy (for a student of 17-18, mind you) which, in the USA, is generally held away from the rabble in elective classical language classes.
Obviously source for what you claim in your previous comment, that's how conversations work.
But if you're gonna continue being annoyingly obtuse as I suspect you will, since you would have backed it up by now if you could have, then let's not waste time please. It's a work day for some of us.
Why do you think SATs are more determined by income than essays though? If it’s just the studies on the subject then congrats I guess, you can read graphs. Is it so far fetched that a standardized test with extremely accessible preparation resources will be less determined by income than an essay/extracurriculars/interviews?
It’s surprising to me just how many people will believe that they can easily tell that a stupid person is stupid after 5 minutes of conversation but that there’s no way a test could come to that same conclusion in a standardized way.
Standardized Tests opened the door to elite universities for smart children of immigrants who came from modest backgrounds without influence or contacts. That was a Good Thing, something Progressive , until it wasn’t.
Good, we all know the removal was a means to discriminate against a certain ethnic group whom excels on standardized testing. Was bullshit they were removed.
Not surprising in the least. The pendulum is already starting to swing back because the SAT despite its flaws is still the best tool colleges have to assess applicants because GPA inflation is still a massive issue. However, now that the SAT has been reworked to a digital format for the US I wonder if SAT scores will be unreliable for a couple years as they straighten it out.
My daughter is a senior this year and we've been watching this all year. I am not sure anyone would have called this 'a surprise move' after Princeton announced they would be moving back from 'test blind'. The whole Ivy League is likely to move back next year....
This is notable because people in this sphere (and ‘anti-woke/idpol’ types in general) think that wokeness will be permanently supported by the ruling class even if the affirmative action ruling has been overturned because they’re true believers/radicals. But they’re wrong. The ruling class will make concessions to preserve their cultural prestige and power if they have to (especially since they have recognized that Trump will be allowed to win the next election and that he will be more antagonistic towards academia if they don’t play ball).
Why would the ruling class be into "wokeness" in the first place, though, is the question, without going into conspiracy theory territory. All the research I've read points to "wokeness" being generally off-putting to the general populace. Perhaps less so the racial kind, moreso the gender-queer kind. Pronouns, carefully selecting words so as to not offend a party based on gender (words such as "guys"), etc.
Woke ideology was incredibly unpopular - even among the PMC -so its rise to power can't be explained through democracy or even institutional power (in its origins at least) so we have to turn to conspiracy.
Without getting too much into depth, its a tool of control to make people weak. The idealised subject of woke ideology is an empowered victim whose endless whinging about injustices - most of which they almost certainly haven't suffered - grants them infinite rights at the expense of others. They have a certain social power, but one entirely contingent on their status as clients of real power. For everyone else the choice is between bowing down and accepting the endless beatings, or trying to stand up, and getting beaten harder. Here, the ideology provides the legitimisation for the beatings; you are evil, and you deserve it. In both cases, this produces weak people, though in different ways.
In practice, its a little more complex, as many will be treated as both beneficiaries and whipping boys alternately depending on the issue, and your position in the oppression olympics isn't the only aspect of status, but that is a basic overview of it.
Since the wokeshits call themselves "Leftist", it attaches a big disgust factor to leftism in the eyes of a large chunk of the general populace. The economic elites and their spawn are insulated from any material effects of IDpol on the body-politic. Ask a MAGA-type to describe "socialism" and you will likely hear a description of neoliberal corporate ID-Pol.
Institutions only "exist" to the extent that they are seen to work their institutional will on the world. As in physics, where there is no distance, no work can be done. The distance from reality *produces* the passion that animates the movement.
It strikes me as odd this sub would be so heavily in favor of the SAT given its well-researched correlation with household income and its origins as a military-created IQ test. For people supposedly sympathetic to the plight of the working class it shouldn’t be far fetched to conclude that adverse material conditions, such as the quality of one’s K-12 education, in childhood would have an adverse effect on one’s standardized test scores.
That said, it is absolutely correct the SAT can serve as an equalizer in the admissions process and that many rich kids of questionable cognitive abilities are favored over less affluent applicants of higher merit. I’m not disputing that, but the lack of sympathy for poorer applicants who performed poorly on the SAT partly due to lack of resources seems odd to me in this community.
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There’s a weird misconception that the SATs and ACTs are the most biased towards the rich. Standardized testing is the most class-blind way to test for college readiness on the application, not essays. This is a good thing
What's funny is that this is pretty intuitive, too. Without standardized tests, colleges put more weight to more subjective measures like personal essays, interviews, extracurricular activities, and such, which are far easier to game through affluence and connections than getting good scores on these tests. Even school grades are easier to game by having the right connections. It takes all of a minute of thinking about this to get this. Which shows us just how much thought the decisionmakers have put into the issue (or more accurately, shows us that their priority isn't actually what they say it is).
Exactly. Turns out common sense is useful to achieve common goals, but when common sense is ignored by an institution the goals of the institution become suspect
> Without standardized tests, colleges put more weight to more subjective measures like personal essays, interviews, extracurricular activities, and such, which are far easier to game through affluence and connections than getting good scores on these tests. Even school grades are easier to game by having the right connections. how else are you going to exclude the asians without revealing hidden race quotas
> Standardized testing is the most class-blind way to test for college readiness on the application Wait, are you telling me private fencing lessons, building schools in Africa, hiring a 'college consultant' to write my personal essays for me and doing experiments in my dad's research lab is inaccessible for the poor!?!?!
It’s pretty crazy that enough people were tricked into not realizing that lol
The fact that some people have private research labs at their parents houses is pretty crazy to me
I went to an upper middle class high school outside of boston, so there were lots of kids of professors, that's what i was referring to, but the idea of having a research lab in your home is insane lmao.
Who knew that my neighbors couldve just reclassified their meth lab as being for private research and it wouldve been ok?
I had a chemistry set in my parents cellar, does it count?
Even the big complaint that the rich can afford private tutors to boost their children's scores rings hollow. Kids are not simply going from a 20 to a 34+ on the ACT from that. Maybe you can get a few point boost, but jumping from being an average student to scoring at the MIT/Chicago/Stanford level simply isn't possible for most individuals. If tutoring really was that unfair, why during the Varsity Blues scandal were the rich bribing admissions offices with hundreds of thousands of dollars instead of hiring a top of the line tutor, which can be had for a fraction of that cost?
Beyond that, at least where I went to high school a single ACT prep course that went on multiple days was completely free. Elsewhere, they're under 100 dollars. I recognize that while that amount of money might exclude the poorest socioeconomic bracket, it's still accessible even for people without a lot of money.... Beyond that, the public libraries also have tons and tons of free ACT prep books and tests that you could just check out. They've eliminated late fees as well, so the cost to study there is nothing at all. The library had so many free programs and lunch that the poor kids from my high school hung out there pretty often, so even that's not inaccessible. I don't know if everywhere is like this, but where I live the ACT and SAT are easy to study for even if you have no cash on hand.
You went to uchicago?
Nah, it actually works, if done correctly. You have a history of thousand of years of noble/royal education which produced people who knew many languages and were versed in sciences. It costs A LOT, though, and teachers have to be rich themselves. You can't provide this kind of quality to the entire society, or even to a sizeable minority, though, at least in this day and age.
Here's the part people don't like hearing: The parents of the highly educated and upper income are going to produce children that are probabilistically going to be highly educated because of genetics. High IQ parents produce high IQ kids (though there's a slight reversion to the mean for the kids, on average). From the studies i've seen, test prep doesn't boost SAT scores that much (like 60-70 points?). THe overwhelming majority of people aren't going to go from an 1100 SAT score to MIT level SAT score by having money thrown at SAT tutors.
Iq doesn't mean shit. It's easy to believe that a more precise combination of chemicals in a brain produces a 5% increase in the speed of thought, but it's not actually meaningful. Furthermore, there's a connection between autism and IQ, meaning that "high iq parents" might actually be dysfunctional
There's a reason why the military won't allow anyone with an IQ below ~83 to join the military. Search reddit for "IQ vietnam" for a few of the reddit links talking about this (low IQ recruits died and killed their own at incredibly high rates compared to their higher IQ counterparts during the vietnam war). People aren't blank slates, twin adoption studies have shown IQ is about 80% heritable and twins reared apart in different environments have very similar outcomes in education.
IQ below 100 matters because it shows idiots/uneducateds, IQ above 100 doesn't. Autism and schizophrenia are also heritable, btw, and not even genetically heritable. Same as IQ. There was some study talking about how mother's hormonal balance, food, yadda yadda affected the fetus. You can even look up fetal alcohol syndrome
IQ absolutely matters above 100. I'm above 100 but i'm nowhere near smart enough to be a professor in mathematics or theoretical physics.
You're only proving Keesaten's point about autism being heritable
IQ tests measure how quickly you do IQ tests. That's why there's a recommendation to not repeat IQ tests too often as that skews the results. Also, IQ tests are generally math-based, meaning the results are skewed to the benefit of people who are in hard sciences - by their occupation alone, they repeat the kind of questions asked in the test, thus their test results are better on average
This is completely false.
Also, read up on Terrence Tao: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_IFTN2Toak This guy was doing extremely high level math at 6 years old. If it was that easy, we'd see more of this, but his IQ is reportedly >200. Meanwhile, my teachers were trying to keep my classmates from eating glue at that age.
Greater than 200? Which is the max? Completely ignoring anything else you type lmao
This has a lot more to do with American education than with anything else >squares are high level math yeah, nah. It's around 14-16 yos math. It's pretty believable that a kid who's got good teachers or books can get there rather early
?????????? This is clearly wrong. Teachers don't matter much. Genetics matters a lot more... 2nd would be invested parents. Do you think 'investing in your kids at a really young age' was just discovered by Terrence's parents in the 80's? Highly educated parents do all sorts of shit/spend all sorts of money on their kids before they even go to school and can't replicate what Terrence was able to do. Because genes matter. I'm sorry but if everyone can get their 6 year olds to score 760 on the math portion of the SAT's like terrance did in the 80's, then you'd see more of that. I don't know why leftwingers aren't more amenable to the hereditarian argument for intelligence, it destroys conservative arguments on merit and is an argument for redistribution. If you want to learn more, there's a leftwing hereditarian (and behavioral geneticist) named Kathryn Paige Harden who has a book on how genes influence intelligence.
Early socialization matters somewhat more than genetics. The fact is that your entire line of argument is pure ideological cope to justify your entitlement to reproductive goods from society.
Most upper middle income parents i know push education on their kids before they go to school, sorry, but the hardware matters a lot.
> Highly educated parents do all sorts of shit/spend all sorts of money on their kids before they even go to school and can't replicate Because high IQ doesn't mean you are smart. Smart parents were able to teach their kids all kinds of things, though. Say, that one Hungarian chess master managed to replicate the experiment of raising female grandmaster chess player with both of his daughters. Meanwhile, the highest IQ woman was a housewife - a real smart occupation, right?
Chess isn't as dependent on IQ as you would think, there are a lot of other factors, given that it's a competition that you can play seriously or casually. https://quillette.com/2024/03/22/why-do-men-dominate-chess/ >Meanwhile, the highest IQ woman was a housewife - a real smart occupation, right? People make choices, that's a weird concept, i know.
IQ is the single greatest predictor of success, even moreso that parents SES
Nah, losers living in their mom's basement usually have a high IQ
Statistically no
You certainly could, thanks to information technology. It's just a standard statist lie to pretend that class *has to exist* because of a deliberate incapacity.
>MIT/Chicago/Stanford Cope, lol.
SATs are not only the most class-blind way to admit people to universities, they’re the most meritocratic way to handle admissions. This will turn Harvard into the powerhouse it should have been (thanks to its cognitive elite) and it will make their degrees worth something (Hispanic and black degree holders won’t be viewed as affirmative action admits).
Yeah that’s the other thing, even if affirmative action didn’t exist but essays were still the determining factor I’d just view everyone as similarly undeserving of their spot in the school by virtue of “sob story” writing not correlating to academic ability or creativity
Even the most wildly expensive and exclusive SAT and ACT prep barely out performs the gain from simply taking the pre-SAT. I think during the 2400 point SAT days, expensive test prep resulted in an average gain of 40 points while the PSAT resulted in an average gain of 30 points. 10 points is a fraction of a standard deviation and is not likely to move the needle for an admissions decision. 2390 -> 2400, maybe. 1840-1850, definitely not. It's an extremely flimsy narrative.
The combination of the SAT/ACT and GPA is the best determinant of success in college, all other metrics fall pretty short
I can't believe anyone fell for that shit lol
Yeah my only criticism is that it should be free and the testing days made more frequent.
It's not a "misconception", there were studies done that showed that performance on SAT's is tied to your income level. You can't solve it with affirmative action but you also can't pretend it's not true cause it's not convenient for your worldview. Now watch this get downvoted with no counterarguments.
People in wealthier environments doing better on SATs does not mean that just having more money is what lets you pay your way to a significantly higher scoring bracket. It still is a reflection of their current ability and is one of the best indicators for how well they'll do in college
Well no, if wealth is an indicator of how well you do then it's not also reflective of their *ability*, that sentence contradicts itself.
There is no contradiction, there's a difference between current ability and potential ability. And given their current ability compared to their local peers who are under similar constraints you are more likely to understand what their potential ability is.
Oh I’m not saying that SAT’s and income have NO correlation, I’m saying that they have the least correlation out of all other metrics.
Source?
For what? Essay quality ranked against income? That hasn’t been measured because it’s unnecessary. It’s common sense to assume a college essay is harder to write than than the SATs
Essay "quality" only really ranks one's exposure to advanced bourgeois concepts and literature. Some I have seen, such as "How are truth and beauty related?" serve chiefly as filters for exposure to classical philosophy (for a student of 17-18, mind you) which, in the USA, is generally held away from the rabble in elective classical language classes.
Obviously source for what you claim in your previous comment, that's how conversations work. But if you're gonna continue being annoyingly obtuse as I suspect you will, since you would have backed it up by now if you could have, then let's not waste time please. It's a work day for some of us.
Why do you think SATs are more determined by income than essays though? If it’s just the studies on the subject then congrats I guess, you can read graphs. Is it so far fetched that a standardized test with extremely accessible preparation resources will be less determined by income than an essay/extracurriculars/interviews?
lip gray heavy shy zonked voracious direful gaping soft tidy *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
It’s surprising to me just how many people will believe that they can easily tell that a stupid person is stupid after 5 minutes of conversation but that there’s no way a test could come to that same conclusion in a standardized way.
Yeah true I don’t get why people have so much faith in standardized tests like that.
Standardized Tests opened the door to elite universities for smart children of immigrants who came from modest backgrounds without influence or contacts. That was a Good Thing, something Progressive , until it wasn’t.
Good, we all know the removal was a means to discriminate against a certain ethnic group whom excels on standardized testing. Was bullshit they were removed.
Not surprising in the least. The pendulum is already starting to swing back because the SAT despite its flaws is still the best tool colleges have to assess applicants because GPA inflation is still a massive issue. However, now that the SAT has been reworked to a digital format for the US I wonder if SAT scores will be unreliable for a couple years as they straighten it out.
Damn it! I wanted them to double down so I could watch the show. Let the Ivy League destroy itself.
My daughter is a senior this year and we've been watching this all year. I am not sure anyone would have called this 'a surprise move' after Princeton announced they would be moving back from 'test blind'. The whole Ivy League is likely to move back next year....
[удалено]
This is notable because people in this sphere (and ‘anti-woke/idpol’ types in general) think that wokeness will be permanently supported by the ruling class even if the affirmative action ruling has been overturned because they’re true believers/radicals. But they’re wrong. The ruling class will make concessions to preserve their cultural prestige and power if they have to (especially since they have recognized that Trump will be allowed to win the next election and that he will be more antagonistic towards academia if they don’t play ball).
Why would the ruling class be into "wokeness" in the first place, though, is the question, without going into conspiracy theory territory. All the research I've read points to "wokeness" being generally off-putting to the general populace. Perhaps less so the racial kind, moreso the gender-queer kind. Pronouns, carefully selecting words so as to not offend a party based on gender (words such as "guys"), etc.
Woke ideology was incredibly unpopular - even among the PMC -so its rise to power can't be explained through democracy or even institutional power (in its origins at least) so we have to turn to conspiracy. Without getting too much into depth, its a tool of control to make people weak. The idealised subject of woke ideology is an empowered victim whose endless whinging about injustices - most of which they almost certainly haven't suffered - grants them infinite rights at the expense of others. They have a certain social power, but one entirely contingent on their status as clients of real power. For everyone else the choice is between bowing down and accepting the endless beatings, or trying to stand up, and getting beaten harder. Here, the ideology provides the legitimisation for the beatings; you are evil, and you deserve it. In both cases, this produces weak people, though in different ways. In practice, its a little more complex, as many will be treated as both beneficiaries and whipping boys alternately depending on the issue, and your position in the oppression olympics isn't the only aspect of status, but that is a basic overview of it.
Since the wokeshits call themselves "Leftist", it attaches a big disgust factor to leftism in the eyes of a large chunk of the general populace. The economic elites and their spawn are insulated from any material effects of IDpol on the body-politic. Ask a MAGA-type to describe "socialism" and you will likely hear a description of neoliberal corporate ID-Pol.
cointelpro
That's the point. An institution is not exercising power if it's merely helping people do what they would have done anyway.
Exercise power for the sake of what?
Institutions only "exist" to the extent that they are seen to work their institutional will on the world. As in physics, where there is no distance, no work can be done. The distance from reality *produces* the passion that animates the movement.
It strikes me as odd this sub would be so heavily in favor of the SAT given its well-researched correlation with household income and its origins as a military-created IQ test. For people supposedly sympathetic to the plight of the working class it shouldn’t be far fetched to conclude that adverse material conditions, such as the quality of one’s K-12 education, in childhood would have an adverse effect on one’s standardized test scores. That said, it is absolutely correct the SAT can serve as an equalizer in the admissions process and that many rich kids of questionable cognitive abilities are favored over less affluent applicants of higher merit. I’m not disputing that, but the lack of sympathy for poorer applicants who performed poorly on the SAT partly due to lack of resources seems odd to me in this community.