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Friday, January 12, 2018

Good News: You Really Did Not Need to Learn Statistics in College

Not very easy to quote this piece of dreck from where I currently am located,  but the argument is that statistics are racist and promote white supremacy.
The second part of the paper draws on the tenets of Critical Race Theory (CRT) to set out some principles to guide the future use and analysis of quantitative data. These ‘QuantCrit’ ideas concern (1) the centrality of racism as a complex and deeply rooted aspect of society that is not readily amenable to quantification; (2) numbers are not neutral and should be interrogated for their role in promoting deficit analyses that serve White racial interests; (3) categories are neither ‘natural’ nor given and so the units and forms of analysis must be critically evaluated; (4) voice and insight are vital: data cannot ‘speak for itself’ and critical analyses should be informed by the experiential knowledge of marginalized groups; (5) statistical analyses have no inherent value but can play a role in struggles for social justice.
And why does the government find this trash?

3 comments:

  1. I heard this elsewhere. I have to defer this to others of greater ability for the appropriate snarky response.
    How can you argue with that level of doctrinaire, willful stupidity?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Any field that embraces the notion of a "standard deviation" is inherently sexist, racist, and oppressive.

    ReplyDelete