Making the SAT and ACT Optional Is the Soft Bigotry of Low Expectations
New York Times | John McWhorter
McWhorter doesn’t mince words in his assertion that lowering academic expectations is bigotry—a belief that Black Americans don’t have the ability to compete. He also “doesn’t buy” that eliminating the ACT/SAT requirement has anything to do with the pandemic; rather, he sees it as "cover for a policy change” that schools wanted to make anyway.
“There is much rumbling about the likelihood that the Supreme Court will deal a coup de grâce to racial preferences in university admissions…To some, this suggests an impending crisis… But I find myself thinking about…how we’ve allowed ourselves to all but give up on the idea that many Black and Latino students, as well as Pacific Islander and Native American students, can compete. When we expect less of people, it’s often because we think less of them.'“
Concerned with the “domino effect” of eliminating standardized test requirements, “the message being communicated to Black and Latino people is that our presence is what matters, not our performance.”
As for why universities are doing this? “Many of the schools cite the pandemic as the reason for making standardized testing optional, but I don’t buy it. I’ve been in academia long enough and have experienced the decades-long debate over racial preferences long enough to suspect that this is cover for a policy change that some schools wanted to make anyway.”
“Too often, we forge…equity by tokenizing people of color, declaring that we have achieved the proper representation after pretending that race or ethnicity entails alternate conceptions of excellence from those we unquestioningly expect of everyone else.”