Here is the killer quote:
If we raise the top-scoring threshold to students scoring 750 or above on both the math and verbal SAT a level equal to the mean score of students entering the nation’s most selective colleges such as Harvard, Princeton, and CalTech we find that in the entire country 244 blacks scored 750 or above on the math SAT and 363 black students scored 750 or above on the verbal portion of the test. Nationwide, 33,841 students scored at least 750 on the math test and 30,479 scored at least 750 on the verbal SAT. Therefore, black students made up 0.7 percent of the test takers who scored 750 or above on the math test and 1.2 percent of all test takers who scored 750 or above on the verbal section.
Once again, if we eliminate Asians and other minorities from the calculations and compare only blacks and whites, we find that 0.2 percent of all black test takers scored 750 or above on the verbal SAT compared to 2.2 percent of all white test takers. Thus, whites were 11 times as likely as blacks to score 750 or above on the verbal portion of the test. Overall, there were 49 times as many whites as blacks who scored at or above the 750 level.
etc.
If we move past college admissions, and issues of whether black students at Duke shift majors from the hard sciences to humanities and social sciences, we reach careers.
Blacks are underrepresented in careers such as engineering, science, and medicine. Those who would say this is due to racism must go back to why black students are not pursuing the requisite degrees for these careers, and the requisite majors for those degrees.
Then we're back to the question of what social factors cause black students to steer away from math and science in high school, middle school, elementary school, and so on.
I found there's a book on teaching math to black students:
I do not understand how it's necessary to teach 2+2=4, or 4x = 5 = 21 differently based on the color of a person's skin or their cultural background.
More confusing are the responses to criticism. One reviewer was critical of the author's fluffy statements, such as "teachers must . . . extinguish all negative verbal communications and interactions with the students" (to teach math?), and a suggestion to college professors of math to "have students develop songs, poems, stories, cartoons or rhymes on some math concept, principal [sic], or skill" as a teaching method."
The response? "Your opinion is based on a cultural bias that prefers the Eurocentric approach to teaching African-American children."
My wife teaches second grade. I know that the students in her class come from at least eight cultural backgrounds simply based on the ESOL problems she faces. I wonder if this school of thought suggests that math should be taught differently to each child based on his or her ethnicity, rather than Eurocentrically?
I've never met a number that was black, white, yellow, or brown. Personally.