It's Official: The Left Says Statistics Are Racist
Reality: It has a well-known known conservative bias. And to the left, that’s a big problem.
So, what’s the solution? Call statistics racist.
Yes, statistics — cold, hard numbers that outline exactly what’s going on in any given social situation — are just plain bigoted.
According to Campus Reform, a paper authored by three British professors argues that statistics “frequently encode racist perspectives beneath the facade of supposed quantitative objectivity.”
The paper argues that supposed practices encoding racist perspectives “serve white racial interests” and need to be replaced by a framework that incorporates critical race theory into statistics.
The article — titled “QuantCrit: education, policy, ‘Big Data’ and principles for a critical race theory of statistics” — was written by David Gillborn, a professor at the University of Birminginham, along with Paul Warmington, a sociology professor at the University of Warwick, and Sean Demack, a sociology lecturer at Sheffield Halam University.
Published in September in Race, Ethnicity and Education, the paper argues that raw statistics are just too racist to be trusted.
“Contrary to popular belief, and the assertions of many quantitative researchers, numbers are neither objective nor color-blind,” write Gilborn and Co.
Their solution is something known as QuantCrit — a linguistic and intellectual portmanteau that fuses quantitative analysis and critical race theory.
For those of you who haven’t been around academia recently, let the fine folks at the UCLA School of Public Affairs break it down for you: “(Critical Race Theory) recognizes that racism is engrained in the fabric and system of the American society.
“The individual racist need not exist to note that institutional racism is pervasive in the dominant culture. This is the analytical lens that CRT uses in examining existing power structures. CRT identifies that these power structures are based on white privilege and white supremacy, which perpetuates the marginalization of people of color.”
I’m not quite sure how straight-up quantitative statistics will be able to be reconciled with critical race theory, although I can wager a guess as to which aspect of the merger will predominate.
According to Gilborn et. al, “quantitative data is often gathered and analyzed in ways that reflect the interests, assumptions, and perceptions of White elites.”
“Numbers are social constructs and likely to embody the dominant (racist) assumptions that shape contemporary society,” the piece reads. “(I)n many cases, numbers speak for White racial interests” and “data is often used to shut down, silence, and belittle equity work.”
For whatever it’s worth, Gillborn is also the managing editor of Whiteness and Education, a controversial publication that has been accused of not employing proper peer review.
I will commend Gillborn for his unique approach, however. If the data doesn’t match up with the “equity work” they’re involved in and instead speaks for “White racial interests,” it’s not the theories of Gillborn and his ilk that are wrong. Instead, it’s the fact that said data hasn’t been run through critical race theory — a wholly unscientific theory in social science that has nothing to do with data.
This is where academia is going, folks. Woe be unto us.
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