[zerospinboson]

Originally Posted by Xenophon

"truths" about specific ethnic groups often seem overgeneralized (at best). But there are some statements we can make legitimately (I think). For example:

• In the US, children from the Asian immigrant community (that's of Japanese, Chinese, Korean, etc.) have historically averaged somewhat higher grades than their non-immigrant classmates.
• Most hispanics in the US are Roman Catholic.
• In the mid-1800s the Irish were considered the least-desirable of all immigrant groups. Two generations later, the stereotype was the "Irish Policeman." Now, nobody notices whether or not you're Irish except on St. Patrick's Day (when the entire country is "Irish").

It wasn't so much the "lower SES children underperform" thing that bothered me. It was that the blame for that was put on the lower SES children (or their parents), after what, 1 fully grown & children of their own generation of affirmative action?
Like you said, two generations later. Following your logic, you seem to be implying that racism doesn't matter, because "things will turn out all right" a generation or two later. (Considering that the prejudice against Irish, and later Italians etc. also came from Social Darwinist/racist thinking, with the IQ test being "invented" specifically for the purpose of "proving" they were less intelligent, by doing silly stuff like pointing at pictures of bowling alleys and asking what was missing from them. Social sciences indeed.)

My thing I took issue with, however, hardly was that there are legitimate and illegitimate generalizations.
Even when you ignore the fact that we have no negative connotations with "smarter" and "Roman Catholic", there is a qualitative difference between "most hispanics are RC", as these statements have no evaluative component, whereas (per your example) "most (really all) Irish people are backwards" or worse, "blacks force us to change the country('s educational standards) for the worse" do, and rather big ones at that.
I'm perfectly aware of the trend and problem she was hinting at, I just don't like where she put the explanation/blame for it.

Again, things don't change overnight, nor even over one or two generations (considering that black people suffered a rather longer period of slavery and social segregation than the irish did, what with the fact that they weren't "expected" to hold any respectable jobs.), but I still fail to see how impatience for improvement is an excuse for prejudicial thinking of that sort.
The problem of "inner city schooling" came up when, in the early 1990s? I'm guessing it had something to do with the affluent part of society fleeing inner cities to the suburbs, and that came up in the '80s or so, so that leaves (working from the assumption that schools were really, really great after the segregation ended, which wasn't at the same time in every state) less than 30 years, or a generation and a half or so of people who got a good chance at a decent education, after which the odds for that started decreasing, because the better teachers didn't want to teach at problem schools anymore.
Sure, "standards were lowered", but I'm guessing that was more because the costs went up and people became less willing or able to pay for these (as well as added costs needed for the extra schooling needed mentioned by kazbates) than it was because that one ethnic group (that only makes up 12% of the population) was really that incorrigible.

So yes, I could've done as you do, and "ignored" that part of the statement, but I don't really see why offhand remarks like that one should go unchallenged.