As Joel Engel writes at William Jacobson’s Legal Insurrection blog, “It’s impossible to guess where The New York Times now finds racism, quoting a passage from the Gray Lady’s article on pro football and the draft, one that should have been called back long before the referee called a 15 year penalty for illegal use of the race card:
For decades, hundreds of college players have gathered each year at the N.F.L.’s scouting combine, where their strength is tested, their speed is timed and, in a test to measure their intelligence, they are asked questions like “When a rope is selling 20 cents per 2 feet, how many feet can you buy for 30 dollars?”
That query is part of the Wonderlic Personnel Test, a 12-minute, 50-item quiz that has been used by N.F.L. teams since the 1970s. It is, however, infamously unreliable in predicting football success — forgettable players have scored high, stars low — and there have been quiet concerns that its reliance on knowledge taught in school might result in a racial bias.
The Butterfield Effect — it can hit a leftwing journalist harder than Night Train Lane on a cornerback blitz. As Engel adds, “I’m utterly speechless. I didn’t know that only white people learned stuff in school. Did you?”
On the other hand, hey, if the New York Times truly believes that academia is a seething cesspool of racism, have fun storming the castle, fellas.
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