December 11, 2012

Hispanic Invisibility: Somebody else notices it

It was sad to read about some Mexican singer lady who died in a plane crash. Flying around in private planes sounds glamorous, but it can be pretty terrifying. American musicians don't die in plane crashes as often as they used to, but the Third World plane crash rate is still pretty high.

But, then, it turned out as I read more that this Jenni Rivera wasn't Mexican, she was a 43-year-old Mexican American born in Long Beach and living not far from me, in Encino. Among her various marriages was one to a pitcher on the Dodgers.

And I had never ever heard of her.

A writer for the Washington Post notices the same thing:
Mainstream media’s ignorance of Jenni Rivera raises image of parallel Americas 
By Paul Farhi, Tuesday, December 11, 5:38 PM 
The Chicago Sun-Times declared Jenni Rivera “a heroine” and quoted an entertainment executive who lauded her “extraordinary gifts.” The New York Times compared her to Diana Ross and Tina Turner. Numerous media accounts labeled her a superstar. 
Chances are, this was news to you. Chances are, you’d never heard of Rivera until you learned that she died in a plane crash in Mexico on Sunday.

The American-born Rivera has sold at least 15 million records — more than many other successful and widely acclaimed singers in the United States. But she did not enjoy much attention from the English-language media. Although she was bilingual, Rivera sang only in Spanish. Her most ardent, record-buying fans reside primarily in the American Southwest and farther south, across Mexico. 
Rivera’s life and death suggest once again that it’s possible to live in parallel Americas, with the larger part only dimly aware of the enormous things happening in the other one. For all our instant connectivity, it’s possible for someone to be hugely famous and perfectly obscure — all at the same time. 
... The Washington Post had never mentioned Rivera’s name until Sunday, nor had the news divisions at ABC, CBS, Fox or NBC, according to Nexis. Rivera’s hometown newspapers in California — she grew up in Long Beach — weren’t much more attentive. The Los Angeles Times name-checked her in about a dozen short pieces over the years; the paper’s most prominent treatment of her was a story about her purchase of an Encino estate. ... 
This degree of cluelessness elicited an acid-laced comment on Monday from the Orange County Weekly’s Gustavo Arellano, who writes the paper’s amusing and often thoughtful “Ask a Mexican” column. Arellano upbraided the mainstream news media for “their pathetic record on reporting on a mega-superstar [who] operated in plain sight under a media that, like usual, didn’t bother to pay attention while she was alive because she was a Mexican and popular mostly to Mexicans — and they never matter unless you can get a diversity grant to cover them. 
“Now that she’s dead? Look everyone: we cover Mexicans!” 
Actually, Rivera was an American who racked up huge record sales in the United States, but point taken. Added Arellano: “For all the racket that the [mainstream media] has made about diversity over the past 15 years, they continue to fail — as if we ever expected them to succeed in the first place?”

For American elites, Mexicans and other Central Americans make an ideal new people to elect because they are so little competition for their own kids.

The Sixties for Italians and Jews

From my new Taki Magazine column:
To continue examining the 60s through an ethnic lens, let’s look at two Ellis Island immigrant groups, Italian Americans and Jewish Americans.

Read the whole thing there.

Mandatory Finnish content

In PISA exams, Finland usually is the top scoring white country. Although I have a large number of brilliant Finnish readers, I had expressed some skepticism: maybe Finns just try real hard on PISA and won't do as well on the other main international tests?

So, how did Finland do in the 2011 TIMSS and PIRLS tests among white countries/regions?

Math 4th Grade: 3rd place, behind Northern Ireland and Flemish Belgium
Math 8th Grade: 3rd place, behind Russia and Israel
Science 4th Grade: 1st place
Science 8th Grade: 1st place

PIRLS
Reading 4th Grade, Overall Reading Average Scale Score: 2nd place, behind Russia
Reading 4th Grade, Reading Literacy: NA

Don't ask me what the difference is between the two Reading tables.

So, Finland does quite well on these tests, too, even though there isn't otherwise much correlation within racial groups between the 2009 PISA and the 2011 TIMSS/PIRLS. On both sets of tests, northeast Asian countries did extremely well on math/science and quite well on reading, rich white countries came in the middle, followed by poor white countries, and then the Third World. But, within, say, Western Europe there isn't much consistency about whether a country scores at the top of the pack or the bottom of the pack among the tests. (A big reason is that the packs are pretty similar, so rank order can change easily).

Except Finland.

One reason is that Finland is just about the whitest of the rich white countries. It only recently hopped on the Third World refugee freight train to who knows where. (White American kids would lead all the countries in the world on the PIRLS, unless Asian-Americans had their own country.)

But I guess we should also be taking seriously Finland's laidback educational techniques, which are, on the whole, the opposite of the more obvious way the northeast Asians grind out high test scores.

By the way, the outstanding Russian performance on these new tests (as opposed to the middling Russian performance on the PISA) is ... interesting.

There might be a niche occupation in the future for somebody to be the Unbiased Expert on international testing.

Photos of how rich white Mexicans live


Thank goodness the press has been searching out Conquistador-Americans such as Univision anchorman Jorge Ramos ever since the election to give the rest of us much needed moral advice on immigration. We racist white bread white people must stop resisting the vibrantization of America. We have so much to learn from our superiors, both in ethics and taste.

(Attention Mrs. Morris Dees, I think I've found those interior decorating inspirations you've been looking for.)

I've been trying to point out for a long time that one problem with massive immigration from Mexico is that rich people in Mexico are among the world's worst role models. When the DREAM Act dreamers dream, this is who they dream of becoming. People in Georgetown, Cambridge, and the Upper West Side don't have a clue what they have been getting the country into.

The rich in some some ex-Communist countries may be worse, but Mexican elites are pretty bad. I suspect that rich people in, say, Turkey (a country that is comparable in some ways to Mexico) aren't quite as atrocious, although what do I know.

Perhaps things are getting better in Mexico? These are all pictures of daughters of PRI-connected men taken in 1999, the last year of the PRI monopoly on the presidency. Maybe the rise of the business-oriented PAN brought about a slightly more bourgeois orientation? (Of course, the PRI is now back in power in Mexico.)

By the way, here are pictures of the reputed Putin's Palace built at vast expense for murky purpose in the Crimea. It's got kind of an Enlightened Despot theme going that I would commend to Mexican oligarchs.

Charles Murray responds to Ron Unz college admissions article

Charles Murray writes:
At the Ivies, Asians are the new Jews
I propose this challenge to any Ivy League school that denies it has a de facto quota for Asian admissions. Let a third party—any number of highly respected research organizations could handle this task—randomly select a large sample of applications from which the 2012 entering class was selected. Delete all material identifying race or ethnicity. Then, applying the criteria and the weighting system that the university claims to be using, have expert judges make simulated admissions decisions. Let’s see what percentage of Asians get in under race-blind conditions. I’m betting 25% at least, with 30–40% as more probable. 
None of the Ivies will take me up on it, of course. The people in their admissions offices know that their incoming classes are not supposed to have “too many” Asian faces, and part of their job is to make sure that they don’t. I just want them to admit publicly what they’re doing, and state their rationale, which presumably goes something like this: The Ivies are not supposed to be strict academic meritocracies. They need students with a variety of strengths and personality types. And even 16% Asian students is more than three times the Asian proportion of the American population. 
I don’t have a problem with the need for a student body with diverse strengths and personality types. Harvard is a better place because it does not select a class consisting exclusively of applicants with perfect SAT scores. But a candid statement of the rationale that has led to the 16±2% solution can’t stop there. It needs to say that apart from the need for a variety of strengths and personality types, the Ivies have decided that they just don’t want too many epicanthic folds in their student bodies. Because there’s no getting past the naked fact that students from an ethnic minority are now being turned down because they have the wrong ethnicity. It is exactly the same thing that Ivy League admissions officers did to Jewish applicants in the 1920s, when it was decided that too many Jews were getting into their schools. They too had a rationale for putting a quota on Jews that they too believed was justified. What I don’t understand is this: Why do we all accept that what the Ivies did to limit Jewish enrollment was racist and un-American, while what they’re doing to limit Asian enrollment is not even considered newsworthy?

How much can you trust international school achievement tests?

Commenter TH compares 2011 results on TIMSS / PERLS to 2009 results on PISA:
I calculated some correlations between the PISA 2009 (15-y/o's), TIMSS 2011 (8th grade), and PIRLS 2011 (10-y/o's). 
The correlation between PISA 2009 math and TIMSS 2011 math is 0.87 (n=26). 
In both studies, East Asians are at the top, white-majority countries at the middle, and others at the bottom. 
However, if you look only at white-majority countries, the correlation is 0.19 (n=13). Russia and Israel do particularly well in the TIMSS compared to the PISA. The former is supposed to be a more math-heavy test compared to the latter which is a test of "mathematics literacy".

So, on the big picture, PISA and TIMSS are pretty much in agreement on the global racial hierarchy of math smarts. On the other hand, on the small picture of how white countries are doing, it's pretty much of a mess. There could be a lot of reasons for this, some inevitable (the test has to choose what to test on by a certain grade, which might not be what that country teaches up to that point), some potentially fixable (one country might try really hard to get students to work diligently on the test, another might treat it as just another test, and a lower stakes one than most).
In the US, the racial breakdown of the TIMSS scores in grade 8 is as follows (SD=100, global baseline = 500)
White 530
Black 465
Hispanic 485
Asian 568
Multiracial 513 
Hispanics slightly outscore Norway and Sweden in the TIMSS, while Norway and Sweden score only slightly (0.1 SD or so) higher than US blacks. In the PISA math test, Norway and Sweden outscored US Hispanics by 0.3-0.4 SD and US blacks by about 0.7 SD. 

What about for reading?
The correlation between PISA 2009 reading and PIRLS 2011 is 0.81 (n=36). Among white-majority countries (n=18) the correlation is 0.24. 
In the US, the racial breakdown of the PIRLS scores is as follows (SD=100): 
White 575
Black 522
Hispanic 532
Asian 588
Multiracial 578 
The black average is higher than that of, for example, France, Spain, Norway, and Belgium. In the PISA reading test, each of those four countries outscored US blacks by more than 0.5 SD.


New TIMSS and PIRLS test results

There are new results out from two international school achievement tests:

The U.S. average mathematics score at grade 4 (541)
was higher than the international TIMSS scale average,
which is set at 500.
• At grade 4, the United States was among the top 15
education systems in mathematics (8 education systems
had higher averages and 6 were not measurably
different) and scored higher, on average, than 42
education systems.
•  The 8 education systems with average mathematics
scores above the U.S. score were Singapore, Korea,
Hong Kong-CHN, Chinese Taipei-CHN, Japan,
Northern Ireland-GBR, North Carolina-USA, and
Belgium (Flemish)-BEL. ...
• At grade 8, the United States was among the top 24
education systems in mathematics (11 education
systems had higher averages and 12 were not
measurably different) and scored higher, on average,
than 32 education systems.
• The 11 education systems with average mathematics
scores above the U.S. score were Korea, Singapore,
Chinese Taipei-CHN, Hong Kong-CHN, Japan,
Massachusetts-USA, Minnesota-USA, the Russian
Federation, North Carolina-USA, Quebec-CAN, and
Indiana-USA.
At grade 8, the United States was among the top
23 education systems in science (12 education
systems had higher averages and 10 were
not measurably different) and scored higher,
on average, than 33 education systems.
• The 12 education systems with average science scores
above the U.S. score were Singapore, MassachusettsUSA,
Chinese Taipei-CHN, Korea, Japan, MinnesotaUSA,
Finland, Alberta-CAN, Slovenia, the Russian
Federation, Colorado-USA, and Hong Kong-CHN. 

For example, here is 8th grade math:
Grade 8
Education systemAverage score
TIMSS scale average500
Korea, Rep. of613
Singapore1611
Chinese Taipei-CHN609
Hong Kong-CHN586
Japan570
Russian Federation1539
Israel2516
Finland514
United States1509
England-GBR3507
Hungary505
Australia505
Slovenia505
Lithuania4502
Italy498
New Zealand488
Kazakhstan487
Sweden484
Ukraine479
Norway475
Armenia467
Romania458
United Arab Emirates456
Turkey452
Lebanon449
Malaysia440
Georgia4,5431
Thailand427
Macedonia, Rep. of6426
Tunisia425
Chile416
Iran, Islamic Rep. of6415
Qatar6410
Bahrain6409
Jordan6406
Palestinian Nat'l Auth.6404
Saudi Arabia6394
Indonesia6386
Syrian Arab Republic6380
Morocco7371
Oman6366
Ghana7331
Benchmarking education systems
Massachusetts-USA1,4561
Minnesota-USA4545
North Carolina-USA2,4537
Quebec-CAN532
Indiana-USA1,4522
Colorado-USA4518
Connecticut-USA1,4518
Florida-USA1,4513
Ontario-CAN1512
Alberta-CAN1505
California-USA1,4493
Dubai-UAE478
Alabama-USA4466
Abu Dhabi-UAE449
△ Average score is higher than U.S. average score.
▽ Average score is lower than U.S. average score.
There are a bunch of different tables like this for different subjects in different grades, so don't take this one all that seriously. I just plunked it in because it was handy.

Here's 8th grade science:

Grade 8
Education systemAverage score
TIMSS scale average500
Singapore1590
Chinese Taipei-CHN564
Korea, Rep. of560
Japan558
Finland552
Slovenia543
Russian Federation1542
Hong Kong-CHN535
England-GBR2533
United States1525
Hungary522
Australia519
Israel3516
Lithuania4514
New Zealand512
Sweden509
Italy501
Ukraine501
Norway494
Kazakhstan490
Turkey483
Iran, Islamic Rep. of474
Romania465
United Arab Emirates465
Chile461
Bahrain452
Thailand451
Jordan449
Tunisia439
Armenia437
Saudi Arabia436
Malaysia426
Syrian Arab Republic426
Palestinian Nat'l Auth.420
Georgia4,5420
Oman420
Qatar419
Macedonia, Rep. of407
Lebanon406
Indonesia406
Morocco376
Ghana6306
Benchmarking education systems
Massachusetts-USA1,4567
Minnesota-USA4553
Alberta-CAN1546
Colorado-USA4542
Indiana-USA1,4533
Connecticut-USA1,4532
North Carolina-USA3,4532
Florida-USA1,4530
Ontario-CAN1521
Quebec-CAN520
California-USA1,4499
Alabama-USA4485
Dubai-UAE485
Abu Dhabi-UAE461
△ Average score is higher than U.S. average score.
▽ Average score is lower than U.S. average score.


I have no idea how representative the samples are, or how hard the students felt like trying.

These things are a lot of work to set up. Think of how hard it would be to coordinate all over the world in all these different languages. Then try to think about all the things that could go wrong if you were in charge. It's pretty daunting.

Looking at all 53 education systems that participated in PIRLS at grade 4 (i.e., both countries and other education systems), the United States was among the top 13 education systems in average reading scores. The five education systems that had higher average scores were Hong Kong-CHN, FloridaUSA, the Russian Federation, Finland, and Singapore. Seven education systems, Northern Ireland-GBR, Denmark, Croatia, Chinese Taipei-CHN, Ontario-CAN, Ireland, and England-GBR, had average scores not measurably different from the U.S. average score. The United States had higher average reading scores than 40 education systems.

Education system Overall reading average scale score
   PIRLS scale average 500
Hong Kong-CHN1 571
Russian Federation 568
Finland 568
Singapore2 567
Northern Ireland-GBR3 558
United States2 556
Denmark2 554
Croatia2 553
Chinese Taipei-CHN 553
Ireland 552
England-GBR3 552
Canada2 548
Netherlands3 546
Czech Republic 545
Sweden 542
Italy 541
Germany 541
Israel1 541
Portugal 541
Hungary 539
Slovak Republic 535
Bulgaria 532
New Zealand 531
Slovenia 530
Austria 529
Lithuania2,4 528
Australia 527
Poland 526


France 520
Spain 513
Norway5 507
Belgium (French)-BEL2,3 506
Romania 502
Georgia4,6 488
Malta 477
Trinidad and Tobago 471
Azerbaijan2,6 462
Iran, Islamic Rep. of 457
Colombia 448
United Arab Emirates 439
Saudi Arabia 430
Indonesia 428
Qatar2 425
Oman7 391
Morocco8 310
Benchmarking education systems
Florida-USA1,4 569
Ontario-CAN2 552
Alberta-CAN2 548
Quebec-CAN 538
Andalusia-ESP 515
Dubai-UAE 476
Maltese-MLT 457
Dhabi-UAE 424