@(1)/JeffZ: It’s equally worth noting, quickly, that the international comparisons of US acheivement are usually apples to oranges. Many of the western european systems track people out of academic/professional preparation by the equivalent of 5th-8th grades; thus, we’re often comparing 100% of the US population, to the academic top 40-60% of other nations.

@Ronit: Immigrant crime non-reporting is a continual issue, and it has allowed for their exploitation. Granted, they have chosen to risk that by coming here illegally, but….

…

Summerlynn Sigler, an English teacher, said there were some boys planning to beat up the victim once she returned to school, on the grounds that she was to blame if her attackers received life sentences.

Daisy Santoya, a ninth grader, said schoolmates had accused her of snitching and told her to watch her back after she went to the police with information.

And some exasperated students said they could not understand why this particular rape was such a big deal. “What happened was bad,” said Abraham Tejeda, a sophomore. “I’m not going to lie, but she shouldn’t have put herself in that situation.”

Fear may also play a role in the reactions. Lizeth Franco, the daughter of the principal and a senior at Richmond High, said she believed that many people were intimidated by the “no snitching” ethos. “People didn’t speak up because they were afraid,” Lizeth said, “not because they’re animals and savages.”

This may or may not be relevant to what happened at Richmond. I have no idea.

Its pretty terrifying when citizens can’t approach the police to help solve/stop crimes because they’re afraid for their lives.

excellent point about the false and useless parable lessons of the Genovese story at that time.

In the Richmond case, it appears that a teenager not in the immediate crowd tipped the police towards the assault once s/he found out. Like Genovese, the actual truth is not as first presented by the media.

It’s also interesting to me that the Kitty Genovese case was frequently cited as a parable for the nature of “New Yorkers” or “urban Americans” or “people like that”, in exactly the same unhelpful way David is speaking about “schools like Richmond”.

Thanks for the background on the bystander effect and no snitching. Good to know.

*especially when you find the one potentially mistaken small point in an otherwise clear and correct point and focus on it instead of the larger picture. which you do on almost every goalpost move.

You know where social psychologists first discovered the bystander effect? A middle-income* white neighborhood in NYC. No snitching probably played a role in this case but not that first case. No snitching is a complex cultural adaptation to the semi-militarized police force that began to patrol urban and/or non-white areas in the 1980s and 1990s. For more information of the complex interactions between police and urban black males (for example), see Alice Goffman’s piece in American Sociological Review from this summer.

*i believe. Kew Gardens in the 1960s was a white part of Queens and not low-income. That I know.

I (did not) know Robert Gaudino. You, sir, are no Robert Gaudino.

what you wrote in comment six is not “uncomfortable learning” it was, quite simply a way to distance yourself from these acts. As a rich williams grad, you’re implying that horrific gang rapes do not happen to me*, nor are they at all because of me*, or even happen around me* because I do not have the “pathologies” of low IQ. My social group is shrunk because it is safer/better for me to keep it to only high IQ types, else i have to interact with those “pathologies” and that’s a dangerous/stupid thing to do, so I won’t. It is, perhaps the single most comforting thing ever written if one does not push deeper into the question.

why are you free from interacting with those with “pathologies”? How can you be sure they are “pathologies”? What role does the ideology of “low-IQ = crime” play in structuring our society? How much does racial/economic segregation affect people having those views? How much are these “pathologies” affected by things that aren’t genetic…such as california’s inept system of school funding, the position of cops/authorities in cities/towns such as Richmond, the changing ethnic and racial composition of the town, etc? You want to make it uncomfortable for williams people? Find a way to distribute

Comment six raises NONE of those points, offers “discomfort” to many of us, but no learning. Do not besmirch Gaudino’s name.

*or others like me.

Second, as someone who actually teaches current Williams students, I can say that, yes, some of them have gone to “schools like Richmond High School.” Regardless of Kane’s effort to belittle everything to do with diversity at Williams, there have, over my twenty years here, always been students who work hard despite very difficult family and economic circumstances. They have been exposed to crime; they are not sheltered. Indeed, negotiating their lives at Williams and their lives at home can be quite challenging at times. No, I do not have aggregate data. Yes, I have talked and advised students who have come from “schools like Richmond High School.” We should recognize and support those students, not dismiss them out of hand as Kane does.

I have seen nothing to suggest that rape, child molestation, child pornography, or other sex crimes are correlated with IQ or economic status.

Well, time to start opening your eyes. Help me out, Rory! The correlation between sex crimes (as well as other crimes) and poverty is one of the more robust facts in the social science. (Again, just talking about correlation here, not causation.) This (pdf) seems to provide a decent overview with lots of citations.

Research shows an undeniable, complex and often cyclical connection between sexual violence and poverty. Sexual violence can jeopardize a person’s economic well-being, often leading to homelessness, unemployment, interrupted education and health, mental health, and other daily stressors and struggles.9 In turn, poverty increases the risk of sexual violence; it can make women and children more dependent on others for survival and, therefore, less able to control their sexual safety, to consent to sex, and to meaningfully address their own victimization.10 Indeed, persons with household incomes under $7,500 are twice as likely as the general population to be sexually assaulted.11

See the pdf for the associated footnotes.

One reason I bring up topics like this is because Williams graduates — even former prosecutors! — are often ill-informed about the facts.

Hitler was a high school dropout, Stalin was expelled from seminary, and there is debate as to whether Bin Ladin got a graduate degree. No real proof that they were not stupid. No question about the evil part.

One of the more bizarre (and gruesome) aspects of it all, is how cell phones (photos and exchanges) are helping to provide all the incriminating evidence.

But the concern of many *[...] is that people’s reactions will be to paint their entire group with broad brushstrokes as potential *[...].

It seems a legitimate worry in light of all we know about illusory correlation. Not only do we tend to overestimate the association between distinctive behaviors and distinctive groups, but this tendency is also exacerbated when we have pre-existing expectations that the variables in question go together.

*Fill in the blanks with the “pre-existing expectations” of your choice.

Why did you juxtapose this inquiry with a story about a horrific (and hardly representative) sex crime like this?

Because I was making the same point that Robert Gaudino started making 50 years ago. Williams students (and graduates) inhabit a radically restricted slice of society. A crime like this does not really touch Williams because none of our children attend schools like Richmond. If you think that this point is boring or obvious, then that is fine. But, every time I point it out, many folks seem upset.

(And, obviously, the only reason the topic came up at all is because Meg Bossong ’05 was quoted in the article.)

But, in the spirit of constructive criticism, offer me advice. I cam across the quote from Meg. I decided to blog it. I could have just quoted her and said nothing. Assume, however, that I wanted to add a comment in Gaudino’s spirit, a comment which pointed out how far away the world of Richmond is from the world of Williams graduates. What should I have written?

How many current Williams student attended a school like Richmond High?

What is your answer, Rory? JG? You think it is, what, the ventilation system? The view? In another few years, your co-hort of Williams graduates will start having children and sending them to school. How many will send their children to places “like Richmond High?” Round numbers: zero. Is that EphBlog’s fault?

Kirsten then asked a reasonable question:

I’m not sure what you mean by “a school like Richmond High” – a public high school?

I gave an honest answer. The central fact that makes Richmond (and hundreds of other high schools across the country) unacceptable to Eph parents is, as best I can tell, the low IQ of its students and the pathology associated therewith.

But, maybe I am wrong. Why don’t you answer the question? There are hundreds (perhaps one thousand?) high schools in the US that have counted the child of a Williams graduate among their students in a decade or more. For some of these schools (e.g., a random place in Nowhere, North Dakota), this is just luck. Any Eph who lived in that town would be satisfied to send her child their. But, for most of these schools, the result is not random. Williams graduates move out of these school districts on purpose, or they pay extra money for the local private/Catholic alternative. Why do they do that?

At this point, you might list some alternatives. You might argue that the key thing that these schools have in common in small budgets. That less money leads to lower quality education and that Eph parents hate low quality.

But it is too easy for me to point to counter-examples, to show that Washington DC public schools spend more than $20,000 per student. There are a lot of Ephs who live in DC. How many of them send their children to a non-magnet, non-charter public high school in DC? I could be wrong, but my guess is zero. It is certainly zero for the bottom half of public high schools in DC, even though those schools get the same funding as the “good” schools.

If it is not spending that drives Williams parents away, what is it?

You think that the rate of criminality at a place like Williams is identical to the rate at a place like Richmond High? I would take the other side of that bet. How many of the students who walk in the door at Richmond tomorrow have been arrested? How many have served time in a juvenile facility?

Have to alert the MAJOR goalpost shift here. Kirsten actually didn’t make a claim regarding overall criminality. She made a comment particular to rape. So how about you address the actual point.

Good evening from Berlin (middle of the night, actually).

I want to clarify that I knew students from Richmond and El Cerrito very well while at Berkeley. I don’t want to oppose your statements; I glanced at this thread after landing at Schoenefeld and, when I get to David’s statements on IQ, pathology, and later… I want to assert that there are “other factors.”

With more time, I might rant a little. I am, ultimately, more concerned with what we can do, than with analysis. Analysis may be misleading. But whatever “pathologies of everyday life” occur at Richmond, they are “more multifaceted and complex.”

I have some other thoughts from the day, which may have something to do with this topic– though the United States is far away for me, now.

I began the day with a local train from Gent to Bruxelles-Midi. The young woman across from me was from Egypt; she spoke on the phone for most of the trip, in a mixture of Belgian French and what seemed Egyptian Arabic and else.

One and a half hours in Brussels, exploring the environs and taking photos. Brussels was a relief: French.

I’ve been in Gent, not to learn Dutch, but to learn something of the local dialects. For that matter, I’ve only been working on varieties of Nederlaands for a few months. File this under Guadino’s “uncomfortable learning” and read on, if you will.

Brussels to Aachen, Thalys express. Once you rise into the mountains, the physical geography is very similar to Vermont, upstate New York along the border, and the Bershires. Except it is densely populated, insomuch as a few millions live there.

From Brussels to Aachen, other languages emerged. The Slavics: Czech and Russian. Turkish, Arabic. There was a small incident on the train, between a group of Turks and a older German man and others– typical of the racial tensions of these areas.

Two hours in Aachen. 1500 photos. “Wir sind Aachen. Es sind kein Nazis.” Was that the placard everywhere? Rather oversimplifed, and ignorant of history. But.

Local from Aachen to Koeln. A “Russian” family, I should say, a local family which spoke Russian, sat across from me. The father asked me, — right after asking his wife– in fairly poor German, if this was the train to Koeln.

After having listened to most of their conversation for the ten minutes before, I imitated Russian as best I could and told him the vlak was going to Koeln.

Cologne. It’s been a long while. Suddenly, I felt oddly– and linguistically– at home. Here I could understand everyone without much effort.

Two hours later, in West Berlin– I got another lesson in dialect. “Meins” und “deins” are not exactly expressions I learned at Williams or Berkeley, not to mention the rest.

Cologne-Bonn Airport to Berlin Schoenefeld Flughafen. Between the clouds, a landscape that is uniquely– almost uniquely– German. Other lessons from the plane (abk.).

Berlin. Here. In Gent– in Brussels, I am largely at home, comfortable. French is accepted, my Dutch will do. In Gent, I won’t walk into a bar or restaurant without local friends, unless I’ve been there and know someone– because–

I had began to think this was “about me.” In Gent– a library, a store, a supermarket– each of these come with a burden attached. It takes a large amount of effort to interact, to listen closely enough to catch most of what is going on– any distraction, means I’m missing the next two sentences.

Dialectical Belgian Dutch– I’m using that phrase, but simple “Flaams,” as a separate language and culture, is appropriate as well– and on the table here in Berlin tomorrow– in short, is an overlap of French and English and German (and old French and old English and old German)– and you can find the old indo-europeean roots still alive, words such as na’ar and ma’ar, which overlap almost directly with Hindi.

Other words and expressions– pronunciation and transliteration vary. “Uit” is “out” — pronounced as “out in English– it means closer to German “aus” — and it is pronounced as “out,” except when it is not. And often it is not.

Repeat this across the entire field of the language, and the languages. Across Europe, at least.

In Berlin, even with the dialects, I find I have no problem, no discomfort, walking into a restaurant or bar. My German is rusty and stilted; I make errors (though– it has never been clear to me, how much der, die, das matters to the average German, insomuch as the dialects, the local variations before standardization, still survive and do not conform to Hauptdeutsch).

Think then– to get back to the original topic– of the matter of linguistic exclusion (as well as uncomfortable learning). Think of the barriers of expression and understanding between the native Turkish speakers between Brussels and Aachen, and the Dutch and German and French speakers– I mean those who speak the common, “high,” imperial versions of those languages– and of the families and people, who since the Wende, live in these areas– but who would not be comfortable or welcome, at a bar or restaurant, who would not fit in because they cannot understand.

For that matter– in another thread here, when I quote Ramda in French, a man and a terrorist who tried to take my life, and whose victims I saw in the moments of that attentat, sounds reasonable. (Though I intentionally quoted what sounds life a confession and apologia, to my ears).

Berlin, tonight– remains a difficult experience for me. This is a day of celebration– and the world I am trying to briefly document above, is one that could not have come into existence, without the Wende. To hear the Slavic languages, — Arabic, Turkish, usw.– across this land, gives hope, and reason for pride.

But. But much of my family fled these lands, and it seems ironic, at best, unheimlich, dass ich wieder… that I come to Berlin at this moment, that I feel so comfortable in German, that I find Berlin, so welcoming. And.

And I am also here, simply to listen, to observe and witness. Wir sind ein volk… We are the (one)(a) people… wir sind das volk… we are the (only) people.” the quick and terrible progression after the Wende, to German exceptionalism, …

Perhaps, in such a celebration, Nationalism in its excesses cannot be avoided. But tonight, in the Netherlands, in Belgium, in France, for all their isolationalism and small-mindedness and inability to confront the world, I hear no such cries as in Berlin tonight, of “only Germany,” “German! German! German!” “Everything is German, we live and die in Germany, we live for Germany, and there is no other!”

Tomorrow, at least, will be another day, and we shall see, what comes.

Because *obviously* anyone who goes to a public high school has a low IQ?

No. My genius wife went to a public school. The public high school in my town is filled with high IQ kids (and very few low IQ kids).

Because *obviously* anyone who would commit rape – or is raped – has a low IQ?

No. But IQ does correlate with crime. Background reading here. People with low IQ commit many more crimes than people with high IQ.

All the top elite colleges have rapes occur just like the “lowly” community colleges do.

You think that the rate of criminality at a place like Williams is identical to the rate at a place like Richmond High? I would take the other side of that bet. How many of the students who walk in the door at Richmond tomorrow have been arrested? How many have served time in a juvenile facility?

Unfortunately, the data does not support that.

What data are we talking about? Let’s compare Richmond High School with the North Newton High School (the high school in my neighborhood). You really think that crime rate, the arrest rate, and any other measure aren’t radically different between these two schools? I will take the other side of that.

Anyway, first we need to establish if there is a difference in the phenomenon we are interested in. (Rapes are probably rare enough that we are better off focusing on a broader measure of crime.) Once we reach agreement on that, we can discuss why there is a difference. Kirsten asked me. (Note that I did not give my views until I was asked.) I gave her my honest answer. I would be curious about what explanations others would provide.

I have been skirting this post for all the obvious reasons, and also found Dave’s comment really disturbing. But you handled it so well, and have shed so much insight, not just on the event, but on the complicated feelings and reactions most of us experience as a result of something so incomprehensible. Thank you so very much.