 Why is beef a better food than cabbage? This question was supposed to measure a person's aptitude or Intelligence, but in reality its goal was to prove the supremacy of the white race The SAT was built with discrimination in mind and to this day continues to exclude people I want to tell you how the SAT came to exist and why we still take it today Despite its disgusting origins this story goes into eugenics systemic racism multi-billion dollar industries and the government lobbyists that fight to keep it happening welcome to another rabbit hole so the SAT was created by this guy called Brigham He looks like he might have had a racist thought or two in the past and as a matter of fact he did in 1924 he published a book called a study of American intelligence in this book He explicitly stated that the Nordics were superior to the Alpines and the Alpines in turn were superior to the Mediterranean's which somehow included Irish people and the Mediterranean's in turn were superior to none other than I can't believe I'm gonna say this the Negro. Okay, so there you go. The SAT was created by a racist guy and So the exam is racist. All right We actually need to back up a little bit to understand where this book comes from and why it was so important For the SAT back in the early 20th century IQ testing was hotter than Britney Spears was in 1999 everybody was trying to measure Intelligence in particular the American psychological association or APA or the people that tell you how to cite your sources in University had a plan for measuring intelligence now their progress was moving along pretty slowly until a major world event happened World War one America had to go in and save the day and tell Europe to behave So we needed millions to be drafted into the army so they could go to Europe and fight for the war There was just one problem. How do you know who's fit for certain positions in the military? You needed to be able to separate your officers from your frontline infantry who should probably just die in the trenches So the US Army called up APA and asked for their president to make them attest Robert Yerkes was the president at that time and he's the author of that fantastic question that I posed at the beginning of this video He came up with two tests the army alpha test and the army beta test The alpha test was for anyone who could read English and the beta test would be given to anybody who was illiterate or Spoke a different language and now if you've always wondered where the whole alpha beta thing comes from now You know now quick side note some of the questions in this test are Absolutely hilarious much funnier than beef and cabbage my personal favorite comes from section one of the test If a man who cannot swim should fall into a river he should a Yell for help and try to scramble out be Dive to the bottom and crawl out or see lie on his back and float So these two tests were given to hundreds of thousands of soldiers over the span of two years from there Robert Yerkes wanted to understand this data a little bit He thought it could be useful So he handed over the data to his assistant Carl Brigham Yerkes actually wrote the forward to Carl's book a study of American intelligence in that forward He wrote no one of us as a citizen could afford to ignore the menace of race deterioration or the evident relations of immigration to national progress and welfare Brigham himself backs that same idea up on page 209 of his book in his conclusion where he says we must face a possibility of racial Admixture here that is infinitely worse than that faced by any European country today for we are Incorporating the Negro into our racial stock while all of Europe is comparatively free from this taint American intelligence is declining and will proceed with an accelerating rate as the racial Admixture becomes more and more extensive. Oh, that's not fun to say. I don't like reading that for the record Now, why did they feel this way Yerkes and Brigham were both eugenicists eugenicists believe in the study of eugenics Which is basically improving the quality of human genes by selective breeding essentially Limiting the ones that you don't want and encouraging the ones that you do want if that sounds familiar a certain Adolf Hitler was a fan So yeah, so the amount of racism in this book is probably enough to make Donald Trump blush But what does it have to do with the SAT to get the answer? We have to go back to 1899 in that year the College Board was founded It's the same College Board that you know today for the SAT back then University admissions were basically a free-for-all So one of the first things that they set out to do was to create a standardized admissions tests for all of the universities on the board They started with an essay writing test which would later become the SAT essay which is now dead But after some time they realized essays are hard to correct and with the number of people applying for university increasing They needed a faster way. They wanted something simpler Something you could mark with a pencil check quickly and move on and they figure there was nobody better to ask than Karl Brigham So in 1926 Brigham published the first SAT you can actually see this SAT for yourself on Washington Post's archives All right, so so far all I've proven here is that a racist guy made a test That doesn't actually mean the test itself is racist or that it's discriminatory in any way does it? And even if it was today's test is so different from that test that it couldn't possibly have the same problems Right to get to the bottom of this we have to fast forward a little bit to the 1930s At the time the president of Harvard University was James Bryant Conan He wanted to create a test to determine who would be able to get scholarships from Harvard University Now Conan was actually a super progressive guy He didn't like that every single person in Harvard came from a preparatory school or a very wealthy family He wanted to open up the university to more people So he asked his Dean Henry Chauncey to figure out a way to evaluate students and give more people a chance Along the way Chauncey met Brigham and Brigham saw a golden opportunity His experience with the Army Alpha test told him that if he could make an even more difficult test for university admissions Only the white race would be able to pass it The thing is Brigham was right the SAT that he designed focused exclusively on three things Reading comprehension vocabulary and math skills The same things that the SAT focuses on today If you didn't have a good education or your English level wasn't so high There was no way that you were going to get a good score on Brigham's SAT That's especially a problem when we're talking about a time in the United States where segregation was in full force Black people had to go to different schools Schools that often had more students per teacher and less funding for the materials they needed They were definitely inferior, the schools not the people And what's crazy about this is Brigham actually acknowledged this on page 191 of his book If we compare Negroes only to those whites who live in the same neighborhood And who have had the same educational opportunities Our differences are smaller Brigham knew that his test would result in low scores for people who come from disadvantaged backgrounds Which is the exact opposite of what Conant wanted to accomplish And still he pushed it anyway The next thing you know the SAT is the standard test for Harvard University scholarships If you fast forward to World War 2 You see that they dropped the scholarship application and started using it for every single person who applied Because there was such a shortage of qualified people that they needed a way to test everyone Now you might be saying, well, Meacham that was the 1930s Surely things have changed since then The SAT still discriminates against anyone who doesn't come from a wealthy background Statistics show that if you earn more money your SAT score is likely to be higher If you are a minority in the United States you typically earn less money And therefore you can also see that SAT scores are lower for different racial groups than others This is still true today Almost a hundred years after Brigham published his first SAT And while some authors have claimed that the SAT does reliably tell you about intelligence What those authors fail to point out is that intelligence comes from two sources Nature and nurture Being your natural given ability But nurture is your society Your education Your parents And your experiences All of those shape your intelligence as you grow So while some people certainly may have a lot of natural ability If they grow up in an environment where that ability is not maximized They're going to have lower scores So just like the Army Alpha test The SAT doesn't really measure intelligence so much as it measures opportunity That's one of the reasons why in 1993 College Board changed the name of the SAT It used to be called the Scholastic Aptitude Test Now it's called the Scholastic Assessment Test If the SAT is so deeply rooted in racism and it doesn't even really measure intelligence And it keeps underprivileged people out when that's the very thing it was designed not to do Then why do we still take it? The answer is simple Money Now the last time I went down one of these rabbit holes I published a video about the TOEIC scandal And if you watch that video You might remember that I talked about a company called Educational Testing Service Now even though the SAT is published by College Board The people that actually make the test are ETS The same people that make the TOEFL Both College Board and ETS are non-profit organizations So you would expect them to not be making a lot of money But when you take a look at their tax filings The picture is a lot worse than you would think Those tax filings are public and I read them So here are some highlights The CEO of College Board made over $1.4 million in 2019 Next in line was the president who pulled in a cool $910,000 At least a dozen other people on the College Board Board of Directors Made over $350,000 Meanwhile at ETS the president raked in $1.3 million And the whole board combined for $17 million in 2019 alone But that's nothing compared to how much money they have in the bank College Board reported nearly $1.3 billion of assets in 2019 That's billion with a B And ETS is even doing better They have $1.5 billion in assets These are non-profit organizations that claim that their whole mission Is about giving people educational opportunity And they have billions of dollars sitting in the bank How do they use that money? Well a lot of it goes to investments to help them get even richer But also a lot of that money goes to lobbying In particular ETS and the College Board Lobby against any bill that could possibly make it harder For people to take the SAT A few weeks ago Colorado passed a bill House Bill 21 1067 makes it impossible for public universities in Colorado To require the SAT for admissions If you look up the list of people who lobbied for and against this bill One name stands out So there you have it The SAT and exams like it are a multi-billion dollar industry An industry that pays millions of dollars every year To make sure it stays in existence Every time you take the SAT You put money into the pockets of already overpaid executives And fund efforts that make it harder for people to get into university And I say that knowing full well that in every other video I tell you to go to preposcore.com and ask us about SAT prep And that's hard for me to reconcile I want us to be the good guys But like I mean On one hand the system is clearly fucked And on the other hand it's the system we have And if you as an international student want to go to study in the United States Chances are you're gonna have to take the SAT I wish I didn't have to tell you that I wish I could just say No you don't need to take the SAT You could make a list that only includes schools that are test optional But even then your chances of getting a good scholarship go down without the SAT We're stuck But I hope that changes I want to see the day where score can get big enough to fight back Where you as a foreigner can get in on your merit And not your comprehension of a bunch of randomly selected English texts and math problems Until that happens, I'll see you next week