item “for sale” from Uncle Sam.nDon Barnett is a writer fromnBrentwood, Tennessee, who lived innthe Soviet Union for two years. Henhas been in regular contact withnSoviet citizens for 15 years.nDirty Secretsnby Robert G. HollandnRace-Norming Lives OnnAyear after the nasty secret got outnof how race-norming works on thennation’s most widely used job test, thenestablishment news herd suddenly discoverednthe story. There were spots onnNBC Nightly News and the TodaynShow, a front-page story in the WashingtonnPost, an editorial in the NewnYork Times, and a piece by me in thesenvery pages. It was front-page copynthroughout the month of May 1991.nHouse Democrats quickly insertednlanguage into the then-proposed civilnrights bill purporting to ban this kind ofnmanipulation of test results (althoughnactually doing no such thing). Whereuponna silence then descended uponnthe Big Media. For all most Americansnknew, race-norming was a quirky practicenthat, once discovered, was quicklynterminated.nPssst! Race-norming just continuesnto roll along with no restraint in sight.nHaving published on July 24, 1990, annofiGcial notice of intent to suspend itsnrace-normed General Aptitude TestnBattery within ninety days, the U.S.nLabor Department fifteen months laternseemed to have placed the GATE inna state of permanendy proposed suspension—na limbo allowing state employmentnservices and thousands ofnmajor corporations to continue to handnout phony scores to millions of haplessnjob seekers. And even with the recentlynenacted civil rights bill, statements ofnlegislative intent that congressionalnstaffs have salted away in the fine printnof committee documents make it highlynlikely that regulators and judges willnfind race-norming to be an imperativenfor hiring by the racial numbers. Thenlegislative history states that if a job testnhas “disparate impact” on protectednminorities (that is, if passing rates aren44/CHRONICLESnunequal), it will fail to meet the “businessnnecessity” criterion of the civilnrights bill. In such circumstances, employersnmust either trash the test ornresort to race-norming (or similar subterfuge).nActually, they would rely onnBig Brother to condnue to do the dirtynwork for them, because the bogus bannplaces no restraint on government employmentnservices.nParadoxically, President Bush hasnrailed against the quotas the civil rightsnbill would foster, but he has ignorednthis smoking gun of quota-mongeringnin his own bureaucracy. Perhaps he isnhoarding this issue to spring during then1992 presidential campaign on thenassumption that voters, not withoutnreason, will blame the party of TednKennedy for the scam.nWhy is race-norming the subject ofnsuch little reporting or critical examination?nThe reason may be that so manynlarge newsrooms are also becoming thenproducts of strict quota hiring. Ornperhaps the self-censoring influence ofnpoliHcal correctness has captured newsnreporting. Whatever the reason, it isnclear that not all dirty secrets aboutnemployment discrimination are equallyntitillating to the gods of the liberalnmedia or to the Beltway cognoscenti;nnor do those presumed opinion leadersndeem all such revelations worthy ofnexposure to the disinfecting sunshinenof full disclosure.nMeanwhile, segregated scoring ofnjob tests according to an illiberal presumptionnof settled racial inferiority isnnot an unsubstantiated secret. ThenGATB race-norming also happens tonbe about ten years old; it traces to thenfinal days of the Carter administrationnwhen the focus of affirmative actionnwas changed from equal opportunity tonequal results. Moreover, race-normingndoes not affect just a few individuals.nIndeed, Scripps Howard political reporternPeter Brown reports in his booknMinority Party that roughly sixteennmillion unsuspecting Americans receivednrace-normed GATB scores duringnthe 1980’s. An even larger numbernwere handed racially rigged marks onntests administered by corporate Carterites.nThe way the scam works sounds likensomething out of South Africa’s playbooknof separate development: testntakers are scored against norm groupsncomposed solely of members of theirnnnown racial or ethnic designations, thenpurpose being to compensate for thentendency of blacks and Hispanics as anwhole to score lower than Asians andnwhites on such tests. This paternalisticnscheme assumes that individual membersnof designated victim groups cannotnhack it on their own, and by usingnnorming data that are 20 years old itnignores the gradual narrowing of thenblack-white performance gap on standardizedntests. The effect of what Departmentnof Labor bureaucrats euphemisticallyncall “within-group” scoringnis to skew the final scores wildly andnpreferentially. For example, if a white,nan Asian, a black, and a Hispanic allnapply for a mechanic’s job, and allnmake a real score of 300, the white andnthe Asian will each receive an adjustednscore of 44, while the Hispanic will getna 67 and the black will go to the headnof the line with an 83. Those scoresnreflect the test taker’s percentile rankingnwithin his own racial or ethnicngroup, but the marks are reported as anset of grades on a college exam wouldnbe. And those are the scores, never thenreal marks, that the employment servicesnreport to employees and to unsuspectingntest takers, many of whom arenunemployed. This is a fraud, and anracist fraud at that, but evidenfly nothingnmore than unpleasant trifles to ^naffirmative action fans in the news jnmedia and government.nThe secret charts used to convertnraw scores to within-group percentilesnwere leaked to the Richmond Times-nDispatch in May 1990. At the time,nthe Department of Labor had had itsnrace-normed version of the GATB undernseemingly permanent review sincenthe Reagan Justice Department hadnlodged a reverse discrimination complaintnin 1986. In 1989, the DOLnobtained a friendly analysis from anpolitically attuned National Academynof Sciences panel, which concocted anpseudoscientific rationale for racenorming.nBut the outcry that eruptednin Virginia upon publication of thenconversion charts reached the DOL’snears, following which then-Labor SecretarynElizabeth Dole published thenJuly 24, 1990, proposal in the FederalnRegister to suspend the GATB for antwo-year retooling.nAs is customary in federalia, thenDOL solicited “public comment” tonthis proposal. From my efforts to re-n