[John Kilduff]

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There's another way to look at it. Proponents of affirmative action would argue that if there is a situation where blacks are underrepresented in a certain population---say, admissions to a university--then discrimination must be at work to some degree.

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This assumes that black intelligence, motivation, personality traits, etc are entirely equivalent to white/asian at a genetic level. I see a lot of evidence that this isn't the case, and little evidence that it is. For example, Asians appear to have superior spatial intelligence to whites. Either way, it's far from a settled question, and until it is the whole premise on which your argument rests is entirely flawed.

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This is in keeping with the points I was trying to make. The whole argument rests on premises which themselves are mere assertions. The fact that some of the argument is undoubtedly true (that effects of discrimination have had some negative impact on test scores) misleads intuitively also, because without more incisive analysis it makes the whole argument appear to be true. That is fuzzy thinking. Some truths in an argument don't make all the premises the argument rests upon true, nor all the claims and conclusions of the argument true.

edit: I personally think it's obvious that effects of discrimination have caused negative impact on test scores, but I think that because it's obvious to me, not because the argument cited is truly convincing. The argument could actually be wrong on all points except that effects of discrimination have had some negative impact on test scores. How can we know which of the premises are true? At this point we pretty much can't, nor can we know if other unseen confounding factors might be at work.