The Study of Racialism

The U.S. Black/White test score gap is a frequent topic of discussion. The most recent threads where it is discussed are:

http://backintyme.com/ODR/viewtopic.php?p=4961#4961
http://backintyme.com/ODR/viewtopic.php?p=3027#3027
http://backintyme.com/ODR/viewtopic.php?p=3044#3044

At Maya's suggestion, I have scanned in the first 51 pages of Christopher Jencks and Meredith Phillips, The Black-White Test Score Gap (Washington DC: Brookings Institution, 1998). This is the most recent comprehensive survey of research that has collected raw data about anthropological factors related to the U.S. Black-White test score gap. You may download the book's introduction as either an Adobe Acrobat "PDF" file or as an MS-Word "DOC" file. Please feel free to read it online or download it to your computer to read it at leisure.

If you choose to read about this research, you should keep four points firmly in mind: (1) The information is rated "M". Reading it can be hazardous to your posting privileges. (2) The Black-White test score gap is real. (3) The Black-White test score gap has serious social consequences for the United States. (4) Give weight to the raw data, but do not give as much weight to researchers' conclusions.

1. The information is rated "M". Reading it can be hazardous to your posting privileges. This information is for mature viewers only. Specifically, these studies address a serious U.S. social pathology in order to collect data so that we can better understand the problem. Some people feel that the very act of studying this pathology exemplifies bigotry (on the part of White researchers) or "racial" betrayal (on the part of Black researchers). If you feel this way, please leave this thread now. The moderator will delete without warning any post under this thread that attributes racist or treasonable motives to the researchers, or that advocates suppressing such research. The moderator will suspend the posting privileges, again without warning, of anyone who violates the previous sentence's prohibition twice. This forum is part of the "Technical and Scholarly Discussions" section of ODR, where political advocacy is not tolerated.

2. The Black-White test score gap is real. It does not merely appear in one specific test nor in just a few particular tests. On the contrary, the gap appears in every test of those mental abilities that are important to success in Western culture. It appears in simple tests like counting backwards and in complex tests like the SAT. It appears in K-12 grades and in college graduation rates. It even appears in employers’ objective appraisals of on-the-job performance. The gap cannot be argued away by saying that it is culturally biased in that it measures only mental skills that are important in White society. Those skills are precisely the ones intended to be measured. Some people are misled because the media calls them “IQ” tests or “aptitude” tests as if they measured something innate. They do nothing of the sort. They measure mental dexterity, nothing more.

3. The test gap has serious social consequences. It imposes a crushing burden of incompetence, ignorance, and consequent poverty on a disproportionate segment of the Black community. It also imposes a burden on U.S. society as a whole, which must deal with a host of social problems, from violent crime to child neglect, that spring from Black inability to fully contribute or produce.

4. Give weight to the raw data, but do not give as much weight to researchers' conclusions. Like everyone else, researchers have axes to grind and political agenda to promote. You should be skeptical of their conclusions because the peer-review process leans lightly upon researchers' conclusions. On the other hand, the peer-review process leans heavily upon verification and replicability of raw data. Even a hint of falsification can wreck a researcher's career. Hence, you should take raw findings very seriously. For example, the study "The Burden of 'Acting White': Do Black Adolescents Disparage Academic Achievement?" by Philip J. Cook and Jens Ludwig, Journal of Policy and Management (1997) concludes that the Fordham-Ogbu "oppositional culture" hypothesis is wrong. Their data show that Black highschoolers strive just as hard as White ones do to achieve good grades. But if you carefully examine the raw data you will find that their central data-collection technique was merely to ask Black students "Do you strive as hard as White students?" The study's conclusion is based on the fact that most Black students answered "yes".

Please feel free to post questions, suggestions, or requests for detailed data. For obvious reasons, I cannot scan in all of the book's 524 pages. But if any particular data point interests you, I would be happy to help you locate its specific original study. Finally, the book's table of contents is available online at the publisher's web site.

Here is a summary of the most recent findings in three areas: preschool, grade school, and adolescence:

PRESCHOOL

3. The gap appears at age 3 at the latest. It may well appear earlier but this has not been tested yet.

4. The gap does not appear in unassimilated immigrants from sub-Saharan Africa.

5. The gap does not appear in unassimilated British West Indian immigrants of predominantly African ancestry.

6. The gap does not appear in unassimilated Latin American immigrants of predominantly African ancestry.

7. There is a slight correlation between gap width and skin tone.

8. There is no correlation between gap width and actual underlying African genetic admixture.

9. Children of wealthy Black families have essentially the same gap as children of poor Black families.

10. Children of college-educated Black families have essentially the same gap as children of uneducated Black families.

11. First-generation biracial children of a Black mother and White father have the same gap as children with two Black parents.

12. First-generation biracial children of a White mother and Black father have a slightly less severe gap.

13. Black children raised by two White adoptive parents have no gap at all. (That is, not until adolescence, when their mental skills plunge to the same level as Black children raised by Black parents.)

14. There is some weak evidence of a “grandmother effect.” Although children of Black parents have the same gap, regardless of those parents’ wealth or education, children with educated grandparents seem to have a significantly smaller gap.

GRADE SCHOOL

15. Reducing class sizes for Black children reduces the gap, but not by much. Increasing class sizes for White children has no effect on White children’s mental skills.

16. Increasing teacher skill level for Black children reduces the gap, but not by much. Reducing teacher skill level for White children has no effect on White children’s mental skills.

17. Having only White teachers teach Black children reduces the gap, but not by much. Having only Black teachers teach White children has no effect on White children’s mental skills.

18. Pouring massive funding into school resources for Black children (facilities, libraries, lunches, art, music) reduces the gap, but not by much. Withholding school resources from White children has no effect on White children’s mental skills.

ADOLESCENCE

19. Black children raised by White adoptive parents do not show any gap through grade school. But upon reaching adolescence their mental skills quickly deteriorate to the level of Black children raised by Black parents.

20. Only one study so far has examined Ogbu’s Black “oppositional culture” hypothesis. (That Black adolescents deliberately fail in response to Black peer-pressure that punishes success as “acting White.”) The study disputes Ogbu’s hypothesis because, when asked, Black high school students insisted that they study just as hard and just as much as White students and that they skip school no more often than White students.

21. Even if it exists, Black peer pressure that punishes success as “acting White” cannot possibly cause the Black-White test score gap because the gap appears by age 3 at the latest, long before peer pressure is an issue.

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Mary Lee (whose masters' degree is in early childhood cognitive development) wanted me to give you her opinion. She believes that some parents lack parenting skills. Specifically, that they do not play sufficiently with their infant in the first 18 months of life in ways that stimulate and develop the frontal cerebral cortex so that the child becomes accustomed to successfully manipulating and controlling its environment. Once those 18 months have passed, the neural connections have formed and are no longer malleable. Hence, children who were deprived of such stimulation in those 18 months may possibly be helped to some extent by direct one-on-one intervention by trained practitioners, but they can never hope to attain the mental skills of children not so deprived.

Regarding Ogbu’s peer-pressure “oppositional culture” hypothesis, Mary Lee believes that this is an entirely separate issue, irrelevant to the formation of the gap.

No data yet shows why there is a weak postitive correlation between grandparents' education and a child's intellectual dexterity.

For what it is worth, most specialists in early-childhood cognitive development (including Mary Lee) agree with your suggestion. According to them, even reading to a six-month-old (who clearly cannot understand a word you say) has a dramatic impact upon the child's later cognitive ability. And reading to or playing with the kid is what grandparents do.

Indeed, there is even a theory in physical anthropology that explains the puzzle of why we are among the longest-lived mammals (the longest-lived primate by far). The theory says that we live so long merely because our role as grandparents is essential to the cognitive development of our grandchildren, without which our genes cannot survive.

As I recall, Bob Herbert (I think) had a funny true story about this. A young mother, who had taken classes on parenting skills, took her one-year-old to the pediatrician for a routine checkup. The pediatrician administered the standard battery of cognitive development tests for a one-year-old, which the kid easily aced. The pediatrician thereupon looked sternly at the mother and accused, "Someone has been reading to this child!"

Mary Lee takes this so seriously that she had me reading to our two-month-old latest grandson last week. Rather than read about purple dinosaurs, or whatever, I read to him from my current reading list, Jim Loewen's latest book, Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism (New York: New Press : Distributed by W.W. Norton, 2005). Now the poor kid will grow up knowing about the Jim Crow phenomenon that originally created the urban ghettoes by expelling Blacks from rural towns and city suburbs.

On the other hand, Jencks and Phillips, the researchers who collected all of the recent research in one place, do not think that this is the case. They suggest that the "grandparent effect" is simply because it takes at least two generations for socio-economic status to impact parenting practices. Parents whose own parents were trapped in poverty never learned parenting skills. Parents whose own parents were middle class did. (See pages 24-25 of their Introduction.)

Again, what we desperately need is more data from serious study. Sadly, many otherwise socially committed researchers shun this field precisely because it attracts villification.

[The following paragraph was added later] I forgot to point you to the original data for the "grandparent effect." It is Meredith Phillips, Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, Greg J. Duncan, Pamela Klebanov, and Jonathan Crane "Family Background, Parenting Practices, and the Black-White Test Score Gap," pages 103-145 of the Jencks and Phillips collection. The specific tables showing the correlation are on pages 121-126.

This story may be relevant:

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/ ... 99,00.html

It is very relevant, thank you.

It is my understanding that the UK has never had a Black-White test score gap comparable to the U.S. test score gap. The children of immigrants from India and Pakistan, for example, who are traditionally called "black" (recall Little Black Sambo) have usually excelled in tests. As the article states, there is a performance gap in the UK for children of recent BWI immigrants, but it is apparently due to acculturation, since -- as the article points out -- it goes away with training and it almost always vanishes in subsequent generations (especially in the mixed population). BWI, Afro-Hispanic, and African immigrant children in the U.S. also have a transitory acculturation gap similar to their British counterparts, which also goes away with training.

The chronic U.S. Black-White gap, on the other hand, seems to be a different problem since it appears earlier in childhood and no reliable or permanent remedy for the individual has yet been found.

Thanks to Frank and Fledgist for posting sources, and to Frank in particular for setting the tone so desparately needed in discussions like these. I want to do some background reading before commenting further.

Don't forget the Black Unitarians who outscored most White populations in the US in the SATs. Of course they were still outscored by White Unitarians.

And Black Yankees consistently outscore White Southerners. (But White Southerners outscore Black Southerners). It is really a puzzling phenomenon. The intro that I posted gets into this.

It reflects access to education, and maybe cultural connections to those who design the tests. Clearly one has to have certain numeracy, literacy and comprehension skills only obtained through formal education enhanced by the types of learning environments that highly educated parents might provide for their kids.

Interestingly nonEnglish speakers usually learn the standardized noncolloquial versions of the language and so may be more open to standard (as defined by upper middle class NorthEast/MidWest) American English than some one from an area with a strong regional speech characteristics who will more likely have teh notion that theirs is the "right" use of American English.

The latter is probably correct. The former I strongly doubt. One clear finding is, "3. The gap appears at age 3 at the latest. It may well appear earlier but this has not been tested yet." This is before formal education takes place.


I do not think so. Again, the gap appears in early childhood, before formal education begins. Also, according to the findings, "9. Children of wealthy Black families have essentially the same gap as children of poor Black families." and, "10. Children of college-educated Black families have essentially the same gap as children of uneducated Black families."

Please feel free to read the two posts that started this thread. Or, for more data, please download and read the book's introduction.

Thanks for posting this Frank. I have only made a slight headway on the study......

A few questions:

1. How wide is the gap measured in relationship to urban, suburban, and rural Black/White (B/W) communities? For instance, how does population density reflect in the gap?

2. How is the gap measured in relation to private and parochial B/W students?

3. How is does the gap compare with Literacy rates?

And my personal favorite finding thus far:






Thanks,

Sadly, one of my heroes, a man whom I sincerely look up to, who has done and continues to do great work in my field (the study of U.S. racialism) is trapped in an early 90s time-warp. He has not kept up with the findings and so remains convinced that he knows the answers. This is a hot-button with me, since this person is otherwise so brilliant.

I shall get back to you on your other questions in a little while. I am working on a new essay right now.

In any society the people are bombarded from birth by millions of covert little social messages that come in a miriad of forms. This thread makes me more aware of one of those messages having to do with being instilled with a sense of entitlement. I have noticed in my lifetime how this manifests itself within people from various socio-economic classes. I've also noticed how significant a sense of entitlement is to a person's self identity and ultimately their success in the world.

I found this finding very interesting:

"19. Black children raised by White adoptive parents do not show any gap through grade school. But upon reaching adolescence their mental skills quickly deteriorate to the level of Black children raised by Black parents. "

Adolesence is the time when children look outside of their family and at the larger world around them to help them form their new adult self-identity. Is what these adolescents are finding in the world outside causing this deterioration?

Exposure to other Black children, Media stereotypes and even cognitive dissonance from racism could all be factors.
It has been shown that cognitive dissonance can lead to lower cognitive ability.

Really? I did not know that! This is totally off-topic, but could you please PM me (or post) whatever material you have on that? This would be very interesting indeed. If the stress that compartmentalization generates really does reduce cognition, it would explain lots of things, and not just the B/W test-score gap. I am surprised that Tooby and Cosmides have not picked up on this.

I'll have to try to remember where I read about the test as it was quite a while ago. But basically it was a test where they got people who tested high on ethnic bias. Then tested their IQ. Then they placed them in an environment where they had to interact with the people they were biased against. On video they looked quite normal. But when tested for their IQ again there was a marked reduction in their scoring. I have always hypothesized what the stress of being in an environment of perceived or real dissonance weould do to the cognitive abilities of a person.

I remember that! Thanks, I am sure that I can find it. It did not ring a bell because I read the original press release as dealing with the discomfort associated with having to interact with someone you were hostile towards, rather than with the mental stress of compartmentalizing contradictory beliefs. I shall look into it again. Thanks again.

I fear that I must disappoint Melani23 because recent studies have not addressed any of her questions.


The closest that any study has come to addressing this was "Black-White Test Score Convergence Since 1965" by Larry V. Hedges and Amy Nowell. They tried to figure out why the gap had narrowed between 1965 and 1990 by looking at everything that changed in U.S. society in those years. One of the things that changed was that lots of families moved from cities to suburbs. Unfortunately, they could not connect that trend to the gap.


Nobody has even looked into this. Several studies considered detailed school factors (pupils per teacher, teacher pay, spending per pupil, etc.) but none explicitly compared government-run schools with private or church-run schools.


Again, I am sad to report that nobody has even looked at this.

Despite the lack of answers today, I am confident that such answers (and similar ones) will emerge within the next few years. This is because the most recent wave of published research was driven by two forces, both of which have been finally laid to rest.

The first force was The Bell Curve. The publication of this bogus pseudo-science book spurred legions of researchers (and their funders) to measure precisely just what percent of the gap was genetic in a "racial" sense. The answer was definitely shown to be zero, zip. In hindsight, it seems silly for so many researchers to have spent so much effort over the past decade to all come up with the same finding. But the important thing is that the fallacy has finally been put to bed. It still pops up among internet ignoramusses, of course, but no serious researcher is likely to apply for a grant to measure it again, and if they did, they are not likely to get funding. The notion of a genetically dependent B/W test-score gap is a dead as anything can be in science. (This is not to say that test-taking ability is not hereditary--it certainly is. But it has nothing to do with relative Afro-Euro admixture.)

The second force was the fight between ideologies. "Liberals highlight social factors, such as racial discrimination, low wages, inadequate schooling, lack of jobs, and so on. Conservatives emphasize cultural factors, such as values, attitudes, habits, and styles." [page 502] And so both liberals and conservatives were willing to fund research in the expectation that the answers would support their ideologies. As it turns out, everybody was wrong. Nobody knows what the hell causes the gap, but we can definitely now say that it is none of the factors listed above. This is good news, not bad. It means that the next wave of studies will be looking at factors that are not so narrow, so idealogically polarized. By casting their nets much wider, the next batch of studies may well scoop up some fish.

In short, although recent studies cannot answer any of your questions, stick around. I am confident that the next batch will.

Thanks Frank.

I noticed a lack of information on these subjects myself. Hopefully, every angle will be examined to get at the 'big picture'. Maybe a different frame of reference or paradign shift would help to solve the mystery.

My experiences of working at a University, working in gov't, and teaching, would lead me to surmise (with nothing but ancedotal evidence).....

Hypothesis 1- Urbanization is expected to close the gap (increases access and acculturation)

Hypothesis 2 - Private/Parochial schools should have a smaller gap due to confounding variables (size of classroom, resouces, parental involvement, etc).

Hypothesis 3 - Literacy rates would have no effect among similar groups.

Could environment play a role in the Black-White score gap??