Chapter 12: Historical and Developmental Perspectives on Black Academic Achievement: Debunking the “Acting White” Myth and Posing New Directions for Research

Academic achievement and motivation among Black youth have been controversial and hotly debated topics for some time. Unfortunately, a myriad of bad research studies and conceptual flaws have always plagued research in this area, leading to much misunderstanding and damage in opportunities for African American youth. Originally, the major flaw in scholarship was an assumption of the biological inferiority of African Americans: the notion that Blacks were genetically deficient in intellectual abilities compared with Whites. Several different lines of pseudoscientific data, ranging from craniometry to IQ testing to mythical views of human evolution, were used to promote this view (Gould, 1996). The theory of biological inferiority is still posed on occasion (Herrnstein & Murray, 1994; Jensen, 1969; Rushton, 1995), although it has been debunked repeatedly by many scholars (Gould, 1996; Lewontin, Rose, & Karnin, 1984).