(The following is a letter from William F. Brazziel, director of General Education at Virginia State College, Norfolk, Va. It was written to the Harvard Education Review in reply to an article by Arthur A. Jensen stating that genetic differences between blacks and whites are the chief cause of the gap between white and black IQs as measured by traditional intelligence tests.)
THIRTEEN YEARS ago plaintiffs brought suit in Federal District Court to integrate the Louisiana public schools. The main argument of the defense attorneys and the superintendent of public instruction was that "white teachers could not understand the Nigra mind" and therefore would not be able to teach them effectively in integrated classrooms. The defense quoted heavily from the theories of white intellectual supremacy as expounded by Henry Garrett and Virginia Shuie.
Last week, a scant five days after Arthur Jensen made headlines in Virginia papers regarding inferiority of black people as measured by IQ tests, defense attorneys and their expert witnesses fought a suit in Federal District Court to integrate Greensville and Caroline County schools.
Their main argument was that "white teachers could not understand the Nigra mind" and that the Nigra children should be admitted to the white schools on the basis of standardized tests. Those who failed to make a certain score would be assigned to all black remedial schools where "teachers who understood them could work with them." The defense in this case quoted heavily from the theories of white intellectual supremacy as expounded by Arthur Jensen.
It will help not one bit for Jensen or the HER editorial board to protest that they did not intend for Jensen's article to be used in this way. For in addition to superiority in performing conceptual cluster tricks on test sheets, the hard line segregationist is also vastly superior in his ability to bury qualifying phrases and demurrers and in his ability to distort and slant facts and batter his undereducated clientele into a complete state of hysteria where race is concerned.
JENSEN and the HER editorial board will modestly admit that they have superior intellects and I am sure they realized the consequences of their actions. Questions now arise as to why they decided to raise this issue, in this way, and at this time.
Fortunately, doubts about the ability of black and yellow people to master war, finance, science and technology are waning rapidly in both white and black minds. The impression of standardized testing is now clear to most literate people and the criminal use to which they are put in schools is also becoming clearer.
Black history has made people aware that white people did not give America such things as the stoplight, the shoe last, heart operations and sugar refining but that black people did this. That John Smith did not develop corn and tobacco but learned to grow these crops from the Indians. And the beat goes on.
People are now witnessing with their very eyes the fact of black youth finally given a half of a chance at education and jobs and being able to make exotic formulas for bombs and napalm as well as anyone else. As a result of all of this, I think the present set-to might be the last go-round for white supremacy psychological theory.
I WOULD hope the Jensenites could alter their stance and approach and try to bring some good out of this situation after all. They might work their way out of ethnic learning styles by broadening their research to include all ethnic groups. We have some rather learned men in our area who believe that English-Americans are atop the pyramid of abstract learning abilities with Welsh, German, French, Belgian, Norwegian, Swiss, Finnish, Danish and Swedish occupying the next nine rungs in the order listed. After the top ten have been given their just due, these gentlemen give a smattering of attention to the rest of the world.
The Jensenites might try to clear this up in some way. They might even look into intra-group differences within the top ten. I would suspect that many would be found and that it would be healthy to make this known at professional meetings, in the journals and in the news media.
We also have a religious wing in this group who suspect that English-American children who are brought up in Southern Baptist churches perceive things differently and might really deserve the top spot upon the pyramid. Southern-English-American-Episcopalians regard these assertions with a great deal of amusement. But who really knows? We all will if the ethnic learning line of research is extended logically to include every possible ethnic, regional and religious stock.
Also in the status research vein, we need research on the effects of racism and caste status on learning. The Jensenites can provide this by following Robert Coles and others around in Mississippi and South Carolina to study the parasitic worm and starvation situation among black children. Autopsies of a few who died might yield valuable evidence on the brain damages wrought by malnourishment.
The team could change themselves into black people a la John Griffin and run the hostility gauntlet as they tried to find some information in the local library. Or the hilarity gauntlet as they made application for a professional or skilled job.
They could fly as black men to Boston or Oakland and make the same applications to the craft union nearest the airport. Or they could try to get a tenured appointment in the Harvard Graduate School of Education, or a spot on the HER editorial board, or simply a rank higher than assistant professor among the 7,000 member Harvard faculty.
