Original Sins: The (Mis)education of Black and Native Children and the Construction of American Racism

During the Progressive Era in the early 20th century, a scientific area of interest was eugenics. Scientists and researchers argued about the best way to breed a better race of humans—just as one would breed livestock.

Biologist Charles Davenport, a leader of the movement, founded the Eugenics Record Office (ERO), which attempted to outline the best familial lines for breeding by looking at scientific and mathematical ability, and also supposedly inherited traits like poverty. Davenport argued that it was the responsibility of the state to better humanity by “institutionalizing, castrating, or executing people whose genes were deemed too dangerous” (116). Davenport’s work was popular and well respected. He received funding from the Carnegie, Rockefeller, and Harriman families. His work was studied in colleges, particularly his 1911 textbook Heredity in Relation to Eugenics.

To measure the effects of eugenics, scientists began studying ways to measure intelligence. In 1904, French psychologist Alfred Binet developed a series of tests for young children. He realized that children developed at different rates, which led to his theory of “mental age.” By testing children’s ability to do things like count or choose the prettiest face, and comparing the results to their age, Binet determined whether they needed intervention. 

To Binet, intelligence was not a fixed attribute. He argued that his test should only be used to identify struggling students, to help teachers know how to best meet their needs. Binet intended his test to measure aptitude, not skills acquired through school, so he never tested reading, writing, or rote learning. However, Binet’s methods eventually led to the development of the intelligence quotient (IQ) test.

In 1916, educational psychologist Lewis M. Terman, ignoring Binet’s guidelines, adapted Binet’s test as a measure of intelligence to be used in a variety of settings, including schools, by social workers and even by parents. Terman’s Stanford-Binet scale continues to be the standard measure of IQ; it has only been revised four times over the past century, most recently in 2003. Terman argued that his scale should be used to test students en masse, to identify students who were innately in need of more help. As a committed eugenicist, Terman believed his work would help in “curtailing the reproduction of feeble-mindedness and in the elimination of an enormous amount of crime, pauperism, and industrial inefficiency” (119). He also argued that it could answer questions about innate intelligence, race, and social class.

During World War I, Robert M. Yerkes, the head of the American Psychological Association, saw in Terman’s work an opportunity to make the field of psychology more relevant. Yerkes developed the Army Alpha and Beta tests, the first standardized tests that aimed to help the Army identify the smartest and most capable soldiers.

Ewing argues that these tests were insufficient and imperfect. Because they were developed by white men, their questions fell largely outside the life experiences of most Army recruits: Black men and recent immigrants. For example, one question asked where the luxury Pierce Arrow car is made, while another asked about the character Becky Sharp—the protagonist of William Makepeace Thackeray’s 1847 novel Vanity Fair. Despite this, the tests were extremely popular. Terman received funding to develop a national intelligence test.

Meanwhile, Terman’s Stanford-Binet testing scale was administered to students in grades three through eight. Some of his questions match the IQ and standardized tests of today, which ask about math or vocabulary. Others relied heavily on life experience or school learning, such as questions about farm product prices and Robin Hood’s Merry Men. 

Terman’s results seemingly showed that white students were innately more intelligent than students of color. He used his findings to fine-tune “racial stock” further, arguing that those of European descent made up almost 75% of “gifted” children. Conversely, Black and Indigenous students made up only 0.4% of his gifted group. When Terman published his results, he vehemently argued for the grouping of children based on their scores. He envisioned five tracks, ranging from “gifted” to “special”—students who should not be educated beyond fifth grade. Despite the criticism Terman’s work has received over the past century, Ewing points out that his ideas continue being used: Schools and teachers still group students by what they perceive as innate intelligence.

Terman’s work influenced Carl Brigham, a soldier who worked with Yerkes on his Army tests. As a psychology professor at Princeton, Brigham argued that Terman and Yerkes’s findings proved that white children were innately more intelligence than Black and Indigenous children. Even when Brigham’s results showed that Black children from the North performed better than those from the South, he ignored the role that socialization and opportunity had played. Instead, Brigham contended that they likely had white ancestry. Brigham eventually turned toward universities, developing the Standard Aptitude Test (SAT) to help with college admission. The test was quickly adopted, with over 8,000 students having taken it by June 1926.

All of these standardized tests have come under scrutiny or been outright dismissed. It has been acknowledged that they rarely measure innate intelligence, instead documenting experience and resource access. Despite this, both the tests and their findings have continued to find legitimization from supporters. In 1967, Nobel Prize-winning engineer William Shockley argued that forced sterilization should be revisited and that genetics plays a meaningful role in intelligence. The science journal Phi Delta Kappan published his work, embracing the theory that social welfare encouraged dysgenics (the opposite of eugenics), as it encouraged the lower classes to reproduce. In 1969, Berkeley professor Arthur Jensen criticized those who dismiss genetic factors related to IQ, resurfacing the idea of “race suicide” as he argued that Black, lower-class families’ high birth rates were troubling. 

Ewing argues that men like these have normalized connecting genetics and intelligence. Both Shockley and Jensen argued that their work was not racist—that they were using science to ask legitimate questions about nature and that ignoring these questions was willful ignorance. Today, discussions about genetic intellectual inferiority continue, despite the massive evidence against it.

When these discussions become normalized, they lead to practice. In 1972, Choctaw and Cherokee doctor Connie Uri learned that hysterectomies were being performed on Indigenous women without their consent. An investigation discovered that at least a quarter of Indigenous women in the United States had undergone sterilization because of the belief that they were not intelligent enough to use birth control. Similarly, in hospitals in Mississippi, New York, and Boston, Black women were routinely given nonconsensual hysterectomies so doctors could practice the procedure or collect Medicaid reimbursements. The procedures were justified with the argument that Black mothers and their children were a “drain” on society. To this day, 31 states and Washington, DC, have laws on the books that allow sterilization without consent.

It is easy to look back at early standardized tests and see how laughable many of the questions are. It is obvious now that they measure cultural and background knowledge rather than innate intelligence. Moreover, SATs and IQ tests are now less high stakes for young children’s education and future.

However, we continue to use standardized testing in dangerous ways. Testing young students determines school funding, measures student progress, assesses teacher skill level, and more. People also use the results to raise “innocent” questions, drawing pointedly racist conclusions under the guise of “just asking!!!” (135).

Standardized tests only measure what the tests’ creators—schools, the state, or a private company—determine is worth knowing. When Ewing taught science, she designed her classroom around research, inquiry, and experimentation. However, the standardized test measuring her work—and determining funding for the school—was a multiple-choice test of rote memorization. The science skills that she’d taught her students became meaningless. Similarly, literacy specialist Nicole Begay recalls reviewing the progress of a student from a rural community in a special education meeting. She was struck by the group’s focus on what the young boy didn’t know. However, they ignored how much he did know about things like farming. Ewing concludes that tests analyze only highly specialized “white” knowledge. Learning this information is the only way to be considered “gifted.” The tests ignore the vast array of knowledge outside their scope. 

An education rooted in white knowledge bestows intellectual inferiority upon Black and Indigenous students. White-centric education serves to destroy Black and Indigenous epistemologies. With settler colonialism, their knowledge needs to be eradicated to be replaced with what white schools and educators deem more vital. This approach harms all students, closing them off to knowledge and experience.

Ewing argues that the problem is less that Black and Indigenous children perform poorly or that tests are inherently unfair. Rather, the issue is that standardized testing is rooted in eugenics that explicitly denied the existence of Black and Indigenous intelligence. As a result, this testing has delegitimized and worked to destroy all other forms of knowledge.