Doubting the measurability of intelligence threatened white educational privilege and its machinery

Evidence

BY THE TIME Biggie Small’s “Juicy” was released in 1994, a growing number of academics was accepting the truth that “intelligence” was so transient, so multifaceted, so relative, that no one could accurately measure it without being biased in some form or fashion. And these revelations were threatening the very foundation of racist ideas in education (as well as sexist and elitist ideas in education). These revelations were endangering the racist perceptions of the historically White schools and colleges as the most intelligent atmospheres; the contrived achievement gap (and actual funding gap); the privileged pipelines for Whites into the best-funded schools, colleges, jobs, and economic lives; and the standardized testing that kept those pipelines mostly White. — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 1134

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s earlier engagement with the achievement gap and standardized testing as policy instruments; the funding gap vs achievement gap contrast is the key inversion here. — connects to: Desegregation replaced liberatory Black schooling with obedience-based knowledge transmission; Discredited phrenology was succeeded by IQ testing defending racial hierarchy — Robert P. Jones, White Too Long: The Legacy of White…, 60