Section 703(h) let employers use standardized tests to legally reproduce racial disparities.

Evidence

On the urgings of segregationists, in fact, Congress actually provided the means for the progression of racism. Section 703(h) of Title VII allowed employers “to give and to act upon the results of any professionally developed ability test.” Though eugenicists had been discounted in mainstream America, members of Congress and their constituents had thoroughly embraced their standardized mental tests as having the capacity to assess what did not exist: general intelligence. In the job industry, in education, and in many other sectors of society, officials could justify their racial disparities by pointing to test scores and claiming they were not intending to discriminate. And to racist Americans, the racial gaps in the scores—the so-called achievement gap—said something was wrong with the Black test-takers—not the tests. — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 976

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s testing project — a perfect counterexample to ‘ideas precede policy’: the assimilationist faith in tests as neutral predates but is weaponized by law.