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BLAME THE NEGRO CHILD!

DOXEY A. WILKERSON

Throughout the history of class society, the exploiters of men have been prone to blame their victims for the degradation imposed upon them, developing self-serving theories to cloak oppression. As with the black man in this country, for example: he was enslaved "because" he was inferior. HE is oppressed in the urban ghetto today "because" the nuclear family unit is broken. This pattern of up-side-down rationalizing extends into many areas of our national life. The concern here is for its manifestations in the education of Negro children in the public schools. 

When I was coming along in college during the 1920's, the psychologists of our land were still enthralled with the big intelligence-testing spree initiated during World War I; and, in all seriousness, we were taught that Negros were "poorly endowed by nature." Their low academic performance in school was evidence of their innate intellectual inferiority. Successive generations of teachers were brought up on this doctrine, and its impact in our profession is still pronounced. If the children fail in school, they-or perhaps their progenitors-are to blame; certainly not their teachers!

During the 1940's and 1950's, however, this racist doctrine lost academic respectability. The once immutable IQ, supposedly set by the genes, was exposed as an unstable function of cultural experience. More fundamentally, even the concept of genetically-determined "potential" for learning was undermined by the theoretical work of Piaget1, Hunt2 and others. Most reputable behavioral scientists now embrace the interaction theory of the development of intellectual

1 Jean Piaget, The Origins of Intelligence in Children, New York: W.W. Norton Company, 1963, 419 pp.
2 J. Mc V. Hunt, Intelligence and Experience, New York: Ronald Press Company, Inc., 1961, 416 pp.

Dr. Doxey A. Wilkerson is on the faculty of the Ferkauf Graduate School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Yeshiva University, New York City.

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Transcription Notes:
POssible capitalization mistakes? especially at the beginning of first paragraph