Black Intelligence Test of Cultural Homogeneity

The Black Intelligence Test of Cultural Homogeneity, or BITCH-100, is an intelligence test created by Robert Williams in 1972 oriented toward the language, attitudes, and life-styles of African Americans. White students perform more poorly on this test than blacks, suggesting that there are important dissimilarities in the cultural backgrounds of blacks and whites.[1][2] Some argue that these findings indicate that test bias plays a role in producing the gaps in IQ test scores.[3] Similarly to the Williams test, the Chitling Intelligence Test [4] is another example of a culturally biased test that tends to favor African Americans.[5]

Both of these tests demonstrate how cultural content on intelligence tests may lead to culturally biased score results. Still these criticisms of cultural content may not apply to "culture free" tests of intelligence. The BITCH-100 and the Chitling test both have explicit cultural assumptions, while normal standardized tests are only theorized to have implicit bias. The fact that a test can have bias does not necessarily prove that a specific test does have bias. However, even on cultural free tests, test bias may play a role since, due to their cultural backgrounds, some test takers do not have the familiarity with the language and culture of the psychological and educational tests that is implicitly assumed in the assessment procedure.[6]

Blacks face one big problem in the test environment. Some Blacks came to America as slaves, so they came here not because they wanted to, but because they didn’t have any other choice. Therefore, these slaves and their descendants spent much of their time keeping with the behaviours of their African cultural roots, becoming conditioned by American slavery and learning these behaviours, and then trying to function successfully in the mainstream American society. [7]

Beverly Daniel Tatum writes that dominant cultures often set the parameters by which minority cultures will be judged. Minority groups are labeled as substandard in significant ways, for example blacks have historically been characterized as less intelligent than whites. Tatum suggests that the ability to set these parameters is a form of white privilege.[8]

See also

References

  1. ^ Williams, Robert L (September 1972). "The BITCH-100: A Culture-Specific Test". American Psychological Association Annual Convention. Honolulu, Hawaii. http://eric.ed.gov:80/ERICWebPortal/contentdelivery/servlet/ERICServlet?accno=ED070799. 
  2. ^ Racial Differences on a Black Intelligence Test Journal of Negro Education, 43, 4, 429-436, F 74
  3. ^ IQ Tests and the Black Culture McNiel, Nathaniel D.
  4. ^ The Chitling Test of Intelligence (Short Version)
  5. ^ Dove, A. The "Chitling" Test. From Lewis R. Aiken, Jr. (1971). Psychological and educational testings. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.
  6. ^ Assessment in Multicultural Groups: The Role of Acculturation van de Vijver, Fons J.R.; Phalet, Karen from the Special Issue on Advances in Testing Methodology from an International Perspective Applied Psychology. 53(2):215-236, April 2004.
  7. ^ Butler-Omololu, C., Doster, J. A., & Lahey, B. (1984). Some implications for intelligence test construction and administration with children of different racial groups. Journal of Black Psychology, 10(2), 64. doi: 10.1177/009579848301000204
  8. ^ Tatum, Beverly Daniel (1997). Why are all the black kids sitting together in the cafeteria? And other conversations about race. New York: BasicBooks. ISBN 9780465091270. 

External links