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My last 45 years have been spent in longitudinal research in which I have watched the psychobiological development of our study members as they grew from children to adults now in their fifties.. . . My association with this study has broadened my conception of the human experience. Now I would be less satisfied to treat the fears of a 3-year-old, or of anyone else, without a later follow-up and in isolation from an appreciation of him as a tantalizingly complex person with unique potentials for stability and change. (Jones, 1975, p. 186)
Developmental research in psychology as a scientific endeavor dates from this era. Certain universities came to be known as the best places to go if one wanted to be trained as a developmen- tal psychologist. The University of California, Berkeley, was one of those sites, as were the programs at University of Minnesota, led for many years by John Anderson (1893–1966), and the University of Iowa. The number of scien- tists engaged in developmental research did not approach the number engaged in behaviorist re- search; still, this became one of the streams that ran parallel to the mainstream of experimental psychology in these years and represents the di- versity of psychology that only grew after World War II.
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Indians, Mexicans, and increasingly, Asian immi- grants. These ‘‘races’’ were, as indicated earlier, seen as inferior because of either failure to evolve or degeneration. It was at this historical junc- ture that the new Psychology entered the picture to offer a scientific view of the psychological qualities of different races.
Psychologists and Scientific Racism
We have already discussed the work of Yerkes and his colleagues in the massive army intelli- gence testing program (see Chapter 6). Here, we extend this discussion briefly to give a flavor of the mainstream attitude of experimental psy- chologists to racial hierarchy research in the first decade or so after the end of World War I. The interpretation of the data from the testing pro- gram reflected the racial attitudes and concerns in the United States at that time.
Yerkes and his colleagues interpreted the test results as indicating that certain ‘‘racial’’ groups were, indeed, less intelligent than others. Among enlisted men or draftees, those of northern Eu- ropean or Anglo-Saxon descent scored highest, with eastern and southern Europeans scoring lower. African Americans scored lower than those of European descent. Yerkes took his analysis even further, comparing scores among African Americans based on lightness or darkness of skin color. Those who were ‘‘yellow,’’ that is, who had more ‘‘White’’ blood, scored highest, with those who were blacker scoring the lowest. Here is an excerpt from his report:
An interesting attempt was made at [Camp]
Lee to further distinguish within the negro group on the basis of skin color. Two bat- talions were classified as lighter or darker on the basis of offhand inspection. Two other battalions were classified as black, brown, and yellow on the basis of skin color. The me- dian score of the ‘‘black’’ negroes ina was 39, that of the ‘‘yellow’’ was 59; while that of the ‘‘brown’’ negroes fell between these values. (Yerkes, 1921, p. 531)
The interpretation of Yerkes and his colleagues reflected the beliefs and the concerns of the dominant majority group at that time, that is, Whites of northern European descent. Their interpretations fit with the eugenics movement (see Chapter 6). Eugenics (‘‘good birth’’), a word coined by Francis Galton, supposedly was a science of improving the human race through better breeding. In Great Britain, positive eugenics focused on encouraging the talented classes to have more children. In the United States, a negative eugenics emerged that focused more on lowering the number of children born to the poor, alcoholics, the ‘‘feebleminded,’’
African Americans, and other undesirable groups. In Nazi Germany, a little later in the 20th century, the same principles were applied with disastrous effects to Jews, Gypsies, and the physically and mentally disabled.
Challenges to Psychometric Racism
The interpretation of the army testing results was not unique to psychologists, nor was it new in the field of psychology. By the time of World War I, the development of paper-and-pencil testing technology to assess intelligence (seeChapter 6) had already begun its long and continuing usage as a sorting methodology, most often employed to validate the superiority or inferiority of one group or another.
When the Binet-Simon test (1905) was brought to the United States by the eugenicist and Quaker psychologist Henry Herbart God- dard (1866–1957) in 1908, one of its first uses was to assess racial differences in intelligence.
This inaugurated a period that has been called the era of psychometric racism by African American historian of psychology Robert V.
Guthrie (1998). Several intelligence tests were developed: the Binet, the Stanford-Binet, the Yerkes-Bridges Point Scale, and so on. In the hands of primarily White psychologists, members of visible minorities, as well as eastern and southern Europeans, were ‘‘proven’’ to be
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intellectually inferior to Whites of northern European and Anglo-Saxon descent.
This situation began to change in the 1920s, first in a negative reaction to the excessive eugeni- cist claims of psychologists and other scientists who overemphasized the role of heredity in psy- chological abilities and moral character. A second reason was the development of convincing argu- ments that emphasized the role of environment and opportunities in shaping intellectual abili- ties. Some of this work was done by minority psychologists.
For example, George Sanchez (1906–1972), a psychologist of Mexican descent (Chicano), investigated the psychological testing of Mexi- can American children in the 1930s. He argued that his results showed that the use of intel- ligence tests standardized on White children were inappropriate for use withChicano children who did not have the same language profi- ciency or cultural experiences as White middle- class children (Sanchez, 1932, 1934; Padilla, 2009).
In addition, a Rockefeller philanthropy connection to the work of African American psychologists arose in this era. The LSRM developed a program of grants and fellowships for which minority scholars were eligible.
When the LSRM was ended, the Rockefeller General Education Board provided scholarships.
In addition, the Rosenwald Fund specifically targeted improving African American education as one of its goals. Many African American psychologists received fellowships from one or more of these funds and used them to further their education, typically using them to complete their doctoral degrees at predominantly White institutions, as few opportunities existed for doctoral work at historically Black colleges and universities.
The question of intelligence and intelligence testing was one focus of the research conducted by several African American psychologists in the interwar period. The Journal of Negro Educa- tion published many articles on the subject of
‘‘Negro’’ intelligence, by both Black and White
psychologists. In 1934, the journal devoted a spe- cial issue to ‘‘The Physical and Mental Abilities of the American Negro.’’
Howard Hale Long (1888–1948), an African American educational psychologist, published on various topics addressing problems in education.
Long was the fifth African American male to earn a doctoral degree in psychology. He received his EdD from Harvard in 1933. He spent much of his career as associate superintendent of public schools in Washington, DC, where he saw the problems of inequality in educational resources firsthand. It was these inequalities, such as lower funding for ‘‘Negro’’ schools than for White schools, that led Long to argue that any differences in academic achievement were due not to inferior intellectual ability among Black schoolchildren but to lack of environmental resources (Long, 1935).
Numerous other minority psychologists were working at this time. Other African American psychologists in this period included Herman Canady, Herman Long (1912–1976), Albert Beckham, Oran Eagleson (1910–1997), Alberta Turner (1941–1988), and John Brodhead (1898–1951). Many of them published research on issues of race, intelligence, and achievement (see Guthrie, 1998).
Beckham (1897–1964) earned his master’s degree at New York University (NYU) and then taught for several years at Howard University before returning to NYU to earn his doctorate.
At Howard, he began a clinic for working with African American children. His dissertation topic was ‘‘A Study of the Intelligence of Colored Adolescents of Different Economic and Social Status in Typical Metropolitan Areas’’ (1929). He recruited 1,100 participants from New YorkCity;
Washington, DC; and Baltimore. The focus of the research was to analyze the intelligence test results in relation to socioeconomic status.
The results indicated that environment played a critical role in determining test results. Beckham then spent much of his career with theChicago Board of Education Bureau ofChild Study. He married Ruth Howard (1900–1997), who was
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the first African American woman to earn a PhD in a psychology department, at the University of Minnesota in 1934 (see Chapter 11). The two of them established guidance counseling clinics at manyChicago schools that served large minority populations. They also established and were codirectors of theChicago-basedCenter for Psychological Services. In Chicago, they were able to put their theories about nurturing the intellectual capacities of minority children into practice.
Canady (1901–1970) succeeded FrancisCecil Sumner (1895–1954), the first African American to earn a doctorate in psychology (atClark Uni- versity, 1920), at West Virginia State College in 1928. According to Guthrie (1998),Canady made West Virginia State into the most pro- ductive psychology department at a historically Black college or university of its time. It was Canady who first questioned the role that racial differences between the examiner and the ex- aminee may play in obtaining accurate results on intelligence tests. He showed the importance of establishing rapport to gain the most accu- rate assessment of intelligence (Canady, 1936).
This was particularly true for minority children.
Canady also contributed research that high- lighted the difficulty in obtaining the same testing environment for Black and White participants.
This necessitated, Canady argued (1943), great care in making any comparisons among races on test results. By the time America entered World War II, then, psychologists of color were suc- cessfully challenging the results of scientific and psychometric racism.