La courbe et la cloche

(Image via ManuMilitari)
Guy A. Lepage: Vous avez dit, et je vous cite: « Les Noirs vivant en Amérique étaient le résultat d'un processus de sélection artificielle, et par conséquent ils ont un léger désavantage sur le plan intellectuel. »

Docteur Mailloux: Oui, c'est vrai (...) il y a eu des études aussi, qui n'ont pas été publiées, qui m'ont été remises par l'Université de Montréal.

Dan Bigras: Quelles études? Quels auteurs?

Docteur Mailloux: Des études américaines, je ne les sais pas par coeur, mais je les ai dans mon sac, qui ont été faites sur des groupes. Et effectivement, ça a donné que le quotient intellectuel moyen des Noirs et des Amérindiens est nettement inférieur à 100.

Un test cognitif est bien plus qu'un paquet de feuilles:

So you get two groups of students, white, black, who are equally prepared. Equal skills, everything. You give them this very difficult test that is presented as diagnostic of ability. The black student has this extra pressure on performance. And that is in our research invariably reflected in lower performance.

Then you shift conditions just with the touch of a change of the instructions, you present the same test as a test that is something we use to study problem solving in the laboratory and is not diagnostic of ability. That turns the stereotype off for the black student. Now as the black student experiences frustration on this test, it has nothing to do with the prospect of confirming a stereotype or being seen from the standpoint of the stereotype. And if that pressure of being seen stereotypically is enough to depress their performance, then taking off that pressure should increase their performance. And that's what happens in this research. Presenting the same test as non-diagnostic of ability, black students perform just as well as equally prepared white students in that situation.

Claude Steele, Département de Psychologie, Stanford

Si vous voulez comprendre la controverse autour de The Bell Curve

• The Bell Curve
  

  sur le site Human Intelligence de l'Université de l'Indiana




• Very few of the reviews frame the book in the history of racist "science," or denounce it as another racist insult tending to the encourage negative stereotypes and political and social violence against black people. This is racism normalized, made acceptable to an important racist constituency and fitted to serve the political agenda of the powerful, setting the intellectual and moral stage for a new wave of harsh policies toward the heirs of the victims of the slave system. -Edward S. Herman