can identify that is responsible for race. No such
markers exist for all members of any one race. No
genes or hereditary factors are shared by every Asian,
or every black, or every white person. Moreover, spe-
cific traits such as the ones listed previously vary more
within each racial group than they do between racial
groups.
America has always been multiethnic and multi-
racial. As more immigrants settle in the United States,
and people marry interethnically and interracially,
ethnic and racial heterogeneity continues to increase.
Racial and ethnic minority children and adolescents
are the largest growing segment of the U.S. popula-
tion. Changes in the ‘‘face’’ of America demand that
individuals try to understand developmental process-
es operating in children from varying racial and eth-
nic backgrounds, as well as other factors that
influence the differences in children’s development.
Looking at similarities and differences in develop-
ment helps researchers identify universal principles
and processes that occur across all cultures, races, and
ethnicities.
Standardized Tests and Race
A variety of race comparative studies have been
conducted in the field of psychology and, more spe-
cifically, in child development. Race comparative
studies on self-esteem, identity formation, out-of-
school activity participation, risk taking, parenting
style, and parental monitoring number in the thou-
sands. Perhaps the most controversial area of study of
racial and ethnic differences has been in intellectual
performance. Many African-American and Native-
American children score, on average, twelve to fifteen
points lower than their European-American peers on
standardized IQ tests. Hispanic-American children’s
scores fall between African-American and European-
American children’s, whereas Asian-American chil-
dren’s scores tend to be at the same level as scores of
European-American children. It is important to note
that neither IQ, future academic performance, nor
life success can be predicted from an individual’s race
or ethnicity.
Researchers have suggested several possible ex-
planations to account for racial and ethnic differences
in intellectual performance. The first explanation is
that standardized IQ tests and testing procedures are
culturally biased toward European-American middle
class knowledge and experiences. According to Janet
E. Helms, IQ tests are designed to measure cognitive
skills and information that middle class European-
American children are more likely to have acquired.
Researchers have attempted to make IQ tests more
culturally fair, so members of minority groups and
lower socioeconomic status are not placed at an in-
stant disadvantage when taking them. A completely
culture-free test, however, is good in theory, but not
so feasible yet in practice.
Another explanation that has been suggested for
racial and ethnic differences in intellectual perfor-
mance is that minority children are not motivated to
do their best on standardized tests. John U. Ogbu
suggested that negative stereotypes about minority
children’s abilities may influence their ideas about
their future educational success and career prospects.
Children may feel that because of societal prejudice
and discrimination they may not be able to get ahead
in life, so the effort that they make and how well they
score on a test is irrelevant. Furthermore, Ogbu sug-
gested that African-American children may associate
academic achievement and doing well on tests with
‘‘acting white’’ rather than with the values of their own
group. Thus, they may avoid doing well because of
the fear of being rejected by their own racial or ethnic
group for behaving in ways valued by or associated
with the majority culture. Claude M. Steele suggested
that minority children and adolescents may experi-
ence stereotype threat—the fear that they will be
judged to have traits associated with negative apprais-
als and/or stereotypes of their race or ethnic group
(e.g., African Americans are not smart in reading;
Hispanics just cannot do math; African Americans are
simply intellectually inferior)—which produces test
anxiety and keeps them from doing as well as they
could on tests. According to Steele, minority test tak-
ers experience anxiety, believing that if they do poor-
ly on their test they will confirm the stereotypes about
inferior intellectual performance of their minority
group. As a result, a self-fulfilling prophecy begins,
and the child performs at a level beneath his or her
inherent abilities.
In 1994, in their book The Bell Curve, Richard J.
Herrnstein and Charles Murray suggested that differ-
ences in IQ are the result of genetic differences be-
tween the races and cannot be explained simply on
the basis of test bias or socioeconomic status differ-
ences. They also suggested that these IQ differences
were responsible for higher rates of poverty, unem-
ployment, and welfare dependence in minority
groups as compared to majority groups. Arthur R.
Jensen agreed with the genetic hypothesis and pro-
posed that humans inherit two types of intellectual
abilities: Level I abilities, related to memorization
and short-term memory, and Level II abilities, which
deal with problem solving and abstract reasoning.
Jensen believed that all children perform Level I tasks
equally well, but that European-American children
perform Level II tasks better than children from
other racial groups. Herrnstein and Murray were met340 RACIAL DIFFERENCES