A little over a year ago, I came upon this on my friend Willy’s page.

 Joe Biden in Iowa on August 8th, 2019:

“Poor kids are just as bright and just as talented as White kids.”

Ummmmm

What the what?”

Uncle Joe, NOOOOOOO! Say it isn’t so! You didn’t! 

But, he did and compounded it this year with the following:

Since I wrote the original post, Biden has also stated, “If you aren’t voting for me, then you ain’t Black” to a Black radio personality. That deserves a whole separate post. 

In this current political climate, one might think that my Small Acts of Racism posts are directed toward Republicans or Conservatives. They are not. They are directed toward everyone. To those who may have experienced racism and to those who have perpetrated it. Racism knows no political party or political ideal. It is an equal opportunity to be had by all. 

Biden’s statement came as a surprise to me, not because I wouldn’t expect it, but because I already had today’s post planned and I am now shifting gears. I planned out several days worth of posts 21 days ago and have yet to get to all but two of them because racism in this country and in the lives of people of color happens every👏🏾damned👏🏾day! It is impossible to escape it. 

There is so much to unpack with Biden’s statement, but I am going to try to make it work with a subject I had previously planned, The Myth of High Test Scores. 

The FB friend’s page that I have referenced frequently in the last few days was saturated with comments I consider the backbone of racism, but one statement in particular stood out to me. It was a poster who kept claiming he had suffered from “reverse racism” because he had been told by several potential employers that he had been turned down because “although he had high test scores” he was not a veteran, disabled or he was the wrong color. They had priority over him in the hiring process. 

I touched upon this same subject during my dissertation research and during one of my classes, because a young white lady expressed that she was very upset that her father had not received the job of fire chief while a Black man had. She screamed in the middle of class “But, my Dad scored number 3 on the test!” She was extremely upset. That statement, as well as Biden’s and my still unnamed FB friend’s statement all have a fatal flaw(s) in their logic, reasoning and underlying assumptions. 

Let’s first re-examine Biden’s statement: “Poor kids are just as bright and just as talented as White kids.” This statement is all kinds of f#*ked up, but let’s try to break it down. 

1. Biden assumes all poor children in school are “of color.”

2. He assumes all poor children who are of color are scoring lower on standardized tests than their white counterparts.

3. He is also assuming that these poor students of color  are scoring lower than students of higher socioeconomic means AND  poor White children (he acts as though they don’t actually exist) and is associating the outcomes with genetics. Although, he tried to walk back his statement. 

4. Finally, Biden is associating standardized tests with intelligence when in actuality, standardized tests are a measure of exposure, not intelligence. For instance, there used to be a question on a test that said, “What is a canoe?” If you lived in the inner city with no exposure to bodies of water or boating you were likely to get the question wrong. Not because you lacked intelligence, but because you lacked exposure.  Tests have a built in flaw in this way. You don’t know what you don’t know if you’ve had no experience it, whatever “it” is. 

Briefly going back to White privilege, this is the epitome of it. White privilege is the assumption that White people are smarter, more capable and more competent than their counterparts BECAUSE  they  are White (read: genetically superior=White  supremacy.)

This isn’t how tests and test scores work. Just because you had “some of the highest scores,” doesn’t mean you had THE HIGHEST SCORE. 

My student’s fundamental assumption was a Black person could not have possibly scored higher than her father even though two people had clearly scored higher than her Dad. In her mind, neither of those two people could be Black because Black people couldn’t be as smart as White people. It turned out the fire chief had scored number one on the examine. 

Secondly, that simply isn’t how test scores work. Even if you score in the 93rd percentile on a test, 6% of the people taking the test scored higher than you. And, while the 93rd percentile is incredibly high, one of the highest, in fact, it is not THE highest. Therefore, making the assumption that the person getting the job is not as qualified as you is ludicrous. It is altogether humanly possible that a person of color, a woman, a veteran or someone with a disability is more qualified than you for a job because not only did they score higher than you, but they come with a whole host of skills that you may not have because they have had to deal with adversity on top of being a damned good test taker. The thought that people of color automatically are less qualified is based in the belief system that White people are brighter than everyone else which is the fundamentally erroneous assumption of Biden’s racist statement and my student’s racist assumption. 

Now, if Biden thinks that, what do you think American educators have been exposed to? 

Racism isn’t a Republican issue. It is not a conservative issue. It is a human issue regardless of your politics. 

Now, given that said, I wouldn’t care what Joe said, when the person in office has done far more. 

For your viewing pleasure: 

Cue the excuses in 3…2…1…