The Mismeasure of Minds: Debating Race and Intelligence Between Brown and the Bell Curve

Description

Finalist, 2019 PROSE Award in Psychology, Association of American Publishers The 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision required desegregation of America’s schools, but it also set in motion an agonizing multidecade debate over race, class, and IQ. In this innovative book, Michael E. Staub investigates neuropsychological studies published between Brown and the controversial 1994 book The Bell Curve. In doing so, he illuminates how we came to view race and intelligence today. In tracing how research and experiments around such concepts as learned helplessness, deferred gratification, hyperactivity, and emotional intelligence migrated into popular culture and government policy, Staub reveals long-standing and widespread dissatisfaction—not least among middle-class whites—with the metric of IQ. He also documents the devastating consequences—above all for disadvantaged children of color—as efforts to undo discrimination and create enriched learning environments were recurrently repudiated and defunded. By connecting psychology, race, and public policy in a single narrative, Staub charts the paradoxes that have emerged and that continue to structure investigations of racism even into the era of contemporary neuroscientific research. Cover......Page 1 Half Title......Page 2 Title......Page 4 Copyright......Page 5 Contents......Page 8 Introduction......Page 12 One: Plasticity of Intelligence, Education Reform, and the Disadvantaged Child......Page 28 Two: Minimal Brain Dysfunction, Ritalin, and Racial Politics......Page 60 Three: The Politics of Cerebral Asymmetry and Racial Difference......Page 90 Four: A Racial History of Emotional Intelligence......Page 120 Five: Neuroscience, Race, and Intelligence after The Bell Curve......Page 150 Afterword......Page 180 Acknowledgments......Page 184 Notes......Page 186 B......Page 222 D......Page 223 G......Page 224 J......Page 225 N......Page 226 P......Page 227 S......Page 228 W......Page 229 Z......Page 230