who were equally well prepared and asked them to complete the verbal reasoning section of the GRE. On this kind of test, Steele wrote, there was, for Black students, an ugly “stereotype of their group’s lesser intellectual ability.” When the results came back, “white students did a lot better on this difficult test than Black students” with “a large difference that, if sustained over the whole GRE exam, would be very substantial.” Steele concluded this disparity was because Black students were aware of the stereotype suggesting they couldn’t do well on the exam, which had generated just enough
...more
