Young, Gifted, and Black Quotes

“Except during outbreaks of vicious bigotry, it is difficult to persuade white America that the alienation of Black America is actual and ongoing, afflicting each generation through policy, custom, quack science, and if nothing else, the Look.”
― Theresa Perry, Young, Gifted, and Black: Promoting High Achievement among African-American Students

“But virtually all aspects of underperformance—lower standardized test scores, lower college grades, lower graduation rates—persist among students from the African-American middle class. This situation forces on us an uncomfortable recognition: that beyond class, something racial is depressing the academic performance of these students.”
― Theresa Perry, Young, Gifted, and Black: Promoting High Achievement among African-American Students

“The visible, in-your-face manifestations of oppression have been mostly eliminated. But you scarcely can find a Black student who cannot recall or give you a litany of instances when he or she was automatically assumed to be intellectually incompetent.”
― Theresa Perry, Young, Gifted, and Black: Promoting High Achievement among African-American Students

“Judith Richards (1993), a teacher in Cambridge, Massachusetts, recounts her experience in a third/fourth grade classroom of children of white and African-American professionals and working-class Haitian immigrants. When she structured a traditional math problem-solving activity, the children of professionals invariably took the lead. However, when she embedded the same type of math problem-solving activity in a traditional Haitian folk tale, the Haitian children took the lead. It seems reasonable that culturally responsive pedagogy would positively affect learning. In both instances, the cognitive task facing children from cultures that were different from mainstream culture was simplified when they did not have to deal with both an unfamiliar speech event and instructional content. Further, one can imagine that using a familiar communication style could possibly reduce cultural dissonance, create a sense of membership, and symbolically affirm children who are members of racial minority groups (Erickson 1987).”
― Theresa Perry, Young, Gifted, and Black: Promoting High Achievement among African-American Students