Giftedness in African American Children

Erain Applewhite

While giftedness has been a topic that has been heavily studied since the days of Lewis Terman and the development of the Stanford-Binet test, considerably less work has been done on the study of gifted African American children (Hamilton, 1993). One explanation for this may be that African American children are significantly underrepresented in this field. Although African Americans make up 16% of the public school population, they represent only 8% of the population in gifted programs (Ford, 1995). Like other gifted children, gifted African Americans are confronted with many issues, such as peer pressure and pressure from parents and teachers to excel. Their experiences are unique, however, in that they must deal with other factors as well, such as discrimination, ethnic/racial identity, and clashes with cultural ideologies that may affect their psychological, social, and academic functioning. Giftedness is a term that over time has been hard to define. While ...

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