Many believe public holds stereotypes that barcode blacks

Study reveals negative racial perceptions

By PATRICIA DONOVAN
News Services Editor

The study by Herbert L. Foster contends that these stereotypes "bar code" black males from an early age and may be responsible, in part, for the assignment of a disproportionate number of black males to special-education classes for the mildly retarded or emotionally disturbed.

Results of the survey, conducted over four years and involving 3,130 respondents-the majority of them white and more than half of them educators -were published recently in The Journal of African American Men, the quarterly journal of the National Council of African American Men.

Foster, professor emeritus in the Department of Learning and Instruction in the UB Graduate School of Education, is a nationally recognized expert on the subject of educators' racial perceptions and stereotyped thinking.

He said the study is the first open-ended survey of attitudes toward black men and has a 95 percent degree of accuracy.

For years, education researchers, including Foster, have cited the stereotypes underscored by the study and raised serious concerns about them. They also have raised an alarm about the "grossly disproportionate" number of black males who are suspended or referred to disciplinary programs.

Foster says those results occur when educators interpret the adolescent coping behavior of even very young black males through a screen of racial and ethnocentric stereotypes. The survey results, he notes, speak to the need to face the fact that racism in our society and in our schools is a fact of life that black children, and particularly male black children, have to contend with every day.

Foster's sample consisted of 3,130 subjects; 1,627 of whom were educators: teachers, school administrators or guidance counselors. Subjects were asked to "list all the stereotypical beliefs, feelings, expectations and fantasies that the average person has about black men." The survey was administered over a four-year period across the U.S. and in Ontario, Canada.

Among the common beliefs cited by respondents as being held by the public are that black men are criminally dishonest, less intelligent, lazy, have "negative family traits" and are belligerent and mean.

Foster writes: "Negative stereotypes about black males, long whispered about, have now been confirmed through research. Those of us continually horrified by the shunting of males, and black males in particular, into special education, or being suspended from school, have a responsibility to educate teachers and their instructors, as well as in-service educators, about stereotypical beliefs established and reported in this study."