The BITCH Test

1970

Robert L. Williams (b. 1930)

By the 1960s, the number of psychologists of color in the United States was finally on the increase after decades of resistance by the psychological establishment. Once in, they encountered a particularly hostile discipline. In particular there was a tradition of using psychological tests, especially intelligence tests, to maintain racial oppression and inequality.

The formation of the Association of Black Psychologists (ABPsi) in 1968 had given voice to the concerns of African American psychologists about the use of tests in support of discriminatory policies. The work of ABPsi drew upon their contemporary experience as well as on the work of African American and Chicano psychologists of the 1920s and 1930s, such as Herman Canady, Albert Beckham, and George Sanchez. These psychologists and their colleagues had skillfully debunked the claims of racial superiority based on intelligence test results.

The attitude in the late 1960s was more militant. Robert Williams, cofounder and second president of ABPsi, had experienced the negative consequences of biased psychological testing. He began a project to construct a culturally specific test, the Black Intelligence Test of Cultural Homogeneity (BITCH), published in 1970. As Williams wrote at the time, “A ‘culture specific’ test is used to determine the taker’s ability to function symbolically or to think in terms of his own culture and environment.” The test was intended to determine the impact of cultural influence on test taking. The BITCH results captured a greater range of intellectual ability in black children than the standard intelligence tests then in use. Williams and his colleagues, especially African American psychologist Harold Dent, further pursued the question of biased testing. By the late 1970s, the court of appeals ruled in the case of Larry P. v. Riles that intelligence tests could not be used to track racial or ethnic minority children into classes for the mentally retarded.

SEE ALSO Army Intelligence Tests and Racism (1921), Black Psychology (1970)

Dr. Robert L. Williams and Dr. Michael Connor. Dr. Williams was one of the founders of the Association of Black Psychology, the developer of the BITCH test, and the creator of Ebonics.