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Abstract
Throughout the history of blacks in America the social positions of whites and blacks have been distances apart, with whites enjoying a much higher social status as a group. One issue that is often raised in connection with this concerns the comparative abilities of the two groups to achieve and succeed. Some professionals believe and assert that blacks inherently have lower abilities than whites and this is why they do not achieve as much and are not as successful as whites. However, recognizing that blacks have not attained as much as whites does not necessarily indicate that they have less ability than whites. Brought to the United States as slaves, blacks were stigmatized as being inferior to whites from the beginning. This stigmatization gave way to a myriad of stereotypes that described blacks in degrading and otherwise unflattering terms. Ultimately, a self-fulfilling prophecy may have occurred. Merton (1948) proposed that the self-fulfilling prophecy occurs when a perceiver acts on his or her initially false beliefs about a target in such a way that those beliefs come to be confirmed. Other writers in this area (see Darley & Fazio, 1980; Jones, 1986, for reviews) document that targets often come to act in ways that are consistent with the expectations of perceivers and may also change their self-perceptions because of such behavior. Essentially, the self-fulfilling prophecy theory holds that perceivers with stereotypical views of others alter their behavior toward those stigmatized others in such ways as to elicit the expected behavior. The stigmatized individuals, thus, come to behave in accordance with the stereotype and ultimately see themselves in a manner consistent with the stereotyped belief. And so it may be that after years of enslavement and degradation, blacks have begun to incorporate the prevailing low opinion of black people held by whites, thus believing that, as a group, they are less competent than whites. Such a belief would consequently affect how blacks behave and perform, and determine the kinds of endeavors that they pursue. The study reported here was, in part, conducted to examine the beliefs about blacks' and whites' abilities held by blacks and whites and to determine if they are as the foregoing theory would predict. Specifically, the study assesses the perceptions that blacks and whites have about one another's ability to succeed given a prescribed set of typical circumstances. Prior to discussing the study, however, it seems appropriate to explore the issue from a historical perspective.
Beginning with the earliest relationship of blacks and whites in the United States, white superiority and black inferiority was the premise upon which all things were based. Blacks were brought to this country against their will, in order to serve as slaves to whites. The color of their skin, clearly distinguishable from that of whites, became the mark of one deserving a sub-servient position. "Black" and "slave" became synonomous and, in this way, blacks became stigmatized as a group. In their book "Social Stigma : The Psychology of Marked Relationships" Jones, et al (1984), discuss the concept of stigmatization. Generally, those who deviate noticeably from norms of appearance or behavior are clearly identified, and, a label marking their deviant status is applied. For both parties this marking process typically has devastating consequences for emotions, thought and behavior. In the classic case, the mark or sign of deviance initiates a drastic inference process for the marker that engulfs his impressions of deviant targets and influences interaction with them . Stereotypes thus become a natural companion to stigmatization as they are an attempt to rationalize or explain the negative affect associated with a stigma. (Jones, et al., 1984, p. 10).
