Handbook of Critical Race Theory in Education

The above statement was taken from Hilliard’s (2003) chapter “No Mystery: Closing the Achievement Gap” in Young, Gifted and Black. We open with this quote because Hilliard’s problematizing the societal narrative concerning the “achievement gap” between blacks and whites draws attention to the way that racism functions in a conspicuous manner by, on the one hand, differentiating between whites’ and non-whites’ cognitive ability through a supposed objective measure (achievement/IQ test) (Arbuthnot, 2011; Gould, 1996; Steele & Aronson, 1995), while, on the other hand, simultaneously forwarding what we will refer to as a “seemingly expansive but inherently restrictive” discourse about racial hierarchies and…