The footnote on page 111 attempts to explain why blacks perform more poorly on standardized tests compared to whites. It starts off by saying that the low performance of blacks is a national problem and isn’t centralized in just one area. He then states that “economic deprivation” (Anson 111) accounts for some but not all the gap in testing scores. When a study showed that a black child from similar economic background as a white child still does worse on a test, sociologists went to their next theory: the questions asked on standardized tests are “culturally biased” (Anson 111) toward white people. When test questions were rewritten to appeal more to the black culture, there was still no notable difference in test scores. Experts have slowly…show more content… I believe that under all the technicalities, Eddie was always telling himself that he wasn’t good enough, and that caused Eddie to act in ways he might not normally act. This has a not so coincidental connection to the footnote on page 111. Anson may have included this footnote because it gets the reader questioning the mental mind on the characters and in the end, I predict that the physical circumstances for Eddie’s death is less of the blame compared to Eddie’s state of mind when the incident happened. It is all a mental game. This footnote does pose the question of how a “subtle, often subconscious cycle of self-doubt” (Anson 111) can affect the rest of a kid from Harlem’s life outside of standardized testing? Could one of the reasons for economic and social inequalities among blacks have to do with this “self-doubt”? I wonder if Anson personally believes the evidence expressed in the footnote, and if so, how would Anson try to fix the problem? The footnote on page 111 clearly expresses why blacks have inferior testing scores, it brings into question why the footnote was even added in the first place, and it raises many philosophical questions about
