re: #136 Occasional Reader

That’s the one I was thinking of, too… the infamous BITCH test, which proved the utterly non-controversial point that of course a test CAN be designed to be completely culturally biased. As if anyone ever doubted that.

Here are some sample questions from a similar test, the “The Chitling Intelligence Test,” designed around the same time, in 1971:

4. “”Bo Diddley” is a:

(a) game for children, (b) down-home cheap wine, (c) down-home singer, (d) new dance, (e) Moejoe call.

5. “Hully Gully” came from:

(a) East Oakland, (b) Fillmore, (c) Watts, (d) Harlem, (e) Motor City.

6. Cheap chitlings (not the kind you purchase at a frozen food counter) will taste rubbery unless they are cooked long enough. How soon can you quit cooking them to eat and enjoy them?

(a) 45 minutes, (b) 2 hours, (c) 24 hours, (d) 1 week (on a low flame), (e) 1 hour.

7. What are the “Dixie Hummingbirds?”

(a) part of the KKK, (b) a swamp disease, (c) a modern gospel group, (d) a Mississippi Negro paramilitary group, (e) Deacons.

8. If you throw the dice and 7 is showing on the top, what is facing down?

(a) 7, (b) snake eyes, (c) boxcars, (d) little Joes, (e) 11.

9. “Jet” is:

(a) an East Oakland motorcycle club, (b) one of the gangs in “West Side Story,” (c) a news and gossip magazine, (d) a way of life for the very rich.

10. T-Bone Walker got famous for playing what?

(a) trombone, (b) piano, (c) “T-flute,” (d) guitar, (e) “hambone.”