Intellectually Superior Negro Youth: Problems and Needs

This chapter is concerned with the problems and needs of intellectually superior Negro children and adolescents. For present purposes the term, intellectually superior youth, is arbitrarily defined to include those children and adolescents who rank in approximately the upper five per cent of their local population in psychometric intelligence or school achievement. This percentage is not, however, to be regarded as unduly rigid. Superiority is a relative term, and whether the upper ten per cent or the upper one per cent of youth are regarded as superior, t h e generalizations developed in this discussion apply with equal force. It is important to observe, further, that concern here is with the youth who are superior in their local group; not merely those who are superior in terms of national norms.