Most people would say that minorities are definitely misrepresented in the ranks of the gifted. Several reasons have been suggested as the causes for that misrepresentation. One is that there are simply fewer gifted children in minorities, unless of course the minority is Asian, in which case people suggest that there are more gifted kids.

Why do people suggest such things? They say them because there is a disproportionately lower number of gifted kids from all minorities, except Asians, where we often find a disproportionately higher number of gifted kids.

Few people anymore believe there is a difference in intelligence among various racial and ethnic groups.

Another reason given for the low number of minority children identified as gifted is that there are cultural and language barriers that prevent children from minorities from scoring high enough on tests that children usually must take in order to be identified as gifted.  This is certainly a much more likely reason than that one group of people has a higher proportion of gifted kids than another group.

Still another reason is that many teachers are simply not trained to recognized signs of giftedness in children. They are usually trained to recognize students who are highly motivated to excel, and that makes sense in a way because many so-called gifted programs are really programs designed not for gifted children, but for those high achievers.  Not all gifted children are high achievers.  Many are underachievers.

The IN Denver Times covered this issue in the article Ethnic imbalances persist in gifted programs.

Is this a problem in your schools?