Semple, Robert B. "Powell Charges Draft Test Bias."
New York Times, May 11, 1966. P. 4.
Adam Clayton Powell lashed out at a series of upcoming tests designed to determine student
deferments. Powell compared the tests to the racial policies of Hitler. The exams would help
guarantee a deferment if the score recieved was high enough. However, there was an inherent
bias in the test because as Powell stated, "First we provide an inferior education for black
students. Next we give them a series of tests which many will flunk because of an inferior
education. Then we pack these academic failures off to Vietnam to be killed." Later on
Powell said the tests were designed to:
"select out the culturally gifted for continued college education and consign the
intellectually deprived to the armed services. Implicit in the draft deferment tests is
the theory of a race of Aryan supermen and the belief that rare great minds alone are fit
to direct the destinies of a nation and to dispose of the lives of its untutored masses.
Instead of a social democracy where equality is encouraged to flourish these draft deferment
tests lay the foundation for a racial aristocracy. These tests are reminiscent of Hitler's
twin system of eugenics and education -- weed out the intellectually deprived or socially
undesirables by conscripting them for cannon fodder."
Adam Clayton Powell stated that he told his own son to refuse to take the test but his son
said that he did have plans to do so because the tests were better than draft deferments based
on class criteria alone.
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