According to studies conducted later by Brown and Shaw in the '70s, the fundamental premise for Black political participation is the idea of African Americans controlling their own communities and institutions. In actuality, many Black individuals believed that Black survival is dependent on African or African American sovereignty from the United States. Research by Charles Cooley (1902) and George Mead (1934) in "Social Looking Glass" and "Generalized Significant Others" models this behavior of self-concept and self-arising values through interaction with other members of one’s community. Yet, this conclusion was not applied to Black consciousness. Notably, Wells (1978) and McAdoo (1974) contribute to this deficit in research, pointing out the early researchers' failure to use multiple methods and a sufficient number of African Americans in standardizing their studies. However, the normalization of Black inferiority undoubtedly contributed to the biases displayed in past studies.

Additionally, the misinterpretation of the Black psyche affected long-term political outlooks due to its influence on education. It is no secret that for years American education was entirely Eurocentric. Traditional white practices formed the basis of history, household economics, mathematics, and literature. The cultural appeal to white America left non-white American students at an unnecessary disadvantage in comprehension. This played out statistically within the 20th century, with a massive overplacement of Black, specifically male students, in special education, depriving them of standard resources for the enrichment of young Black minds and severely impacting Black self-esteem. Post-evolution of Black living environments, non-Black psychologists constructed a narrative that deemed the Black home as overstimulated, resulting in the Black child's inability to focus. Using IQ tests such as The Army Alpha Test and the Army Beta Test, which were from the 1917 era or 1916, sealed the long-term fate of Black students.

“An IQ test determined whether one would attend college, receive a scholarship, become an officer or an enlisted man in the army, or enter management or another role in the corporate world, serving as a gatekeeping device.”
-Aaa G. Hilliard III

Blacks scored significantly lower on these tests. Leon Kamin, author of "The Science and Politics of I.Q.", discussed the pure racism inherent in these tests and how their purpose was to demonstrate the racial inferiority of minorities. Thankfully, the work of Black psychologists such as A. Wade Boykin and their analysis of psychological verve spurred the Black community to challenge the inferior placement of young Black minds. Robert Williams’s "The Black Intelligence Tests of Cultural Homogeneity" provided empirical evidence of the cultural biases present in American education. Reconfigured to examine the same degrees of intellect yet framed through Black culture, the Bitch test was revolutionary. When administered to whites and blacks, whites failed to understand any of the items.