Of Black Folks and Intelligence
The recent news of a Harvard 3L suggesting that it is within the realm of possibility that black folks may have some type of genetic character trait which leads them to be intellectually inferior to white people has caused quite a stir.
Some have called it racist on its face while others have said that the “outrage” represents the worse example of what liberalism does to academia. They rationalize that it is certainly a question that is worthy of scientific inquiry and that freedom of speech and thought should exist everywhere and should certainly exist within the system of higher education.
While this notion may have a certain merit to it, the idea that people would not or should not be outraged is laughable at best.
The theory that white people are some how inherently superior to blacks is not something that has just surfaced, it has been around for ever. The supposed scientific merits of the proposition have been used to dehumanize people for the longest. After all if white people are some how naturally more intelligent than it is perfectly logical that they should have the dominant voice and control over business, commerce, education, and government.
Obviously the lesser of the intelligent human beings would be better served by having their more intellectually endowed counterparts make all the decisions for them (see the notion that blacks in America were much better during slavery as expressed by pseudo academics).
The more interesting fact is how that train of thought often leads to denial of or reconstituting of things that demonstrate this as a false hood.
When black folks say that the Greeks went to Africa to learn about math and science, some deniers try to come up with elaborate reasons to deny to “blackness” of advanced civilizations like Egypt.
When black folks vastly out perform their white counterparts they have their accomplishments relegated to that of an anomaly.
Yet in a hypocritical change of direction black folks are instantly told to pull themselves up by their boot straps and that they have achieve anything they put their “minds” to when they complain about the strangle hold that is institutional racism.
The fact is Black folks have contributed just as much in the way of math,science art,culture etc. as anyone else, yet we often times even have to fight to get credit for those things.
While it may be within the realm of academic inquiry to ask the question are black folks genetically predisposed to being intellectually inferior to white folks, a quick look at history would suggest that the answer to this question is a resounding “Hell NO”.
There have been far to many contributions by black folks and all other “races” throughout history for one culture to actually believe that they in anyway have some sort of monopoly on intelligence.
Never mind the fact that how intelligence is expressed is an extremely broad question in itself.
The fact is along as we allow people to pontificate with these pseudo-scientific and intellectually dishonest questions we will only continue to add to the narrative of a country and worlkd that is already volatile, and that will no doubt lead us nowhere.
Plus this is happening in America, the place where being dumb puts you in the best position to be successful (see any number of celebrities, reality tv stars, and radio shock jocks.)
