The truth can never be racist.
Schmucks!
In the Watson Affair (read this, this, and this), 79-year-old, Nobel Prize-winning geneticist James Watson was forced, in late October, to recant his statement that blacks are, on average, less intelligent than whites and that there are genetic reasons for this inequality, and to resign his position as chancellor of the world-famous (due to Watson’s 40-year leadership) Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. Since then, ever more rats have been jumping the good ship IQ, including some I hadn’t even known were on board.
Two such rats are the authors of Schmucks!, comedian Jackie Mason and “celebrity divorce attorney” Raoul Felder. Mason and Felder, politically neo-conservative, Ashkenazi Jews — the kind that were raised as liberals, but changed through experience — joined the anti-science, leftwing-dominated mob denouncing Watson.
In “Race and Intelligence,” Mason and Felder pile on, lying like Persian rugs, not only about the science, which backs up Watson in spades, but at least in Mason’s case, about his own beliefs as well.
Apparently a subject that has attracted scientists is the question of the correlation between race and intelligence. Now don't get us wrong. We believe that basically this is an area of wasteful analysis. In our lives, we don't deal with “races,” we deal with individual people. For instance, if science has determined that Jews are smarter than Buddhists, the fact is if we needed an operation, we would rather have a smart Buddhist picking up the scalpel than a dumb Jew. But if scientists want to explore a particular subject for what they believe is a search for the truth, and want to waste their (hopefully, not the public's) money on a particular piece of nonsense, so be it.
A worldwide uproar occurred because Nobel Prize winner James Watson made a racist statement about the supposed lower intelligence of Africans. “All our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours,” according to the London Sunday Times, but then he added, “Whereas all our testing says, ‘Not really.’” Who cares? Even if true — which we believe it is not — it is basically an irrelevancy. Does that mean, if Watson is to be believed, that Africans should not be entitled to an equal share of the economic pie, the right to be equally educated, or the right to have all the protections and benefits that government can offer? In short, even if it were true — again, which we do not believe it is — who cares? Might not centuries of exploitation and denial of the benefits of education and health facilities cause testing to be skewed?
Watson's position is eerily similar to that of Professor Arthur Jensen, who wrote an article in 1969 in the Harvard Educational Review wherein he postulated that racial differences in intelligence test scores may have a genetic origin. He suffered the same fate as Dr. Watson.
Mason and Felder also speak of Watson’s remarks on African IQ as “pseudo-science” on a par with “global warming and the Loch Ness monster.”
Mason and Felder don’t deal with “races”? “Who cares” whether one group is smarter than any others? A black with an IQ of 67 or 85 has the same right as a Jew with an IQ of 112 to get admitted to a prestigious university or get a high-paying, intellectually demanding job? “Centuries of exploitation and denial of the benefits of education and health facilities”? (In the latter case, are they talking about blacks or Jews?)
As for Arthur Jensen, he may have been vilified and assaulted for his work, but that work endures scientifically, and Jensen did not suffer the same fate as Watson. Jensen was not suspended, much less forced to resign by his employer, UC Berkeley, and he never repudiated his research on intelligence. And there is nothing “eerily similar” about the common points between Watson and Jensen; based on the known facts of psychometrics and genetics, the two scientific giants simply agree. It happens.
(Jensen’s classic, 1969 article, “How Much Can We Boost IQ and Scholastic Achievement?” was published as a stand-alone volume (No. 39) of that notorious lunatic fringe publication, The Harvard Educational Review. I heartily recommend it to Mason and Felder, should they ever wish to learn something about the science of intelligence.)
As for Watson having made “a racist statement,” the truth cannot be racist.
It is a scientific fact that African blacks have radically lower average IQs than whites, and that American blacks also have considerably lower average IQs than whites. One may curse a scientific fact, as one may curse the rain, but one cannot wish it away. The average group IQs are: white Americans, 100; black Americans, 85; blacks in sub-Saharan Africa, 67. It is likewise a scientific fact that at 105, East Asians (including Red China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, South Korea and Japan) have the highest average IQ of any identifiable racial group. (Richard Lynn, Race Differences in Intelligence: An Evolutionary Analysis, 2006, 23, 37, 44, 128, 130.) Ashkenazi (European) Jews’ IQ has been estimated to average 112-115 (PDF).
The genetics behind group IQ differences are based — as Watson was intimately aware — on the alleles (“alternative forms for genes”) for intelligence that developed in those races that left Africa 50,000 years ago, as opposed to those that stayed. Some of Watson’s tormentors knew this, and were thus traitors to science; others were scientific illiterates who lied out of ignorance, spite, and the will to power.
Due to Jackie Mason’s distinctive public track record on race, I am going to focus on him. But first, a quick history of the loving community of blacks and Jews.
“Shvartzers”
No group has done more for blacks than Jews. As a result, urban blacks have long hated Jews even more than they hate every other group, including blacks. As my mom always says, “No good deed goes unpunished.” The Jewish machers (big shots) got the glory, while encouraging ever more of the already robust black racism (PDF) that destroyed and continues to destroy the lives of countless Jewish kleine pishers (“little nobodies,” literally, “little pissers”).
(In addition to the machers’ racial pandering, two myths get in the away of appreciating the historical relationship of blacks and Jews: 1. ‘All Jews are rich and powerful’; and 2. ‘As a people that must dwell alone, Jews exhibit an incredible solidarity, which they developed as an “evolutionary strategy,” in order to destroy gentile host societies.’ The second myth, in particular, is the expression of people who know absolutely gornisht (nothing) about Jews, who engage in intermarriage at a higher rate than any other religious or ethnic group in America.)
In his 1963 essay, “My Negro Problem–and Ours,” Commentary editor Norman Podhoretz reflected on how he and other working-class and poor white, especially Jewish boys he grew up with in 1930s and ‘40s Brooklyn, were brutalized by racist black boys. And that was in the “good old” days!
Honest Jews have for generations been increasingly bitter about black anti-Semitism. After all, Jews don’t target blacks for muggings, assaults, rapes, murders and riots, or ethnically cleanse them from neighborhoods and workplaces. And John Podhoretz notwithstanding, unqualified Jews don’t get affirmative action jobs in place of qualified blacks. (Blacks have long terrorized white gentiles as well, but there is no phony history of a loving community uniting those two groups.)
The “Ambassador” Gets Recalled
During the 1989 New York City mayoral race, Jackie Mason served, in historian Chris McNickle’s words, as Republican-Liberal candidate Rudolph Giuliani’s “unofficial ambassador to the Jewish community.”
Following on the heels of the second of his many wildly successful, one-man Broadway shows, the Tony Award winner was on top of the world. In August 1987, even dour, pc New York Times theater critic Frank Rich wrote, “I hereby confess that I was the last drama critic in New York to catch Jackie Mason's act on Broadway – a full six months after the comedian's opening night.” Rich was sure he would be immune to the comic’s crude charms, but had to admit that, “for all the familiarity of his [Borscht Belt] attack, Mr. Mason was very, very funny.” Among other things, Rich also praised Mason’s lack of pretence, refusal to pander to the audience, and honesty.
Mason’s success and honesty have always been of a piece with his volatility. Considering that his hair-pin-trigger temper had led to powerful TV host Ed Sullivan exiling him to show business limbo a generation earlier, Mason knew exactly what the stakes were. And yet, he risked a long, hard fall with some blunt talk on race.
During an August 31, 1989 off-the-record luncheon interview arranged by Mason’s agent, Jyll Rosenfeld, with Giuliani and four Newsweek writers (Jonathan Alter, Nancy Cooper, George Hackett and “an old friend” of Mason’s, Charles Leerhsen), Mason said that socialist (or as the New York Times’ Sam Roberts called him, “mainstream Democrat”) David Dinkins, who was running to become New York City’s first black mayor, was just a “fancy shvartzer with a moustache.” (I recall the phrase as “just a shvartzer in a fancy suit,” but Mason gave multiple versions of it.)
One month later, during an interview with the radical leftwing New York weekly, the Village Voice, Mason argued,
There is a sick Jewish problem of voting for a black man no matter how unfit he is for the job. They feel guilty for the black predicament, as if the Jews caused it . . . The Jews are constantly giving millions to the black people. Have you ever heard of a black person giving a quarter to a Jew?
(Mason reportedly also used “shvartzer” during the Voice interview; I could not determine whether that interview was on the record.)
When the Newsweek interview somehow came out within the Village Voice story, the four Newsweek staffers were severely reprimanded for failing to report what Mason had said. (But the interview was off the record!)
Forget what “journalistic ethics experts” say; most scribes routinely either suppress or report impolitic remarks made to them in private by public figures, based solely on feelings of political, ethnic, and/or racial loyalty or enmity. In this case, however, rank opportunism was also at work. In violation of Newsweek policy, Jonathan Alter had pitched an article on the Mason interview, playing up the racial angle, to Adam Moss, the editor of New York’s short-lived, lefty political magazine, 7 Days. (The Voice article also somehow — see below — exposed the 7 Days affair.)
Newsweek responded to the Voice story by reporting on the off-the-record luncheon, quoting Mason’s “shvartzer” line, and saying, “Giuliani joined in the nervous laughter, making no effort to rebuke Mason.”
Since Jonathan Alter had recorded Mason while on assignment from Newsweek, when he failed to ask his editors for permission to peddle to another media outlet what they considered to be “proprietary” material, not only did Alter violate Newsweek’s ethics rules, but he violated the trust of Charles Leerhsen and Jyll Rosenfeld, without whom he would never have gotten the interview. And then, for good measure, he lied about the whole thing.
Although Newsweek’s honchos reportedly only refrained from firing the four reporters after they privately showed proper remorse, Alter shamelessly spun the story in public, calling the matter “Much ado about nothing,” because the story had never run in 7 Days. That’s like a street punk insisting he’s a good guy, because his intended victim somehow managed to slip his sucker-punch.
As NYT media reporter Alex Jones wrote on October 14, 1989,
Mr. Alter said yesterday: “We all regret that the remark was not printed in Newsweek in a more timely way. As for the 7 Days business, I never wrote a word of any article for 7 Days, though discussions took place, and I think the rest of it is much ado about nothing.”
The reason Alter never wrote the story for 7 Days is because after he pitched it to Adam Moss, he asked Jyll Rosenfeld for permission to quote Mason. When Alter confirmed to Rosenfeld that Mason had used the “s” word, and that Alter planned on quoting him doing so, she refused to grant him permission.
Alex Jones tried to have it both ways. He sought to help Alter and hurt Rosenfeld, by emphasizing that there was no “explicit” agreement that the interview was off the record. Jones doth protest too much. That Alter would call Rosenfeld to ask her permission to use the material left no doubt that both understood that the interview had been off the record. But Jones also noted, “The situation was doubly charged regarding Mr. Alter, who has often chastised news organizations for journalistic and ethical lapses.” (Perhaps Jones told himself he was being balanced, or perhaps he felt constrained by Times press room politics to spin things the way he did.)
Alex Jones also misrepresented what Mason had told the Village Voice, writing “The comedian later was forced to leave the campaign after being quoted as saying that some Jews would vote for a black candidate out of guilt.” But Mason had said an “unfit” black candidate, which is considerably different.
As historian Chris McNickle recounts in To be Mayor of New York: Ethnic Politics in the City, Mason immediately resigned his unpaid position in the Giuliani campaign, and Giuliani distanced himself from Mason, saying “the remarks do not reflect my views.”
Mason proved prescient: Due to over 30 percent of white voters — including 23 percent of white Catholics and almost 40 percent of Jews — pulling the lever for Dinkins, while less than three percent of blacks voted for Giuliani, Dinkins, who had promised to be a “racial healer,” won by only 47,000 out of 1.8 million votes cast, the closest mayoral race since the five boroughs were joined in 1898 to create modern New York City. (Source: McNickle.)
(In 1992, Alex Jones would leave the Times to co-author with his wife, and with the paper’s cooperation, a history of the Times. Upon the book’s 1999 release, the paper promoted it, which led to Jones and his
wife being named the following year to share an endowed journalism chair at Harvard, where Jones was also named to run the school’s Shorenstein Center on the Press. When 7 Days folded in 1990, after only two years in business and $10 million in losses, pc featherweight Adam Moss landed at the Times, where he would eventually be entrusted with the radical dumbing-down of its Sunday Magazine. Since 2003, Moss has run the already pre-dumbed-down, New York Magazine. At Newsweek, Jonathan Alter is more powerful than ever. And lest I forget, the Village Voice, which broke the 7 Days affair, was then owned by Leonard Stern, who simultaneously owned 7 Days. Big Journalism — which includes “J-schools” — is a small world, after all.)
A Bissl Yiddish
In German, which has no “n” word, “Schwarzer” simply means “black man;” “Neger” simply means “negro.” (“Schwarzer” is the German spelling; “shvartzer” is the Yiddish version phoneticized using the Roman alphabet.)
But Mason wasn’t speaking German. He was speaking Yiddish, the roughly thousand-year-old dialect born in the Rhine River Valley, that pairs the ancient Hebrew alphabet with a vocabulary that is approximately 67 percent Middle High German, 17 percent from various Slavic tongues, and 17 percent Biblical Hebrew. And on top of that, Mason was using “shvartzer” as a New York Jew would, even if he was born and raised in Wisconsin.
Growing up in Long Beach, Long Island, from 1965 until circa 1974, I lived in a Jewish building. Old Jewish ladies sat on beach chairs in front of our building, bundled up in their winter coats, no matter how hot it was outside. (“Aren’t you cold?” they’d ask me.)
I grew accustomed to three ways they would occasionally pepper their English with “shvartzer”: 1. Meaning innocent and non-threatening, as in ‘He’s black, but he’s o.k.’; 2. Meaning borderline, as in ‘Maybe good, maybe bad, who knows?’; and 3. With an entirely pejorative meaning, the same as the “n” word, instantly recognizable through the drawn-out first syllable.
Notwithstanding Mason’s tendency to cut short his syllables in his trademark now mumbling, now staccato delivery (or so it was, when I saw him on the Broadway stage in the late 1980s), I’ll leave it to the reader to conclude which meaning of “shvartzer” he had in mind.
While Mason was stupid to call Dinkins a “fancy shvartzer,” he showed great courage in emphasizing Dinkins’ unfitness for the office of mayor, and “liberal” Jews’ craven racial paternalism.
After David Dinkins’ inauguration as New York’s first black mayor, he immediately proved to be so incompetent, that even Jewish socialist staffers who loved him almost immediately began seeking to escape his administration.
Bury My Heart in Crown Heights
The amazing thing is not that some Jews complain about “shvartzers,” but that more don’t. The only time I recall my late, Hungarian-born Nana (1893?-1976) mentioning race was circa 1970, when she referred to a “nice colored man.” (“Colored” was the respectable term used by ordinary whites and blacks alike until the early-to-mid 1970s. “Negro” was in parallel use by white and black elites until the same period. Circa 1918, when my Nana left her parents’ Lower East Side home, she also quit the Hungarian and Yiddish of her childhood. I never heard her say a word in either tongue.)
The last time I heard anyone say “shvartzer” was in 1992. I was visiting a Chabad-Lubavitch Chassidic friend in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, one year after a racist black mob had engaged in a three-day pogrom against the Chassidim. At one point during the pogrom’s first night, a black man, Charles Price, yelled “Kill the Jew!” and the mob lynched visiting Australian rabbinic scholar, Yankel Rosenbaum.
Mayor Dinkins ordered the NYPD to let the mob have its way. When the rioters threw bottles and rocks at New York’s Finest, the policemen ran away. On day three, Mayor Dinkins addressed the mob, but the rioters threw bottles at him, too! He only ordered the NYPD to stop running away and end the pogrom, out of anger at the lack of racial loyalty the rioters showed him.
Note that the “Rebbe” (spiritual leader) of Chabad-Lubavitch, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson (1902-1994), had endorsed Mayor Dinkins in the 1989 election.
Before Yankel Rosenbaum died, he identified his killer, Lemrick Nelson Jr., in whose pants pocket police found the blood-soaked murder weapon. Nelson also repeatedly confessed to the crime. On October 29, 1992, a racist, black and Hispanic-dominated jury acquitted Nelson, and the next day celebrated with the killer and his lawyer.
When we were alone during my visit, my inconsolable Chassidic friend repeated, “Shvartzers, shvartzers, shvartzers.”
I no longer recall whether my visit was before or after the juror-accessories aided and abetted Nelson.
Already at the time of the pogrom, the socialist MSM sought to rationalize it and the lynching of Yankel Rosenbaum, using the same pathetic boilerplate that leftists always use to rationalize racially-motivated, black-on-white violence. As my old philosophy teacher, Hans Joachim Kramer used to say, “Gründe lassen sich immer finden.” “Reasons can always be found.”
The 1993 election was even closer than its immediate predecessor, with Giuliani winning by a mere 44,000 votes. The Times’ Sam Roberts employed desperate sophistry, in an effort to diminish the significance of a Republican (and a former prosecutor, no less!) winning election in a city where registered Democratic voters outnumbered registered Republicans 5-1, and where the municipal unions and the TV and print media were, with rare exceptions such as Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post, rabidly leftwing.
Giuliani got his revenge, and Mason got a measure of vindication . . . but Yankel Rosenbaum was still dead.
Intelligence and Integrity
Ashkenazi Jews have a well-earned reputation for being the smartest group around, a reputation they have long been extremely proud of. And why not? What are they going to brag about, Jewish basketball stars? If you think a couple of brilliant Ashkenazim like Jackie Mason and Raoul Felder actually believe that all races are intellectually equal — you know, the races they say they “don't deal with” — and that a typical African with an IQ of 67 (or 85, for that matter) has the same right to admission to a selective university and to an intellectually demanding job as a typical Jew with an IQ of 112 or higher, I have a great deal for you on a slightly used bridge.
Note too that typically, every group obsessively talks privately about, and feels superior to every other group it comes into contact with.
And Ashkenazi or no, virtually all educated people, Left or Right, care about intelligence. As Steve Sailer has often wryly observed, in his Sailer Law of IQ,
Liberals tend to believe two things about IQ:
• First, that IQ is a meaningless, utterly discredited concept.
• Second, that liberals are better than conservatives because they have much higher IQs.
Mason and Felder each stomp on Watson with only one foot. While telling a “noble lie” about race and IQ, they defend scientists’ right to pursue “racist” research in peace. Apparently each thinks he can thereby divert attention from himself, while buying a little peace from the forces that mugged Watson.
At 76, Jackie Mason is almost as old as James Watson. There is a cowardly symmetry to Mason taking a cheap shot at Watson, in the course of implicitly recanting his own beliefs. How can Mason live with himself? (How, for that matter, can Watson?)
As John Stuart Mill observed in On Liberty, all the intelligence in the world is worthless, without intellectual courage. In other words, Felder and Mason may be smart, but they’re still a couple of schmucks.
Dear Mister Nicholas,
What a well written article: lots of impressive words, scholarly references, and well measured humor (or is it irony?).
The only problem is that my IQ-deficient Scottish ancestry can’t quite grasp the point. Is it a statement on “intellectual courage” versus “intelligence”, or is it simply a historical review of Jackie Mason’s and James Watson’s positions on IQ, race, and so on? Or does it have something to do with the presidential candidates? – all that stuff about Giuliani (hope I spelt his name right!)
Now I must confess to my ignorance of ‘studies’ or ‘research’ (if there is any difference between these two disciplines of deception) that ‘prove’ which race, or even individual, has the greatest ‘inherited’ intelligence. I don’t need a study to tell me that Europeans landed on the shores of Africa and America, not the other way round. Neither do I need a study to tell me that my Scottish ancestors built the pyramids – or was it aliens? Or perhaps even Africans, or Egyptians?
Neither do I need a ‘study’ or ‘research’ to tell me that Europeans have been the most efficient exterminators of human beings this planet has ever had the misfortune to witness. Most of that contempt for human life was and is a product of ‘studies’ and ‘research’ that convince certain people of their superiority to others. Such misplaced ‘beliefs’ reinforce the further delusion that such ‘inherited superior intelligence’ naturally vests in them an authority over those they deem to be of the ‘inferior’ species, or intelligence. Citing the “paternalistic” attitude of the Jews (in NY I presume) towards the blacks is a case in issue (although I have no idea if that is true).
That, in turn, leads to the delusion that ‘freedom’ is somehow relative – relative to ‘intelligence’, which of course depends on ‘race’. And, of course, those who are better able to devise ‘mechanisms’ to assess ‘intelligence’ – like IQ tests – can then point to tendentious ‘studies’ and ‘research’ produced by their fanciful ‘mechanisms of intelligence’ to reinforce their peculiar ‘beliefs’.
As you point out in the last quote of your article, that is certainly a liberal position. Liberals have a sort of ‘natural authority’ due to their ‘superior’ IQ’s, even though they debunk the notion of an ‘intelligence quota’ in the first place. But is that not what you are essentially arguing? I wish I had the IQ to work it out!
If, of course, we human vermin are simply the product of some giant accident which put in train something called ‘evolution’, then your ‘intelligence quota’ must be absolutely inevitable. All life on earth would then simply be the wake of man’s evolution. And just as man separated from the apes (or whatever man’s ancestor was), so will some of the presently recognizable human species become so much more ‘intellectually superior’ to the rest of the species that the two (or more) could no longer be regarded as the same species. Who knows, if there is a God, perhaps that is even what He intended.
Maybe that is what is meant by the Jews being the ‘chosen people’? Or are only the Ashkenazi Jews to be the ‘chosen people’ because of their ‘indisputably superior intelligence quota’?
That would not tally with the Scriptures as I understand them (but who cares when we are talking about ‘intelligence’), although your argument certainly seems to lean in that direction.
Or is my pygmy IQ playing games with me?
Could it be that you are confusing vanity with intelligence? Hopefully some day someone will ‘invent’ a ‘VQ’ – ‘Vanity Quota’. It is long overdue.
[Ps. Before blasting off a comment to tell me that IQ means Intelligence Quotient, not Intelligence Quota, I know! Quota just seems more appropriate in the present context.
I must also confess that I have no idea who Jackie Mason is, but he must be important for the author to devote an article about him. I hope I’m not missing something!!]
Joseph BH McMillan
http://www.freedomvrights.com
Dear Mister Nicholas,
This article of yours has certainly proved to be thought-provoking for me – but in a troubling rather than enlightening sense.
I am always disturbed by people who obsess about intelligence, especially when their obsession focuses on ‘relative’ intelligence; and more particularly, intelligence relative to race.
In my experience, those who obsess about intelligence (individually, or ‘race relative’), harbor a deep insecurity about their own intelligence. So they assuage that insecurity by doing two things: first, they identify those they can ‘prove’ are of an inferior intelligence; secondly, they find a way to disparage those they consider to be of superior intelligence (usually by claiming that such people have used their ‘superior intelligence’ in the wrong way, or that their superior intelligence has been gained at the expense of some other virtue, like ‘courage’, for example.
Regrettably, I have had the misfortune of witnessing such machinations first hand. I was born in South Africa, and spent my first twenty odd years there. The Afrikaans-speaking whites (and many English-speaking whites as well) were consumed with precisely such obsessions. We were forever subjected to IQ tests (which I treated with the disdain they deserved, and was branded an imbecile – an instance, my detractors would no doubt claim, when the test actually worked). Such was the all-pervasive indoctrination, and pandering to the insecurity of the ignorant, that very, very few white people ever questioned the received ‘wisdom’ – received from government, that is. And the received wisdom was that the blacks were less intelligent than whites (IQ tests ‘proved’ that), and although Jews were probably on a ‘par’ with whites (although many reluctantly acknowledged that they were probably smarter) they ‘misused’ their ‘intelligence’ for financial gain.
But it wasn’t only the state that imbued white society with this type of nonsense, even the churches played a part (especially the Dutch Reformed Church). Scriptural references were cited to show that God Himself had ordained that blacks be subordinated to whites – that they be “hewers of wood and carriers of water”. And, of course, the Jews had killed Jesus Christ, for which they could not be forgiven.
What I found odd about this state-imposed ‘intellectual hierarchy’ was that the Nationalist Party (the governing party in SA during apartheid), on first gaining power, immediately instituted laws reserving certain jobs for whites. If the whites were so intellectually superior in the first place, why any need to preserve such positions for them? And notwithstanding that white South Africans had vastly superior educational opportunities during the apartheid years, after independence, when such laws were scrapped and blacks could compete for such jobs, many of those whites lost out.
Now I am aware that the ANC government has introduced laws giving preferential opportunities to blacks in many ways, but that does not detract from the irony of having to protect ‘intellectually superior’ whites from competition by ‘intellectually inferior’ blacks.
Of course, we could point to countries like Zimbabwe where Mugabe has made a complete hash of things since majority rule. We could also predict that the election of Jacob Zuma to head the ANC (and thus possibly become president of SA in 2009) may see South Africa ‘embrace’ a similar fate to Zimbabwe. In fact, I would be hard pressed to identify any African country as having been an unmitigated success since obtaining independence. But that, I think, is largely down to corruption. There are those no doubt who would argue that that very fact is illustrative of an ‘inferior intelligence’. Yet, the Western World is itself rife with corruption. The only difference is that in African countries it is corruption born of a necessity for survival, as well as greed, whereas in the Western countries it is entirely one of greed.
Now, we could go round and round in circles arguing about whether certain propensities or abilities are an indication of ‘intelligence’, or simply a result of historical ‘oppression’ and lack of opportunity. But that would be futile.
Instead, I want to consider this question of ‘intelligence’, or the ‘science of intelligence’ (as those obsessed with the subject prefer to call it).
It must stand to reason that tests to gauge ‘intelligence’ must be limited to the ‘intelligence’ of those who devise the tests. That in turn must mean that such tests are nothing more than a determination of one person’s ‘intelligence’ relative to the ‘intelligence’ of those who devised the test. Essentially, therefore, the tests can be nothing more than an assessment of ‘conformity’ with a certain way of thinking, coupled with a certain degree of ‘knowledge’ about certain facts (both, again, limited to the way of thinking and knowledge of those devising the tests).
Further, that applies not only to things like IQ tests, but to all tests.
It is not surprising then to find that some of the smartest people who have ever walked this earth were dismal failures when it came to such tests, or at best inadequate. Thomas Edison, for example, was judged to be ‘un-teachable’ at the age of seven, so his mother removed him from school and educated him herself. Einstein did not excel at testing either. Apparently he didn’t even talk until he was four years old. Today, with the ridiculous ‘tests’ and pressure to help children speak from an early age (so that mummy and daddy can get all puffed up with pride) Einstein would have been regarded as ‘retarded’.
James Watt was the same – homeschooled and self-educated. He didn’t refine the steam engine, and thus bring about (almost single handedly) the industrial revolution by showing his ‘mettle’ in the examination room.
And there are plenty more such people whose brilliance could be measured by their inability to excel at tests devised by the more intellectually challenged. Such tests are nothing more than an assessment of the ability to conform. They are devised by sheep to identify other sheep, because sheep are more ‘productive’. Sheep can be tamed.
Tests do nothing more than snuff out man’s instinct for discovery and exploration. They snuff out man’s curiosity. They snuff out individualism, and create an army of ‘intellectual’ clones all marching to the same tune. As Einstein said of such sheep, “he who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would fully suffice.”
But by far the worst thing about ‘tests’, especially ‘tests’ of intelligence, is that they inculcate in the ignorant a certainty in their superiority over others, with the inevitable consequences that flow from such delusion. An IQ score, or a piece of paper, is not the same thing as intelligence or knowledge. In fact, they are the reverse. They are confirmation of the inability for independent thought. They are a ‘passport’ to the milking pens, or a ticket to the abattoir of ‘intellectual independence’.
A mustachioed little corporal, and a nation of ‘indisputably high intelligence’ following the little corporal to their own self-destruction like sheep, is incontrovertible evidence of that fact.
As I said in my last Comment, obsession with intelligence is nothing more than a sign of utter vanity. And vanity is the only thing the ignorant have to fall back on. Vanity is a compensation for ‘intellectual’ insecurity, and lack of independence. But vanity needs a logo – and what better logo for the vain than ‘intellectual superiority’, or superior ‘intellectual courage’ when ‘intellectual superiority’ is lacking.
[Please do not take anything I have said here as suggesting that you, Mister Nicholas, fall within any of the categories I have identified. This Comment is not written to impugn your integrity, but as a comment on intelligence, or the illusion of it.]
Joseph BH McMillan
http://www.freedomvrights.com
If all testing is simply a matter of conforming to, apparently “ignorant”, standards set forth by an arbitrary person or entity, then it follows that there are no such things as objective facts, and “reality” (including such “realities” as “science” and “mathematics”) and “intelligence” are relative and unique to each individual. And yet that is not the case. There are objective facts that do not change depending on one’s ability to understand or perceive them. Regardless of who constructs the test, or who constructed the positional number system, or how the quantities are measured, we may be reasonably certain that 2+2=4. We can demonstrate it using an abacus and non-positional numerals, or by comparison of tangible objects, such as the 5 protubrances extending off of each of our hands. Conformity to this assumption does not imply any lack of intelligence or originality on the part of the testee who, when asked what the sum of 2 and 2 is, replies with “4″. You seem to display the same egotism and religiosity in your anti-intellectual and anti-testing position that you so despise in those of the opposite persuasion.
Acknowledging that different people have differing levels of intelligence and speculating on the causes of those differing levels of intelligence is not a “white-man” racist conspiracy. We have attributed many characteristics possessed by different groups of humans to genetic differences (there’s even controversial claims that skin color may be influenced by genetics), so it is not illegitimate to ask if intelligence (or rather, the racist white-man perception and measurement of intelligence, if you prefer) is also so determined.
Dear Patrick, I don’t actually see that there is any disagreement in our positions other than the way you seem to associate ‘intelligence’ with a ‘knowledge’ of ‘facts’. But even in that respect, it seems there is little difference in our respective positions.
In my view, the accumulation of facts, and the ability to regurgitate those facts on command, is not a measure of intelligence. If it were, then the computers we humans design must be more intelligent than those who design them.
Those who discover facts in the first place do not discover them by undergoing tests, but rather by devising tests of their own to reveal facts that, on the whole, others denied or disputed the existence of. My point is that if those who discover facts in the first place simply confined themselves to the facts of any given time, we would still be in the stone-age.
In that respect then, it must stand to reason that there can be no ‘test’ of ‘intelligence’, because if there is such a thing as objective ‘intelligence’, then it is the ability to challenge accepted ‘facts’ and ‘norms’ and so make new discoveries. But who, locked in the confines of our present knowledge and accepted ‘facts’, can test the ability of someone who has that unique instinct and insight to challenge those facts.
Hence my reference to those remarkable people who have had such a dramatic impact on human life: because of their unique insight they seemed somehow to ‘know’ that what the rest of us think we ‘know’ is in fact wrong. And because of that, they could not excel at the ‘tests’ devised by lesser mortals – those whose arrogance and vanity convinces themselves that they are in some way already in possession of the ‘truth’, or the ‘facts’.
As Nietzsche said, “Instinct is of all the kinds of intelligence that have been discovered so far – the most intelligent.”
And I think that sums it up really: “of all the kinds of intelligence discovered so far ..”! Intelligence is simply a word that certain people ascribe to certain abilities in order to delude themselves that they possess the real thing. Those who do possess the real thing have no need to run around trying to convince themselves, or others – they know they have it. And who could devise a ‘test’ for instinct? Even those who have it probably have no idea where it comes from, or how to harness and develop it, never mind ‘test’ for it. It may even be in the alleles of the genes – in which case you would be right, ‘intelligence’ would be in the genes, just not the kind of ‘intelligence’ you claim.
One final point about testing: Yes, if confined to ‘facts’, it can be a measure of how many facts a particular person can remember, and that person’s ability to apply them in a theoretical way, but that does not mean that someone who does not undergo a ‘test’ does not possess a better comprehension of the facts, and a better and more practical ability to apply them. That may be why we see so many people, with prestigious Masters degrees in Business Administration working as employees of ‘self-made’ men. Their ‘testing’ serves them well to be the servants of the ‘un-tested’.
On your ‘white-man’ racist conspiracy comment, I simply do not understand what you are getting at. I am not suggesting that there is any conspiracy. I simply pointed out that people of self-professed ‘superior intelligence’ more often than not behave like sheep. The ‘facts’ bear that out, do they not?
Whatever the ‘truth’ or ‘facts’ may be about ‘intelligence’ therefore, the one thing I do believe is that no one man, or group of men (or women for that matter), by virtue of some claim to possess this thing called ‘intelligence’ in greater quantities to some other man, or men, has any greater freedom or authority as a result of his delusions. And when such people do seek to assert some greater freedom than others, and thus assert some authority over those they consider ‘inferior’, then the ‘inferior’ are free to resist, and resist they have always done, and resist they will always do.
So I must admit that if I do “despise [anyone] of the opposite persuasion” it is in the context that they believe that they can claim some authority over those they deem to be ‘inferior’ by virtue of a lesser ‘intelligence’. On the other hand, so long as those of a ‘superior intelligence’ to me recognize my freedom to live in ignorance, and leave me alone, I have no problem with them believing whatever they please – they can speculate on the causes of their ‘superior intelligence’ as much as they like so long as they don’t use it as an excuse to interfere with me, my family, or anybody else.
My Scottish and Irish (mother’s side) ancestors fought for their freedom from the ‘indisputably superior intelligence of the English’ for centuries and I, for one, will take up their fight anytime anyone claims some ‘right’ to subvert my freedom to their ‘superior intelligence’.
Joseph BH McMillan
http://www.freedomvrights.com