January 14, 2023 • 24 mins
Today’s episode we discuss the bias that is found in some far-right conservative circles and pockets of the internet that suggest that White people are intellectually superior to Black people. We examine the origins of this myth, explain how dangerous and divisive it can be, and remind you to look beyond the numbers published in reports.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to another episode of Civic Cipher. I'm your host,
ramsys jockey is ram Jah.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
I am to warden. You are tuned into so exciting.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
As you are, and we've got a lot people to
stick around for Today. We're gonna be talking about some
some stuff that comes up in life, and in particular
the past couple of weeks, we've had to have some
really strange conversations and we've also kind of encountered some
stuff on the Internet that let us know that common
(00:36):
sense is not all that common, not even kind of
yeah yeah, and that's okay because we're here to learn.
So we're not picking anybody apart, We're not, you know,
trying to tear anybody down. But again, stay tuned. We're
gonna be talking about this strange question. You know, are
our white people smarter than black people? Or are black
people less intelligent than white people? You know, and there
(01:00):
are people who sincerely feel like they have the full
story because they have test scores or whatever whatever it
is that they think that they have to kind of
validate that belief, and we're going to talk about that today.
We're also going to talk about what we call code switching.
(01:22):
But basically, we're going to talk about how black people
in this country are inherently bilingual. I think that was
something that I heard a comedian said once upon a time.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
That's a good way to put it.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
Yeah, yeah, so we have to you know, I heard
a non black woman recently said that when she was
growing up, black people used to speak jive to her. Yeah,
So that tells you when she's shout out to the seventies. Yeah, man,
sixties and shout out to Cheryl. She's a sweetheart. And
we got a whole lot more fee to stick around
for as well. But first and foremost, we'd like to
(01:59):
start at the top with what we like to call
Ebny excellence. Cute we shall, all right, So this week's
Ebony Excellence is sponsored by Hip Hop Weekly Media and
the article comes from Marine Times.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
It's not a.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
Subject we talk about all that off them show, so
you know, taking any too many dives in the Military Times.
So the article reads, one marine will make Core history
by becoming the first black by becoming the first black
(02:35):
woman to serve as a two star general in the service.
President Joe Biden appointed Brig. Jen Lorna Maylock to the
grade of Major General Dependinggon announced on December sixth, and
the Senate confirmed her recently. Maylock is the Deputy Director
of Cybersecurity for Combat Support at the National Security Agency
at Fort Meade, Maryland. Born in Kingston, Jamaica, Maylock immigrated
(02:58):
to Brooklyn, New York at the age of seventeen nineteen
eighty five. According to a biography written by Marquette University,
she enlisted in the Marine Corps three months later and
became an air traffic controller. She received her commission through
the Women Marines Association. She has amassed multiple higher degrees,
including two master's degrees and strategic studies from the US
Army War College and the Naval Postgraduate School. Marine Corps
(03:22):
Times previously reported Maylock nominated to the grade of brigadier
general in twenty eighteen, and she became the first black
woman to achieve that rank. One of the smallest military branches,
the Marine Corps has the lowest percentage of women among
its troops at nine percent. Only three women in the
corep history have picked up the rank of lieutenant general,
(03:42):
and all three of them are retired. So today we
are going to highlight you and applaud you. Lorna Maylock
for making black history and for being a shiny example
of e any excellence.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
Keep going gay, General Lorna Maylock. That's incredible. Indeed it is.
Speaker 1 (04:02):
All right, So let's talk about.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
How smart we are. Isn't that weird? That's a weird
thing to talk about. I talk about how smart RAMS is. Stop.
So I don't think it's very strange at all.
Speaker 3 (04:16):
Okay, So we Uh, basically, for today's segment, we had
to pull some back and forth stuff off of the
Internet just to kind of help paint a picture.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
But before we get there, I want to get your
early thoughts on this topic, Q. I mean, sure, go
for it. So my early thoughts on which topic, well.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
Specifically specifically whether or not black people are less intelligent
than white people or Asian people.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
What hasn't all the research already proven that we are
by far the lesser of the intelligent creature.
Speaker 1 (05:01):
This is sarcasm, ladies and jail. This is sarcasm.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
I thought, that's what it is. Sarcasm. This is sarcasm. Well,
you know what. I to your point, Q, if you
grew up.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
In the US, and uh, you weren't educated in a
way that prevents a lot of how would I describe
it cultural? And uh, let's be honest, white supremacist based
(05:40):
ideals to take root in your brain, you might think that, right.
I know this is true for me. Once upon a
time I found myself I always took tests well, and uh,
you know, I got good, more in class and all
(06:01):
that sort of stuff, and eventually they start kind of
separating you from the people that are your age into
smaller classes where you have there's less students and you
get more intense education.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
Yeah, it's more engaging.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
Sure, sure they call it. When I got to high school,
they would call it honors classes. But you know, this
has kind of been a story of my life. They
would take me out of my normal classroom setting and
put me into a special class for gifted kids. Right,
And every time they did that, I found that there were.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
Less even less.
Speaker 1 (06:38):
People of color, and that was a norm for you
know school. You know, that was just kind of normal
how it went. And I guess if I were to
take that and just accept it as face value, I
would think that overwhelmingly white children are more intelligent than
(07:02):
black and brown children.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
Right, But that's not the full story.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
And it's strange that you're taught that, and it's strange
that people push back against things like critical race theory.
When I talked about earlier on, I mentioned that white
supremacist ideals and institutions that kind of bolster and fortify
these notions. They don't this attack on CRT, which is
effectively American history that seeks to tell the whole story
(07:28):
and paints a fuller picture so that people get the
nuance and they understand, Okay, opportunities exist in these areas
and they don't exist to the same degree in these
other areas, and then you have results that reflect that
in society. Without that, you end up kind of like me,
just thinking that, oh, this is normal, I am in
(07:52):
rare air in this classroom.
Speaker 2 (07:54):
Right.
Speaker 1 (07:56):
So I'll read a bit from the online conversation that
we were having. The question was posed, don't most black
people have lower IQ than whites? And then it goes
on to say that, you know, if you believe in evolution,
black folks look different as do Asians and Caucasians. Evolution
(08:19):
doesn't stop with skin pigment. In other words, black people
are less evolved, right, And it's again, maybe these ideas
are the result of a person being hateful ignorant, you
know whatever. But maybe a person who draws a conclusion
like this is simply trying to state their reality in
(08:43):
playing terms, and they may not question why their reality
is the way that it is, which is what we
seek to do on this show. Why were we born
to be poor and get beat up by the police?
Speaker 2 (08:57):
Are we criminal?
Speaker 1 (08:57):
You know what I mean? Like you go to Africa,
It's not like that, you know, Are we whatever stereotype
you think that is true of black people, There's different
circumstances in this country that shape outcomes, and those circumstances
are often overlooked, which is why on this show at least,
we really fought very hard and continue to fight to
(09:19):
make sure that the whole story is told and that
education includes American history and the origins of the origin
story of black people in this country and everything in between.
All Right, So we'll go down to the answer, because
now that the question is post, the irony here is
(09:41):
extremely painful, suppressing urge to engage in ad hominem. Thomas
Soul discovered old military mental test results. Now, just so
you know, Thomas Soul is not a person I'm a
big fan of. I don't agree with a lot of
his thinking. But just so you know some context, he's
a black conservative, very educated man, and just has of
(10:07):
what I believe to be a flawed belief system, you know.
But he I wouldn't say that he doesn't love his people.
I can't say he might not, but I don't know
that to be true. I just believe that he and
I would certainly take different paths to get to the
(10:27):
same results. In other words, I'm allowing this moment for him,
because even a broken clock is right, you know, twice
a day. All right, let's go on. Differences in mental
test scores among different racial and ethnic groups were taken
as proof of genetic differences in innate mental ability during
(10:51):
the progressive era in the early nineteenth and sorry, in
the early twentieth century, Progressives regarded the fact that the
average IQ test score among whites was higher than the
average among blacks as conclusive proof of genetic determinism. Right,
So again, if you just take those test scores at
face value, well, women lie, men line numbers don't lie.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
Right, that's one way to put it.
Speaker 1 (11:15):
Yeah, But as we know, and I wouldn't be talking
about this if it weren't true. That's not the whole story.
In fact, often enough, when there are numbers, there is
a much deeper story there, because we've learned on this
show that numbers can be made to look any kind
of way, especially if you don't tell the whole story.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
So I'll continue.
Speaker 1 (11:36):
A closer look at mental test data, however, shows that
there were not only individual blacks with higher IQs than
most whites, but also whole categories of whites who scored
at or below the mental test scores of blacks.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
H All right, let's keep going.
Speaker 1 (11:56):
Among American soldiers given mental tests during the First World War,
for example, white soldiers from Georgia, Arkansas, Kentucky, and Mississippi
scored lower on mental tests than black soldiers from Ohio, Illinois,
New York, and Pennsylvania.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
Okay, so by that time there was access to education.
It was okay to learn how to read, It was
not still illegal to teach either current or former slaves anything,
et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
It's a progressive time, and of course the black people
were from progressive cities, right and again the white soldiers
from Arkansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, you know what I mean, Their
education system may not have matured to the point where
it could be competitive with the education system in a
(12:51):
big city where the black folks you scored higher than
those white folks. So what you're seeing now is a
perhaps geographical correlation with these test scores that is more profound,
certainly more striking, and more.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
Telling.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
Then Okay, black people scored lower, white people scored higher. Right,
And from this alone you can see the direction that
this is going. And I'm going to say the rest
of this reading just for a bit, but you can
draw your own conclusions. And for those who may not
be able to draw the conclusions all the way out,
(13:36):
I'm going to help both Q and I are going
to help. So if from that we can agree that
where you grow up has an effect on your education,
then perhaps there's something to do with the quality of education. Right,
(13:57):
because again, in progressive cities, you know, the school systems
seem to educate people better than in more rural areas,
less developed you know, states and parts of the country.
So again the quality of the education matters. Right, But
(14:18):
let's take it a step further. How is education funded. Well,
education is funded with property taxes, right, So you pay
your property taxes on your house, that goes to your
local education, you know, your school board, and on and on.
Speaker 2 (14:41):
Right, So.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
It stands to reason that if you have a neighborhood
we'll call it, you know, or a part of town
where it's more affluent, the houses are nice, her text
at a higher rate, etc. Schools are nicer, that that
quality education might be more prevalent in the test scores.
Speaker 2 (15:11):
It might be reflected in the test score.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
Meanwhile, on the other side of town, where maybe folks
are making less money, maybe those people are working longer hours,
maybe those people are dealing with other social issues, socioeconomic issues,
et cetera, the education received by the students might be inferior.
(15:40):
Add to that that, you know, I knew a teacher
for some years who worked in a rough part of town,
and she was a high school too, and she used
to ask me, you know, once upon a time, I
used to get closed in shoes given to me because
(16:01):
I was on the radio, you know, and the companies
would send out boxes of shoes.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
I'd get for five pairs of shoes, I'm not gonna
wear these.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
They's sent me a bunch of clothes I'm not gonna wear,
all in my size, And I would donate a lot
of these to this teacher. Well, she just asked me
for it because I was, if I'm honest, probably bragging
one day, like, man, I got all this stuff and
never gonna wear it. And she says, give it to me.
I can give it to my students. And she said,
in particular, I have one student who has to wear
(16:29):
the same thing every day, and he's embarrassed to come
to school, so he doesn't come because he only has
you know, he won't tell me about his home life
because he's weared it it'll get worse. So I don't
know his circumstances, but I know he's always hungry and
he always wears the same clothes. And so I says, yes, absolutely,
here you go, right, And that turned into me giving more,
(16:49):
and really it turned into her having a conversation with me,
and she says, Ramses, a lot of the students that
I teach are constantly in mode that is their reality.
One hundred percent of it is survival mode. They don't
have room for education. They don't care what the you know,
(17:10):
the Pythagoram theorem of you know, a triangle and the
isosceles and you know, none of that they don't care
about any of that. They worry about where they're going
to eat because they didn't eat yesterday, and they're hungry
right now and they can't focus, and they spent all
last night crying, and they haven't been home in four days.
Speaker 2 (17:25):
Right.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
And it's not every student that comes from that environment,
but it's a lot more.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
For it's not it's not one or two, you know,
I mean like, it's not every, but it's a lot, right.
Speaker 1 (17:38):
And she believed, just like the United Negro College Fund,
that a mind is a terrible thing to waste. And
she saw the potential in these students because she was
a teacher. She could see that they had the the
base level intelligence upon which you can build a brilliant mind.
It just needed the knowledge. The framework was all there,
but she couldn't pour into a mind that wasn't focused
(18:00):
and that was hungry. You know, your brain is a
funny thing. I had to learn this, you know, partially
through her, but you know, my own studies kind of
revealed a lot of this to me.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
And that's that.
Speaker 1 (18:12):
You know, your mind is built to protect itself. Your
mind will protect itself even if you are under attack.
Your physical body is under attack, your mind will just
turn off to protect itself from getting damaged, and you
need to be awake, you know what I mean. Your
mind will it's a higher functioning part of you. It's
the mind brain. And if that's not in alignment with
(18:37):
your agenda, then you're you're going to lose that fight
one hundred percent of a time.
Speaker 2 (18:42):
Right.
Speaker 1 (18:42):
So with that said, we can still recognize that environment
and resources have a lot to do with this, right
if we're using test scores as the metric. Okay, let's
also account for the fact that in other parts of
(19:03):
the world they center education very differently than we do
in this country. Indeed, right, education is of the utmost
importance in other parts of the world, in particular in
Southeast Asia, East Asia and Southeast Asia, where you know,
(19:24):
their test scores are often compared to the scores of
you know, US students, and and then.
Speaker 2 (19:31):
Typically higher across the board of race or gender.
Speaker 1 (19:34):
Sure, and again that is a reflection of some cultural
differences there. Bear in mind that in this country, the
education system I'm drawing from memory now, but the education
system was largely built as a result of John D.
Rockefeller's expansion of his empire. In New York City. He
(19:55):
needed workers to build those skyscrapers, and those workers had
to have certain skills, certain knowledge, And this is where
you get the beginnings of standardized testing. You know, once
upon you think of little house on the prairie, there
was a schoolhouse. All the kids were in the same school,
all different ages and grades or whatever, all doing the
(20:16):
same thing. Well, John D. Rockefeller comes along and says, look, man,
I need people to know these skills so that you
know these buildings are built properly.
Speaker 2 (20:24):
Who amongst you can do this? Right? Okay? I need
all y'all to come with me, right.
Speaker 1 (20:30):
Exactly, And he partnered with the Board of Education, or
really established the Board of Education in New York, which
was then replicated elsewhere in the country to where we
ended up with what we have.
Speaker 2 (20:41):
Now.
Speaker 1 (20:42):
This wasn't always the case. It's always been the case
in our lifetime, sure, but it wasn't the case since
the sixteen hundreds. That just isn't the way this has
come about. And you know the result of that is
that the education system had to be.
Speaker 2 (21:04):
Built around seasonal work.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
A lot of young people still had to go in
the summers and harvest with their families because a lot
of people, you know, work in farms. This is why
we get summers off. In other countries, they don't. They
go to school year round.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
You know.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
They treat school like its work, not like it's something
that you have to do in order to you know,
not go to jail.
Speaker 2 (21:34):
It's work.
Speaker 1 (21:35):
You work hard, and you create opportunities for yourself, right
and in a lot of these places when you get out,
you don't even have those opportunities, Like you know, this
is the land of opportunity, they're the land of education.
And it's it's strange how that kind of fleshed out.
But again, we're talking about test scores, which is the
I guess, the accepted method of determining who's smart and
who's not.
Speaker 4 (21:57):
So it's a lot trickier then it's a simple method.
It's an very very olderly simplified, sophisticated method of trying
to determine who's smarter who's not. So let me jump
back in and read a little bit more here. Among
other groups of whites, those with average mental test scores
no higher than the average mental test scores among blacks
(22:19):
included those in very various isolated mountain communities in the
United States, those living in the Hebrides Islands off of Scotland,
and those in isolated canal boat communities in Britain. Looking
at achievements in general, people living in geographically isolated environments
around the world have long lagged behind the progress of
(22:41):
people with a wider cultural universe, regardless of the race
of the people in these isolated places. When the Spaniards
discovered the Canary Islands in the fifteenth century, they found
people of a Caucasian race living at a stone age level.
And then the conversation and here goes on I which
you want to read this because I think it's pretty cool.
(23:02):
That's all I'm willing to give you on this question.
Using common sense.
Speaker 1 (23:05):
You will only be able to determine this properly if
everyone is equally given a good education that is consistent
across the board and over a substantial period of time.
And I don't think we have ever seen that. There
are definitely many, many, many black people with higher IQ's
than you. I like the sass at the end of that,
but also like, yeah, it was, it was. It was
(23:29):
petty in the perfect way.
Speaker 2 (23:30):
Very specifically petty.
Speaker 1 (23:32):
But you know, this is Uh, this is something that's it.
A lot of people need to challenge themselves because I
know that you've heard this que and I've heard it certainly, you.
Speaker 2 (23:43):
Know I like you. It's your people heard oh you talk.
I've heard those words specifically, show an exact word that
you said.
Speaker 1 (23:51):
I believe it. And you know, oh you? Why you
talk so nice? Why can't everybody you know talk like you?
Why don't your people talk like you?
Speaker 2 (23:59):
That's give an example of a conversation like that to
a white co worker today, right that we end up
in these rooms where that's the conversation that we're being had.
And we talk about the over simplification of determining who's smart.
I heard someone say it. I can't credit the right
person because it's not top of mine right now. But
if you judge the intelligence of a fish on its
(24:19):
ability to fly, every.
Speaker 1 (24:22):
Fish would fail and it been its whole life thinking
it's stupid. And this is an injustice to six year
old Ramses having lived a life thinking that we were
just supposed to be poor. And you know, I was
a person that got lucky.
Speaker 2 (24:43):
Who knows. We're going to give you guys more on
this topic. I want us to look over this interview
that Nildigrass Tyson did just on the basis of racism
and anthropology, so we'll follow up on that on another episode. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:56):
Actually, I'm pretty excited to do that as well.
Welcome to another episode of Civic Cipher. I'm your host,
ramsys jockey is ram Jah.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
I am to warden. You are tuned into so exciting.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
As you are, and we've got a lot people to
stick around for Today. We're gonna be talking about some
some stuff that comes up in life, and in particular
the past couple of weeks, we've had to have some
really strange conversations and we've also kind of encountered some
stuff on the Internet that let us know that common
(00:36):
sense is not all that common, not even kind of
yeah yeah, and that's okay because we're here to learn.
So we're not picking anybody apart, We're not, you know,
trying to tear anybody down. But again, stay tuned. We're
gonna be talking about this strange question. You know, are
our white people smarter than black people? Or are black
people less intelligent than white people? You know, and there
(01:00):
are people who sincerely feel like they have the full
story because they have test scores or whatever whatever it
is that they think that they have to kind of
validate that belief, and we're going to talk about that today.
We're also going to talk about what we call code switching.
(01:22):
But basically, we're going to talk about how black people
in this country are inherently bilingual. I think that was
something that I heard a comedian said once upon a time.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
That's a good way to put it.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
Yeah, yeah, so we have to you know, I heard
a non black woman recently said that when she was
growing up, black people used to speak jive to her. Yeah,
So that tells you when she's shout out to the seventies. Yeah, man,
sixties and shout out to Cheryl. She's a sweetheart. And
we got a whole lot more fee to stick around
for as well. But first and foremost, we'd like to
(01:59):
start at the top with what we like to call
Ebny excellence. Cute we shall, all right, So this week's
Ebony Excellence is sponsored by Hip Hop Weekly Media and
the article comes from Marine Times.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
It's not a.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
Subject we talk about all that off them show, so
you know, taking any too many dives in the Military Times.
So the article reads, one marine will make Core history
by becoming the first black by becoming the first black
(02:35):
woman to serve as a two star general in the service.
President Joe Biden appointed Brig. Jen Lorna Maylock to the
grade of Major General Dependinggon announced on December sixth, and
the Senate confirmed her recently. Maylock is the Deputy Director
of Cybersecurity for Combat Support at the National Security Agency
at Fort Meade, Maryland. Born in Kingston, Jamaica, Maylock immigrated
(02:58):
to Brooklyn, New York at the age of seventeen nineteen
eighty five. According to a biography written by Marquette University,
she enlisted in the Marine Corps three months later and
became an air traffic controller. She received her commission through
the Women Marines Association. She has amassed multiple higher degrees,
including two master's degrees and strategic studies from the US
Army War College and the Naval Postgraduate School. Marine Corps
(03:22):
Times previously reported Maylock nominated to the grade of brigadier
general in twenty eighteen, and she became the first black
woman to achieve that rank. One of the smallest military branches,
the Marine Corps has the lowest percentage of women among
its troops at nine percent. Only three women in the
corep history have picked up the rank of lieutenant general,
(03:42):
and all three of them are retired. So today we
are going to highlight you and applaud you. Lorna Maylock
for making black history and for being a shiny example
of e any excellence.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
Keep going gay, General Lorna Maylock. That's incredible. Indeed it is.
Speaker 1 (04:02):
All right, So let's talk about.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
How smart we are. Isn't that weird? That's a weird
thing to talk about. I talk about how smart RAMS is. Stop.
So I don't think it's very strange at all.
Speaker 3 (04:16):
Okay, So we Uh, basically, for today's segment, we had
to pull some back and forth stuff off of the
Internet just to kind of help paint a picture.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
But before we get there, I want to get your
early thoughts on this topic, Q. I mean, sure, go
for it. So my early thoughts on which topic, well.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
Specifically specifically whether or not black people are less intelligent
than white people or Asian people.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
What hasn't all the research already proven that we are
by far the lesser of the intelligent creature.
Speaker 1 (05:01):
This is sarcasm, ladies and jail. This is sarcasm.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
I thought, that's what it is. Sarcasm. This is sarcasm. Well,
you know what. I to your point, Q, if you
grew up.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
In the US, and uh, you weren't educated in a
way that prevents a lot of how would I describe
it cultural? And uh, let's be honest, white supremacist based
(05:40):
ideals to take root in your brain, you might think that, right.
I know this is true for me. Once upon a
time I found myself I always took tests well, and uh,
you know, I got good, more in class and all
(06:01):
that sort of stuff, and eventually they start kind of
separating you from the people that are your age into
smaller classes where you have there's less students and you
get more intense education.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
Yeah, it's more engaging.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
Sure, sure they call it. When I got to high school,
they would call it honors classes. But you know, this
has kind of been a story of my life. They
would take me out of my normal classroom setting and
put me into a special class for gifted kids. Right,
And every time they did that, I found that there were.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
Less even less.
Speaker 1 (06:38):
People of color, and that was a norm for you
know school. You know, that was just kind of normal
how it went. And I guess if I were to
take that and just accept it as face value, I
would think that overwhelmingly white children are more intelligent than
(07:02):
black and brown children.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
Right, But that's not the full story.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
And it's strange that you're taught that, and it's strange
that people push back against things like critical race theory.
When I talked about earlier on, I mentioned that white
supremacist ideals and institutions that kind of bolster and fortify
these notions. They don't this attack on CRT, which is
effectively American history that seeks to tell the whole story
(07:28):
and paints a fuller picture so that people get the
nuance and they understand, Okay, opportunities exist in these areas
and they don't exist to the same degree in these
other areas, and then you have results that reflect that
in society. Without that, you end up kind of like me,
just thinking that, oh, this is normal, I am in
(07:52):
rare air in this classroom.
Speaker 2 (07:54):
Right.
Speaker 1 (07:56):
So I'll read a bit from the online conversation that
we were having. The question was posed, don't most black
people have lower IQ than whites? And then it goes
on to say that, you know, if you believe in evolution,
black folks look different as do Asians and Caucasians. Evolution
(08:19):
doesn't stop with skin pigment. In other words, black people
are less evolved, right, And it's again, maybe these ideas
are the result of a person being hateful ignorant, you
know whatever. But maybe a person who draws a conclusion
like this is simply trying to state their reality in
(08:43):
playing terms, and they may not question why their reality
is the way that it is, which is what we
seek to do on this show. Why were we born
to be poor and get beat up by the police?
Speaker 2 (08:57):
Are we criminal?
Speaker 1 (08:57):
You know what I mean? Like you go to Africa,
It's not like that, you know, Are we whatever stereotype
you think that is true of black people, There's different
circumstances in this country that shape outcomes, and those circumstances
are often overlooked, which is why on this show at least,
we really fought very hard and continue to fight to
(09:19):
make sure that the whole story is told and that
education includes American history and the origins of the origin
story of black people in this country and everything in between.
All Right, So we'll go down to the answer, because
now that the question is post, the irony here is
(09:41):
extremely painful, suppressing urge to engage in ad hominem. Thomas
Soul discovered old military mental test results. Now, just so
you know, Thomas Soul is not a person I'm a
big fan of. I don't agree with a lot of
his thinking. But just so you know some context, he's
a black conservative, very educated man, and just has of
(10:07):
what I believe to be a flawed belief system, you know.
But he I wouldn't say that he doesn't love his people.
I can't say he might not, but I don't know
that to be true. I just believe that he and
I would certainly take different paths to get to the
(10:27):
same results. In other words, I'm allowing this moment for him,
because even a broken clock is right, you know, twice
a day. All right, let's go on. Differences in mental
test scores among different racial and ethnic groups were taken
as proof of genetic differences in innate mental ability during
(10:51):
the progressive era in the early nineteenth and sorry, in
the early twentieth century, Progressives regarded the fact that the
average IQ test score among whites was higher than the
average among blacks as conclusive proof of genetic determinism. Right,
So again, if you just take those test scores at
face value, well, women lie, men line numbers don't lie.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
Right, that's one way to put it.
Speaker 1 (11:15):
Yeah, But as we know, and I wouldn't be talking
about this if it weren't true. That's not the whole story.
In fact, often enough, when there are numbers, there is
a much deeper story there, because we've learned on this
show that numbers can be made to look any kind
of way, especially if you don't tell the whole story.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
So I'll continue.
Speaker 1 (11:36):
A closer look at mental test data, however, shows that
there were not only individual blacks with higher IQs than
most whites, but also whole categories of whites who scored
at or below the mental test scores of blacks.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
H All right, let's keep going.
Speaker 1 (11:56):
Among American soldiers given mental tests during the First World War,
for example, white soldiers from Georgia, Arkansas, Kentucky, and Mississippi
scored lower on mental tests than black soldiers from Ohio, Illinois,
New York, and Pennsylvania.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
Okay, so by that time there was access to education.
It was okay to learn how to read, It was
not still illegal to teach either current or former slaves anything,
et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
It's a progressive time, and of course the black people
were from progressive cities, right and again the white soldiers
from Arkansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, you know what I mean, Their
education system may not have matured to the point where
it could be competitive with the education system in a
(12:51):
big city where the black folks you scored higher than
those white folks. So what you're seeing now is a
perhaps geographical correlation with these test scores that is more profound,
certainly more striking, and more.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
Telling.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
Then Okay, black people scored lower, white people scored higher. Right,
And from this alone you can see the direction that
this is going. And I'm going to say the rest
of this reading just for a bit, but you can
draw your own conclusions. And for those who may not
be able to draw the conclusions all the way out,
(13:36):
I'm going to help both Q and I are going
to help. So if from that we can agree that
where you grow up has an effect on your education,
then perhaps there's something to do with the quality of education. Right,
(13:57):
because again, in progressive cities, you know, the school systems
seem to educate people better than in more rural areas,
less developed you know, states and parts of the country.
So again the quality of the education matters. Right, But
(14:18):
let's take it a step further. How is education funded. Well,
education is funded with property taxes, right, So you pay
your property taxes on your house, that goes to your
local education, you know, your school board, and on and on.
Speaker 2 (14:41):
Right, So.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
It stands to reason that if you have a neighborhood
we'll call it, you know, or a part of town
where it's more affluent, the houses are nice, her text
at a higher rate, etc. Schools are nicer, that that
quality education might be more prevalent in the test scores.
Speaker 2 (15:11):
It might be reflected in the test score.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
Meanwhile, on the other side of town, where maybe folks
are making less money, maybe those people are working longer hours,
maybe those people are dealing with other social issues, socioeconomic issues,
et cetera, the education received by the students might be inferior.
(15:40):
Add to that that, you know, I knew a teacher
for some years who worked in a rough part of town,
and she was a high school too, and she used
to ask me, you know, once upon a time, I
used to get closed in shoes given to me because
(16:01):
I was on the radio, you know, and the companies
would send out boxes of shoes.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
I'd get for five pairs of shoes, I'm not gonna
wear these.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
They's sent me a bunch of clothes I'm not gonna wear,
all in my size, And I would donate a lot
of these to this teacher. Well, she just asked me
for it because I was, if I'm honest, probably bragging
one day, like, man, I got all this stuff and
never gonna wear it. And she says, give it to me.
I can give it to my students. And she said,
in particular, I have one student who has to wear
(16:29):
the same thing every day, and he's embarrassed to come
to school, so he doesn't come because he only has
you know, he won't tell me about his home life
because he's weared it it'll get worse. So I don't
know his circumstances, but I know he's always hungry and
he always wears the same clothes. And so I says, yes, absolutely,
here you go, right, And that turned into me giving more,
(16:49):
and really it turned into her having a conversation with me,
and she says, Ramses, a lot of the students that
I teach are constantly in mode that is their reality.
One hundred percent of it is survival mode. They don't
have room for education. They don't care what the you know,
(17:10):
the Pythagoram theorem of you know, a triangle and the
isosceles and you know, none of that they don't care
about any of that. They worry about where they're going
to eat because they didn't eat yesterday, and they're hungry
right now and they can't focus, and they spent all
last night crying, and they haven't been home in four days.
Speaker 2 (17:25):
Right.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
And it's not every student that comes from that environment,
but it's a lot more.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
For it's not it's not one or two, you know,
I mean like, it's not every, but it's a lot, right.
Speaker 1 (17:38):
And she believed, just like the United Negro College Fund,
that a mind is a terrible thing to waste. And
she saw the potential in these students because she was
a teacher. She could see that they had the the
base level intelligence upon which you can build a brilliant mind.
It just needed the knowledge. The framework was all there,
but she couldn't pour into a mind that wasn't focused
(18:00):
and that was hungry. You know, your brain is a
funny thing. I had to learn this, you know, partially
through her, but you know, my own studies kind of
revealed a lot of this to me.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
And that's that.
Speaker 1 (18:12):
You know, your mind is built to protect itself. Your
mind will protect itself even if you are under attack.
Your physical body is under attack, your mind will just
turn off to protect itself from getting damaged, and you
need to be awake, you know what I mean. Your
mind will it's a higher functioning part of you. It's
the mind brain. And if that's not in alignment with
(18:37):
your agenda, then you're you're going to lose that fight
one hundred percent of a time.
Speaker 2 (18:42):
Right.
Speaker 1 (18:42):
So with that said, we can still recognize that environment
and resources have a lot to do with this, right
if we're using test scores as the metric. Okay, let's
also account for the fact that in other parts of
(19:03):
the world they center education very differently than we do
in this country. Indeed, right, education is of the utmost
importance in other parts of the world, in particular in
Southeast Asia, East Asia and Southeast Asia, where you know,
(19:24):
their test scores are often compared to the scores of
you know, US students, and and then.
Speaker 2 (19:31):
Typically higher across the board of race or gender.
Speaker 1 (19:34):
Sure, and again that is a reflection of some cultural
differences there. Bear in mind that in this country, the
education system I'm drawing from memory now, but the education
system was largely built as a result of John D.
Rockefeller's expansion of his empire. In New York City. He
(19:55):
needed workers to build those skyscrapers, and those workers had
to have certain skills, certain knowledge, And this is where
you get the beginnings of standardized testing. You know, once
upon you think of little house on the prairie, there
was a schoolhouse. All the kids were in the same school,
all different ages and grades or whatever, all doing the
(20:16):
same thing. Well, John D. Rockefeller comes along and says, look, man,
I need people to know these skills so that you
know these buildings are built properly.
Speaker 2 (20:24):
Who amongst you can do this? Right? Okay? I need
all y'all to come with me, right.
Speaker 1 (20:30):
Exactly, And he partnered with the Board of Education, or
really established the Board of Education in New York, which
was then replicated elsewhere in the country to where we
ended up with what we have.
Speaker 2 (20:41):
Now.
Speaker 1 (20:42):
This wasn't always the case. It's always been the case
in our lifetime, sure, but it wasn't the case since
the sixteen hundreds. That just isn't the way this has
come about. And you know the result of that is
that the education system had to be.
Speaker 2 (21:04):
Built around seasonal work.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
A lot of young people still had to go in
the summers and harvest with their families because a lot
of people, you know, work in farms. This is why
we get summers off. In other countries, they don't. They
go to school year round.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
You know.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
They treat school like its work, not like it's something
that you have to do in order to you know,
not go to jail.
Speaker 2 (21:34):
It's work.
Speaker 1 (21:35):
You work hard, and you create opportunities for yourself, right
and in a lot of these places when you get out,
you don't even have those opportunities, Like you know, this
is the land of opportunity, they're the land of education.
And it's it's strange how that kind of fleshed out.
But again, we're talking about test scores, which is the
I guess, the accepted method of determining who's smart and
who's not.
Speaker 4 (21:57):
So it's a lot trickier then it's a simple method.
It's an very very olderly simplified, sophisticated method of trying
to determine who's smarter who's not. So let me jump
back in and read a little bit more here. Among
other groups of whites, those with average mental test scores
no higher than the average mental test scores among blacks
(22:19):
included those in very various isolated mountain communities in the
United States, those living in the Hebrides Islands off of Scotland,
and those in isolated canal boat communities in Britain. Looking
at achievements in general, people living in geographically isolated environments
around the world have long lagged behind the progress of
(22:41):
people with a wider cultural universe, regardless of the race
of the people in these isolated places. When the Spaniards
discovered the Canary Islands in the fifteenth century, they found
people of a Caucasian race living at a stone age level.
And then the conversation and here goes on I which
you want to read this because I think it's pretty cool.
(23:02):
That's all I'm willing to give you on this question.
Using common sense.
Speaker 1 (23:05):
You will only be able to determine this properly if
everyone is equally given a good education that is consistent
across the board and over a substantial period of time.
And I don't think we have ever seen that. There
are definitely many, many, many black people with higher IQ's
than you. I like the sass at the end of that,
but also like, yeah, it was, it was. It was
(23:29):
petty in the perfect way.
Speaker 2 (23:30):
Very specifically petty.
Speaker 1 (23:32):
But you know, this is Uh, this is something that's it.
A lot of people need to challenge themselves because I
know that you've heard this que and I've heard it certainly, you.
Speaker 2 (23:43):
Know I like you. It's your people heard oh you talk.
I've heard those words specifically, show an exact word that
you said.
Speaker 1 (23:51):
I believe it. And you know, oh you? Why you
talk so nice? Why can't everybody you know talk like you?
Why don't your people talk like you?
Speaker 2 (23:59):
That's give an example of a conversation like that to
a white co worker today, right that we end up
in these rooms where that's the conversation that we're being had.
And we talk about the over simplification of determining who's smart.
I heard someone say it. I can't credit the right
person because it's not top of mine right now. But
if you judge the intelligence of a fish on its
(24:19):
ability to fly, every.
Speaker 1 (24:22):
Fish would fail and it been its whole life thinking
it's stupid. And this is an injustice to six year
old Ramses having lived a life thinking that we were
just supposed to be poor. And you know, I was
a person that got lucky.
Speaker 2 (24:43):
Who knows. We're going to give you guys more on
this topic. I want us to look over this interview
that Nildigrass Tyson did just on the basis of racism
and anthropology, so we'll follow up on that on another episode. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:56):
Actually, I'm pretty excited to do that as well.
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