What If There Were Only One Race?
There is: the Human Race. But a significant number of people don’t see it that way: structural, overt racism persists.
I know what gender bias is. I’m a woman.
I know what racism is, too. And it seems almost impossible to believe, but in 2023, a U.S. Presidential candidate who benefited from race-based affirmative action, Vivek Ramaswamy, is getting media coverage and attention from race-motivated conservative voters by saying things like:
Everyone agrees that affirmative action in the NBA would ruin basketball, and affirmative action in the NFL would ruin football. Turns out that affirmative action in engineering & medicine has a similar effect: this should surprise no one.
I could go into what type of fallacy Ramaswamy makes (bandwagon), or I could note that 43,000 people “liked” this heinous assertion via Ramaswamy’s Twitter account.
I could go into what type of fallacy Ramaswamy makes (bandwagon), or I could note that 43,000 people “liked” this heinous assertion via Ramaswamy’s Twitter account.
It’s possible Ramaswamy believes what he is saying.
But it’s more likely he’s campaigning and tweeting for cash. He is 38 years old and has already amassed a lot of it. Forbes pegs his fortune at $950 million, while Ramaswamy’s own campaign asserts he is a billionaire. Donald Trump continues to use political candidacy and his Presidential office to receive business opportunities and direct donations. Ramaswamy is opposing Trump — but far to the “right” of him politically. Ramaswamy is supposedly “drawing ahead” of the second-place anti-Trump candidate, Florida governor Ron DeSantis.
The two men are competing to see who is more anti-abortion, anti-woman, and apparently — anti Black or any other non-white race or ethnicity.
And this is 2023.
And in 2023, Ramaswamy appeals to his niche audience of people who think Black Americans and Black Africans are stupid and incapable of work involving mental abilities. They believe science tells them this. They also believe that women are inferior to men in various ways. They believe science tells them this.
As a fiction writer, I’m supposed to be able to imagine any type of person and any type of attitude or motivation. I do understand Ramaswamy’s cash and power-based motivation to tell this audience what they love to hear.
But I don’t understand the audience’s motivation.
I truly do not understand how in 2023, any person would believe that a person of another race or different sex would automatically, intrinsically possess or lack any quality, positive or negative. And further, even if they do believe this, why would they care?
With all the problems in the world, they choose to demonize or put down people they don’t know, and have never met? Of any race?
A Mega-Racist Attorney
While Bruce was going to the YMCA pool, we ran into a gentleman who used the pool every day, who made the racist dinner party guy who thought Blacks were taking the jobs of white Americans look like a Civil Rights activist.
This man was a retired criminal defense attorney from a major East Coast city. He chortled when speaking of how a jury acquitted a Black defendant that he had represented. He knew the man was guilty of murdering an elderly white woman. He found the verdict humorous because he believed the jury, which was comprised of different races, had “reverse racism.”
I listened to several lectures from this man about how ignorant, low-living, and incapable African people were. He believed that all Africans could barely read or write, all lived in mud huts, and none had any intelligence or intellectual capabilities. He was specific about this and could loudly quote “scientific studies” that “proved” his beliefs.
I knew it would be pointless to argue with him. I knew he wouldn’t even consider information about Wangaari Maathai: a Black African Ph.D. and Nobel Laureate. I did ask if he’d ever seen pictures or videos of current African cities. He returned the next day quoting statistics of the low annual income of various African nations, probably from the 1960 CIA Fact Book.
He also talked about how Black Americans were destroying inner cities, and how they just wanted to sit around, do drugs, and rob stores. He was particularly incensed by videos of Black people looting department stores.
“Go into a white neighborhood,” he said. “You won’t find them doing that!”
Finally I asked him, “Why do you concern yourself with Black people at all if you dislike them so much?”
He was unable to form a coherent answer to this.
“I’ve heard you talking with the lifeguard here about Christian beliefs,” I said. “I’m a Baptist and I was taught we were all God’s children.”
He didn’t have much of an answer for that, either.
But it was obvious that his firmly-held racist beliefs were a core part of his identity. I felt as though I was talking with a member of the Spanish Inquisition or a Salem Witch Trial Judge. He eagerly quoted doctrine, chapter, and verse of material prepared by others to “prove” the moral and intellectual inferiority of people with Black skin.
Hate Makes Respect Impossible
I often think about the slave-owners of old and the myth that they had some degree of caring about Black slaves.
How could anyone imprison someone and force them to work to enrich them for their entire life if they did not hate them?
Yes, racism is hate.
Maybe the peculiar form of fake affection is found in the patronization of slaves, their infantilization — it’s the kind of hate that an abusive spouse or parent exhibits.
If you respect someone you allow them to be who they are and you do not concern yourself with whether or not they have a “High IQ” or other qualities. If you respect someone you treat them as you would want to be treated.
Black People Have Low IQs And Other Myths
I was not respected by some of my college teaching colleagues because my classrooms were genuinely equitable. Students came to me with horror stories of discriminatory or harassing behavior for a variety of causes, from race-based discrimination to gender bias. Those instructors were obviously going to hate the positive, pleasant, productive classrooms I and my fellow equitable teachers worked in.
Part of my passion to combat racism and gender bias comes from what I saw directly in 20 years of college teaching.
Any and all students can excel if they are given a positive environment and support to learn. Regardless of race. Regardless of age. Regardless of ethnicity. Regardless of sex or gender. Regardless of being identified as having a cognitive difference or disability.
I have never, ever seen anyone with a genuinely high IQ espouse the IQ-based theories that various “races” have higher or lower IQs. IQ tests have been proven flawed time and again. They measure specific abilities. They have nothing to do with anything real.
Both Bruce and I have high IQ scores. In my case, I would be qualified for any of the high-IQ societies. I also received a perfect score on the SAT and I missed a perfect score on the GRE by 10 points.
Sure, I’m “white.” My father was doubtless a genius — he had two Master’s degrees, a Ph.D., and had memorized the dictionary. He ran a janitorial service and washed windows for a living.
If I believe what I’ve been told, I technically have a higher IQ than the ones these racists put out for Albert F-ing Einstein. I think my IQ might be similar to the one that the “World’s Smartest Woman” used to advertise.
If anybody has a right to say IQ tests are total BS, I do. Anybody that brags about them is at best, ill-informed. It’s more likely they’re an asshole.
It doesn’t matter what anybody’s number is on any test, it matters what they are able to learn and accomplish.
How many years have passed since the introduction of IQ tests based on 19th century concepts? How much different work has been done on different forms of intelligence? Howard Gardner introduced his theory of multiple intelligences in the 1970s through 1980s. Salavoy and Mayer introduced the idea of Emotional Intelligence or EQ in 1990, and it has since been commercialized by others.
100% Of This Is About Abusing & Taking Advantage Of Others
IQ tests have been used as excuses for vast amounts of harm. The fact that today, a candidate for President who presents himself as intelligent and even in a scientific field callously markets the old falsehood that different races, especially Black Americans, “have low IQs” speaks to the lack of intelligence and experience of people who believe these lame, outdated, long-disproven lies.
Vivek Ramaswamy probably does know that IQ tests are nearly meaningless. But having a lot of shrewdness, much like his political opponents, he knows how to tell his audience what they want to hear to collect as much money as possible.
As I have written before, most dedicated white racists do know how much they’ve materially benefited from exploiting those they look down upon. They probably know to the penny even if they will not admit this to anyone.
It’s no different to the abusive spouse — let’s say the non-working Sister Wife guy, how about him? — who tells the hardworking women he is married to that they have no choice but to work hard as possible to give him money. That’s their role in life. That is all they can aspire to because they’re not [smart, pretty, desirable, good] enough for anything else.
Just like my former fiance told me, “But you have to be smart to be a sci-fi writer.”
Yeah buddy. That’s right. That’s why I am.
IQ tests and the SAT measure how well you do on IQ test and the SAT. The College Board has all but admitted their tests are biased and don't predict what they claim to predict (first year college performance).
There is a type of bigot who views something like a test, with an objective-seeming output like a specific number, as ironclad proof that they are "right". Which is an interesting thing to need.
Racism like the lawyer you experienced is based on lack of experience. Ignorance, basically. I remember this from my all-white, rural high school. Vicious and snarling country trash people decrying blacks they had never encountered a living example of. The great irony is that these poor white trash people had far more in common with the minorities they decried than they had differences. Which is why racism is such an attractive tool.
It says 4.3 million VIEWS, not likes. Meaning: a lot of people have seen the piece, but they haven't necessarily agreed with him, since it clearly didn't get a comparable number of likes.
IQ tests shouldn't be used to discriminate against people via race, but they would be a much needed way of excluding hot-headed idiots from public office.