Origin of the Racist Myth "Blacks are Less Intelligent"

There are those few with "genius" intellect that have contributed to the advancement of technology but generally speaking technology advances based upon individuals of generally average intelligence that identify a problem and then, through hard work, provide a technological solution to the problem. I'm actually unaware of any technological breakthroughs that weren't first identified as being a problem to be solved and then resolved by a lot of hard work by basically average individuals that addressed the problem. Education and knowledge to play a huge role in these breakthroughs but education and knowledge are not specifically linked to intelligence. Virtually anyone with average intelligence can gain education and knowledge by simply applying themself to those tasks. It might be easier for someone with higher intelligence to gain education and knowledge but any average person can do it if they are committed to it.

I would also argue on behalf of those that believe that living in a primative society requires more knowledge than living in a modern society. We take advantage of technological advancements in modern society but most of us don't know how those things work. How many people could build a cell phone from scratch? Very few and even then it would be based upon knowledge and not intelligence. In primative societies the individual had to know everything but in modern societies people know much less and would be hard pressed to survive if they were thrown into a primative environment. This agian really relates to knowledge and not to intelligence of course.

People need to understand that knowledge and intelligence are basically unrelated. That's a problem with our current IQ tests because they assume an "average" knowledge base for all individuals but there are individuals that do not possess this basic knowledge for numerous reasons.

 

You are not aware of inventions by people with genius level intelligence?

Like the transistor, the computer, fibre optics (which allowed high speed internet), DNA discovery, etc. etc. etc.

Do you want me to go on?

 

Societies adopt things from other societies based upon need. Why would a nomadic person necessarily need to know how to read and write? If we look back at American history a large percentage of "white" Americans could not read in the 19th Century. If we go back to the Middle Ages in Europe only a small percentage of "white" Europeans were literate. Literacy was based upon "need" and did not have any relationship to intelligence.

I will present an ironic fact. There is no evidence that Jesus was literate. Not a single writing exists that is credited to Jesus writing it. We would generally assume that someone that was literate would have written something in their lifetime and certainly anything written by Jesus, even if it was a shopping list, would have been cherished and preserved by his followers. No such documents exist to our knowledge and none are ever recorded as having existed. Could the so-called "son of God" actually have been illiterate? Sort of a weird fact, is it not?

 

Yeah right bro. Why would a newt need to learn to read? Newts are equal to us.

 

Well, actually there are thousands but let's just provide ten:

http://teacher.scholastic.com/activities/bhistory/inventors/mccoy.htm

http://teacher.scholastic.com/activities/bhistory/inventors/latimer.htm

http://teacher.scholastic.com/activities/bhistory/inventors/matzeliger.htm

http://teacher.scholastic.com/activities/bhistory/inventors/woods.htm

http://teacher.scholastic.com/activities/bhistory/inventors/carver.htm

http://teacher.scholastic.com/activities/bhistory/inventors/walker.htm

http://teacher.scholastic.com/activities/bhistory/inventors/morgan.htm

http://teacher.scholastic.com/activities/bhistory/inventors/boykin.htm

http://teacher.scholastic.com/activities/bhistory/inventors/bath.htm

http://teacher.scholastic.com/activities/bhistory/inventors/johnson.htm

From the invention of the "Real McCoy" to the filament used in Edison's light bulb to IBM guidance systems to the pacemaker that keeps millions of people alive all of these were invented by African-Americans and some were born into slavery and denied any education while slavery remained an institution in America. They overcame the invidious racial discrimination that existed denying them equality of opportunity to advance science and technology in the United States.

That invidious racial discrimination continues today denying African-Americans equality and opportunity today.

Just think of how much African-Americans would advance our technologies and economy today if invidious racism didn't exist.

 

It is ironic that the transistor was mentioned because my father was involved in it's creation. Yes, the theory of the transistor was "invented" in 1947 by John Bardeen and Walter Brattain at AT&T's Bell Labs there were problems related to actually making one. They were unable to attach the wires to the transistor and took about 10 prototypes in a tray to Production Welding in the San Fernando Valley to have the wires attached. The transitor could not be subjected to more than 400F when attaching the wires. They left instructions that their technicians were to be there when the wires were attached. My dad ignored those instructions and took the transistors, which were very large by todays standards, and simply used 60-40 solder feathering a flame over the end of the transitor until the solder melted (at 370F) in attaching the wire. When the technicians from AT&T arrived the wires were all neatly attached but they were PO'd because my dad didn't wait for them to be there. The "genius" didn't know a common fact about 60-40 solder's melting point but a common welder did. I have one of those transistors packed away somewhere.

So yes, we can say that a genius came up with the idea but they didn't come up with the actual product. That was left to the technicians at AT&T and others involved in the actual development.

Fiber optics were really based upon a demonstration by a couple of Swiss physicists in the 1840's and were not "invented" in the United States per se. How to "draw" fiber optics from glass was merely a techological advancement. There were numerous patents and advancements in fiber optics in the time period between 1840 and today and those patents continue as improvements are made.

There is no question though that some inventions result from discoveries by different people that would qualify as a genius and that is to be expected but the vast majority of the roughly 100,000 annual US patents granted each year are from average people either working on their own or as employees of corporations. A person doesn't have to be a genius to come up with a new idea to solve an old problem. There's always a "better mouse trap" and average people are always looking for it.

 

The first ICBM Guidance Systems were of course developed by Wehrner Von Braun of Nazi Germany and NASA.

1000s? Name one!

Think what could have been achieved by now!

 

Black invention myths

 

Political pressure has been put on white archaeologists to try and condition westerners with the idea that African Empires were built by Arabs or Europeans. This tactic has ultimately been deemed as wild eurocentric fanaticism by pretty much every intelligent person since the last 20 years.

Do you still think bell bottoms are in and that the jews are european? Get back at me next month when you studied some more of my post k.

 

Also might I add that Sudan and Ethiopia are sub saharan.

 

Nurture plays a part. That's why its so important to break the chain of physical abuse. It should be at least as important to break the chain of racism.

 

Most recent innovations came from whites of anglo saxon origins because world war 2 they were forced or lose the war, einstein was a white jew from Nazi germany and he didn't like that they were oppressing him and his kind so he developed the atom bomb to help America win the war.

Black nations have not exhibited any intelligence with inventions because they were not in any recent major wars that is why they have not invented anything, maybe back in egypt during the time of moses but not anytime recently so agreed. right now militias don't count because they have destabilized so there is no hope for them any longer unless they integrate with whites.

 

Most ongoing research from white nations has nothing to do with war.

And your position contradicts itself. Blacks are clever, but they don't need to fight wars so they don't invent, but they are oppressed by white people? I'm pretty sure blacks fought a lot of wars, including against whites. The "poor innocent blacks" like nothing more than a box of AKs believe me.

 

Wrong. The Nubians, whose ancestors built Meroe, were and remain BLACK.

I will have to do some digging, but there are accounts stating that some of the Egyptian royalty were at least partly of Nubian ancestry.

Isolation, war and poverty. Kills great civilizations all over the place.

The black Oromo people ruled most of Ethiopia before the Amhar (mixed-race) Menelek drove them out of most of the northern part of the country and reduced them to vassals.

At the time that the first contacts were made with Europe, some of the peoples of those areas were still migrating south. Nomads rarely develop a great deal of material culture until they reach a certain population density so that it makes sense to build cities and engage in any great deal of trade.

First, they have to establish a food supply.

Eueopeans were able to do that a little earlier than Africans because Middleeastern peoples had already begun cultivating wheat and barle

All Africa had was teff (which only grows well in mountainous areas, but which provisioned the creation of Ethiopian civilization) sorghum, millet, peanuts and rice. Rice is the only one of those which can sustain a heavy population, but it is not practical in all areas.

Where the resources were available to build a civilation, African people did so rather easily.

Problem is that it just took too long to find good food sources that they could transport and transplant to new area, by which time Europeans and Berbers had started moving in to screw stuff up.

And you were off by over a thousand miles on the Mosque of Djenne. Designed, built and regularly maintained by black Africans, mostly Mandinge and Songhai.

 

You are totally wrong about the mosque of Djenne. That is a Mandinge design. You find that building style only in Mali and surronding areas.

Of course there were exchanges between Mandinge and Songhai and whoever first brough Islam ot the attition of the sub-Sharan world, and Mali absorbed some of those cultural aspects that explorers brought with them, especially, Islam. In very short order, Timbuktu was a center of learning to the entire known world. Their chief export was hand-copied and beautifully bond BOOKS, long before the Celts had stopped chucking spears at each.

 

Isolation and war. Seems like the poor innocent blacks just can't win. Could the fact the African males generally fail to take care of their children have anything to do with it? No, let's blame whitey both for being there or not being there.

Funny how Japan was firebombed and nuked and managed to end up with the top economy, while Haiti just slid further into chaos.

 

Most of the scholars in Timbuktu were Arab. Can you provide evidence to the contrary? Why can you only provide examples from the edge of Arab territories, why not deep Africa? I think we all know the answer.

Timbuktu scholarship dates from 14th-16th century. Got any pictures of these "beautifully bond BOOKS"?

This is what Celts were doing in the 6th Century.




You liar.

 

First teachers may have been Arab, but their students were Songhai, black Africans. Arabs did not build the cities.

Arabs destroyed Timbuktu in 1591.

Who, besides priests, were allowed to read it?

Everybody was required to learn to read the Qur'an.

 

Where is the evidence for what you are saying? You are saying that everyone in Timbuktu was literate?

Why didn't literacy spread to Central Africa?

 

Interesting that cultural issues are being addressed and not human intelligence.

 

Precisely my point.

 

Culture is a product of intelligence.

 

Some people could not take the time out of their normal work, but that is also typical of most European civilizations until just a century or two ago. Certain classes were required to learn to read. The others learned it as best they could.

The djali usually did, but still were mostly engaged in their particular crafts plus memorizing songs and stories generations old and learning to play musical instruments. All of the nobles were expected to do so.

Not all of the countries around them were at all interested in converting to Islam. Many were at war with the rulers of Mali, which was one of the roots of the slave trade. It was usually employed as a means of pacifying conquered territories.

An interesting point, of course, is that the first Songhai emperor to rule from Timbuktu established the rule that it was not mandatory that his subjects convert to Islam, just that nobody was allowed to persecute others for their faith.

There remain pockets of non-Muslims in modern Mali, although the only ones who suffered any serious harm for refusing to convert were the Dogon, who remain to this day largely pagan, and who continued making war against Islam for some time after the peoples around them had made peace.

 

Well there's learning to read



and learning to read.



I think you're going to need to demonstrate a significant text from an unambiguously black author in the Timbuktu area.
That's not too much to ask, right?

 

Culture is a product from numerous different sources from natural resources to interventionism by other cultures such as conquest by war, religion, discriminatory oppression and even individual preference.

There is a very real problem that has been pointed out by cultural anthropologists in that many make value judgements upon different cultures classifying some as superior and some as inferior and that value judgement is false. For example we could take the Polynesian culture that many Europeans considered to be inferior to European culture when they discovered it in the 1500's when, in fact, it was not. The Polynesians were far superior to Europeans in ocean navigation for example and could traverse thousands of miles in the Pacific without a sextant or compass and still arrive accurately at a small island. The Polynesians could literally read the ripples in the ocean waves that were generated by these small islands which was way beyond the capacity of their European counterparts and follow these ripples to their source.

When we compare a tribal group in a remote region we cannot make any assumptions about their intelligence because they have different cultural values that affect how their intelligence is used. It often is not dedicated to formal education and enterprise. The Polynesian culture didn't require "enterprise" because they lived in a tropical paradise where food was in abundance and the weather didn't require them to build structures for living. They could literally live on the beach and eat the fish and fruits that were abundant around them. Their culture didn't require them to develop civil engineering knowledge because it was completely unnecessary.

As I've noted, and which is beyond dispute, is that the needs of a society dictate that which they develop on their own or adopt from other cultures. If a culture doesn't require something then it will not develop or adopt it.

So a question such as why Africans in the Congo didn't adopt a written language is very simple. Their culture didn't require it so there was no need. It had nothing to do with intelligence of the individuals in that society. We can look at Haiti today and the problems there are related to a disfunctional government. This doesn't have anything to do with the intelligence of the people. It is a problem with the Haitian culture which has created a disfunctional government run by power hungry politicians and does not reflect the intelligence of the People at all.