How a Couple of Racist Frauds Created "The American Intellect"

Banned Histories of Race in America

Lewis Madison Terman was born in 1877. The twelfth of 14 siblings, Lewis was small and weak and a bit of an outcast. While the other kids in his rural Indiana township were playing outside, Lewis was inside, working on his incel vibe. At that time in that place, most kids didn’t stay in school past the eighth grade. Lewis would be an exception, eventually obtaining multiple degrees, including a PhD., afforded, of course, by his rich, land-owner daddy.

Like a lot of other dipshits with daddy-bought success, Lewis came to believe that he was better than everyone else—superior, if you will. And as any silver-spoon fool would, he believed his superiority to be earned and at the same time genetic. Before long Lewis was not only a devout believer in eugenics, but a loud and proud proponent. He wrote about it, spoke publicly about it and joined any eugenics organization that would have him. Lewis championed educational and tax benefits for the certain fair-skinned folks and legal sterilization and other forms of societal eradication of us darker types. Naturally, he became a professor at Stanford University.

One day Lewis stumbled upon the work of French hypnotist-turned-child-psychologist Alfred Binet…

In the late 1800s France made it mandatory for kids ages six through fourteen to attend school. Since no one knew what the hell they were doing, the French government asked Binet to design a test ascertaining which children did and didn’t have learning disabilities. In 1903 Binet published a book called Experimental Studies of Intelligence describing his methods. A few years later Lewis got ahold of this book and probably thought something like, “What if I did an Alfred Binet, but instead of trying to help children, I aided in the destruction of the lesser races?”

And so, in 1916 from the underdeveloped and deviant mind of Lewis Madison Terman, the first IQ test was born. He tested as many people as he could and proclaimed this “general intelligence” test to be absolutely infallible! You will be shocked to learn that among the ridiculous meticulous nonsense of this professional eugenicist’s findings was that “the intelligence of the average negro is vastly inferior to that of the average white man.”

Of course, people at the time knew this was bullshit. Many of his peers understood that intelligence, if anything at all, was too contextually dependent to be so broadly measured, especially by a bad-faith worm like Lewis. His work was viewed as unethical and racist. Unfortunately, this was the time of the Great Migration and powerful bigots across the North were terrified of Black folks moving in next door. The immigration spike of 1919-20 only added to the racist panic and the popularity of the IQ test grew and grew. And with it came the gradual acceptance of Lewis’ unethical and racist definition of “intelligence”.  

Soon other genocidal zealots with institutional backing started waving around the fake results of their own sham studies. For example, in 1923, Princeton’s own Carl Brigham wrote A Study of American Intelligence in which he proclaimed, “American intelligence is declining, and will proceed with an accelerating rate as the racial admixture becomes more and more extensive. The decline of American intelligence will be more rapid than the decline of the intelligence of European national groups, owing to the presence here of the negro,” which is a little severe, if not wildly ignorant of European populations. But ol’ Carl was nothing if not an optimist! He continued, “The deterioration of American intelligence is not inevitable, however, if public action can be aroused to prevent it.”

Carl walked the walk. He himself would take action in preventing “the negro” from dismantling American intelligence. Just three years later in 1926 Carl created the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT). Yeah. And there were enough likeminded bigoted politicians and school leaders in support that by 1930 13 million American children would be categorized by the SATs or some other fraudulent, white supremacist metric.

Their motives were always clear. Just looking at the tests would tell you how weighted they were in the specific direction of a certain race, class and gender. For years, the SATs had a question involving a “regatta”. However, questions weighted in the direction of races, classes and genders that could accurately answer a question about, say, a hot comb were not included.

Recently colleges have begun dropping these tests, which would be a great first step. But even if they all went away tomorrow, there is that much bigger problem that can’t be so easily undone: For over a century we’ve been forced into equating intelligence with white supremacists’ ideals of merit.

Lewis’ version of successful career placements were doctors, lawyers, scientists and the like. Having been safeguarded by eugenics tests, these positions remain disproportionately white. The necessary skillsets involve the act of thinking with agency and self-propulsion. They require “intelligence”.

Black men in this country, on the other hand, are thought of as finding success through athletics or the arts, paths out of reach for these eugenicists. Despite the necessary strategy, dedication and sheer willpower required in developing and practicing athletic or artistic skillsets, we do not identify these positions as needing intelligence in any way. On the contrary, they require something called “talent”, a trait completely without any trace of agency. Talent is innate, so lacking in self-propulsion that it’s often described as God-given.

A white man’s genetics allows him a mind with which he can earn his success and a Black man’s genetics allows him only a body with which—if he’s lucky—God might use to entertain white men.

Lewis set out to protect his white male status. He did this through allegedly measuring only traits he could claim for himself. This “general intelligence”, discounted traits he didn’t value. He didn’t “measure” the intelligence required for athletic nor artistic endeavors. “General” didn’t include social intelligence, something required in a skill like code switching. Nor did it include emotional intelligence, a necessity in navigating a country that defines a mind only in ways that prohibit you from having one.

The irony is that if Lewis had measured intelligence in any general way, he himself would’ve likely been declared legally an idiot and clinically an imbecile. But that probably wasn’t really his game. Lewis was a turd who demanded the world tell him he was the best, that all his racist horseshit was the way to go and he accomplished just that. He and his eugenicist con man contemporaries convinced the country to exchange the concept of legitimate thought with their particular version of white supremacy.

Maybe a greater irony is that for all of Carl’s worry that “the negro” would dismantle American intelligence, his and Lewis’ efforts have done exactly that. Their eugenicist checkpoints have led to the entire country countlessly and collectively crying, “That guy’s a doctor/lawyer/scientist?”

Case after case a repeated and endless amount of benefit of the doubt is given, “intelligence” used as a redemptive lie. We see men like Richard Spencer, Tucker Carlson and others of their ilk continuously called “intelligent,” having only displayed mindless hatred.

We see journalists reporting back from red states feverishly attempting to convince readers about the very real “intelligent” Trump voter who is quite genuinely concerned about how gas prices are effected by immigration and who really truly wonders what will happen to the debt ceiling once BLM destroys America.

And we watch in wonder as Ron DeSantis and the newest generation of eugenicist con man contemporaries ban books and twist government in an attempt to keep Lewis and Carl’s exclusionary version of intelligence… shall we say… “pure”?

After Lewis left Stanford, he went on to become the president of the American Psychological Association where he did things I’m sure will be covered in future posts here. And I probably won’t stop there with the Terman clan, as his son, Frederick is known as “The Father of Silicon Valley”. There’s always more Banned Histories of Race in America.