Elon Musk Falsely Claims Black University Students Have Lower IQ Than White Students

Elon Musk, the enigmatic billionaire and CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, has once again stirred controversy with his recent endorsement of a tweet suggesting that graduates from Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) have lower IQs. The tweet, which Musk publicly supported, claimed that these students are unfit to become pilots due to their supposed intellectual limitations. But is there any truth to these claims, or are they simply perpetuating harmful stereotypes?

The Context

The incident in question revolves around a United Airlines program announced in 2021. This program provides students from three HBCUs with the opportunity to interview for the company’s career development program for pilots. A Twitter user, known as @eyeslasho, argued that this initiative is dangerous because graduates from HBCUs are unintelligent and therefore ill-suited to fly planes. The user cited average SAT scores at these schools as evidence, claiming that the mean IQ of graduates from two of the HBCUs is around 85 to…