Western “Superiority” is Killing Us

Whiteness, technology, and the cult of progress

I should have set a timer.

Like the kind that lets you know when your hard-boiled eggs are ready.

Because having just published a piece on Medium calling into question the fetishization of “intelligence” as typically defined (by things like IQ tests) I knew it wouldn’t be long before the snide comments began rolling in.

Not just the cheap shots — the ones implying I was only questioning IQ tests because I must have done poorly on one — but the politically-loaded types as well. Like how liberals and leftists disdain successful people, and because successful people tend to have higher IQs (arguable but whatever) we have to tear down the concept of intelligence as part of our “war on excellence.”

And of course, there were the racist ones insisting I was dismissing IQ because black folks tend to score lower on IQ tests, and I would prefer to elide this fact.

Indeed it was this issue of racial supremacy and inferiority that animated most of the negative replies I received. And if I wasn’t willing to take IQ tests seriously, they had another line of attack. What about the simple fact, they asked, that most all achievements in history have had European origins, and none African? This…