Re:Less intelligent - An African replies (Score 2, Insightful)

How was this modded UP!? I feel so strongly about what you wrote I'm trying to make a rare comment which'll probably never see the light of day on /. Still, a fellas gotta take a swing when people get outright dangerous spreading the kind of crap you're spouting. I don't know where to start, your comments are so off the wall I can't tell if you get this stuff off of T.V. or not. Certainly not slashdot, which I read everyday, and I've not heard this kind of total crap before. First of all NOBODY has done ANY survey of AFRICAN I.Q.s There are 54 countries and a plethora of territories in Africa, a BILLION+ people, and more than 5,000 tribes who are culturally, linguistically and genetically differentiated - and range from the absolutely languid to those who make the Swiss seem relaxed. The total number of languages and dialects is UNKNOWN. In Nigeria alone there are more than 470 distinctive languages and dialects. English is NOT the majority language on the continent as almost EVERYONE has a primary native tongue and may or may not ADDITIONALLY speak - from broken to fluent - English, French, Portuguese, Dutch, Afrikaans, or German, as a second or third tongue, though most people speak at least two languages other than European ones because of the local variety. So give your CNN (which I watch a lot) viewpoint a rest. I never cease to marvel at the rude comments people make about how badly "Africans" (which ones?) speak English on TV when interviewed. How many languages do you speak other than your native tongue? And how many of those, if any, do you speak fluently? The point is any of the IQ tests you might refer to - Raven's math matrices or not - are administered in European languages and anybody with an IQ over 12 who has looked at or read the extensive literature on the construction of those tests knows they are culturally loaded and biased in a lot of ways, including how the math questions are constructed (context not content). And No, they have not been fixed. (I took one for fun a few weeks ago and if that's fixed I think you mean "fixed". When you say "Asians" are you making the same hand-waving racial and langauge generalization as before? Or do you differentiate between Asian-Americans (a complex category) and Asians outside of America? Does that include Turkmen, Mongolians, Burmese, and Malaysians - or did you have a well-picked few in mind? Give me a break pleeease! I'd like to see you take an IQ test in a second language you don't speak well and do as well. Set your time machine for the 21st century dude and bring your mind back from its comforting romantic and historical Victorian travels about Africans (or did you really mean "Blacks"?) having IQs lower than your own. More relevantly, do you personally know anything about the University of Witwatersand? And its tests? (in Afrikaans) For that matter do you know anything about Afrikaans and how South Africans of non-European descent feel about it even though they're were required to learn it? Or about South Africa and its pre- and post-apartheid educational and ethnic research? These are the same kinds of folks who were researching how to build a genetic virus that would selectively eradicate the native Zulu and other native African tribal populations in South Africa so they could inherit the land. And despite all you've seen on American TV (Wow!) including 'Tsotsi' just winning an academy award, believe it or not, your argument went deep south in a blasted hurry the moment you put "University of the Witwatersrand" and "(a liberal college in South Africa)" in the same sentence. What planet do you live on? On a personal level I'm from Nigeria and went to poor but good schools in Lagos. I've learnt English as a second language and was, as far as the results of intellectual efforts were concerned, a wee bit more than average with respect to my classmates - many of whom were and are seriously smarter than I was or presumably am. My IQ, when then tested, was 183. So give me some oxygen fella, unless you've been running some massive covert black ops developing culturally balanced intelligence tests across and for some 5000 tribes - and who knows how many langauges and dialects - you are seeing an awful lot of sunshine coming down whatever you're looking up. And I don't think it's "enlightened research". You do sound like a not much travelled, pseudo intellectual racist looking for heavy credentialled cover in, ironically, politically correct (as in extremist) views. You're right on one score, you cannot fix your problem until you accept that it exists. Do some homework, Peace.