WHAT ANCIENT WHITE WRITERS SAID ABOUT BLACK INTELL

WHAT ANCIENT WHITE WRITERS SAID ABOUT BLACK INTELLIGENCE

..Vitruvius and other ancient writers associated dark skin with high intelligence. To the Greeks and Romans, the 'sun burnt' peoples of the south -- Egyptians and Ethiopians alike -- were nothing less than the founders of civilization. What is truly astonishing is how effectively proponents of the Master Race theory were able to turn this ancient opinion topsy-turvy in the centuries that followed.

Throughout the history of this nation, great pains have been taken by scientists and academicians to prove that people of African descent are inferior to Whites. Such thinking and research have generally been either tolerated or encouraged on many college and university campuses. Furthermore, by virtue of their eager coverage of all "Black inferiority theories," no matter how specious or unscientific, the American media have literally become agents in the promotion of these ideas.

In all of their feigned objectivity, the media have never deigned to consider the opinion of ancient White writers, who, in truth, believed that the most intelligent human beings on earth were Black Africans. This is a far cry from prevailing opinion, which often suggests that "Black intelligence" is a contradiction in terms.

Over the past twenty years in particular, a number of White scientists have claimed that Black people are genetically inferior to Whites, specifically with respect to intelligence. Some of these theorists have gone so far as to hold that, when compared to Whites and Asians, people of African descent are genetically deficient.

Among the most recent scientists, scholars and academicians to promote theories of Black genetic inferiority are psychologists Arthur R.A. Jensen and J. Phillippe Rushton, sociologist Linda Gottfredson, writer Daniel Seligman, Michael Levy of the City College of New York, biologist E.O. Wilson; Charles Murray and the late Richard Herrnstein, co-authors of "The Bell Curve;" and the late physicist, William B. Shockley.

While the American media, academic and scientific establishments have provided vast forums for White supremacists -- even while claiming to shun their theories -- by contrast, evidence of Black intellectual achievements is either suppressed, invalidated, ignored or dismissed as liberal propaganda.

For example, in his book, "Even The Rat Was White," social scientist Robert Guthrie has written that "the earliest effort by American researchers to investigate Black-White differences using intelligence tests was made in 1897 when G.R. Stetson tested 500 Black and 500 White public school children in Washington, D.C."

In these experiments, which tested for the children's facility for memorizing poetry, the Black children excelled their White counterparts. Consequently, according to Guthrie, "it was determined that the memory technique was not a valid measure of intelligence."

During this same period, another White scientist, R.M. Bache, tested the reaction time of Native Americans and African Americans. Since the people of color excelled the Whites, Bache concluded that "primitive peoples" were highly developed in physiological tasks, while the more advanced Whites "tended less to quickness of response in the automotive sphere; the reflective man is the slower being."

A few years later, during World War I, educated Black soldiers scored higher than Whites with equivalent college training. This of course was not highly publicized. This pattern of dismissing or ignoring Black intellectual achievements over those of Whites remains widespread today and raises a number of significant questions.

Why, for example, have all of the American media uniformly ignored numerous tests given newborn infants? A number of White scientists have been literally astonished at the brilliance of African and African American newborns when compared to all other children. Predictably, to minimize the significance of this precocity, several scientists have insisted that the Black infants have only demonstrated physical prowess.

In truth, however, the Black babies have also exceeded all other groups on special intelligence tests formulated for infants." This clearly reflects the potential of Black children before the onset of cultural bias, poor education and racism.
Why, moreover, have the mass media failed to report the results of studies undertaken in the schools of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania? After the Black school curricula were restructured in this city, Black elementary school children excelled Whites in a number of subjects, including math and science.

In the same vein, the London Times of January 12, 1992, reported that Black primary students are the highest achievers in all of Britain. Why has this escaped the attention of the American media? Just as White scholars, scientists and journalists suppress Black achievements today, they are equally silent about the glowing reputation of the Black race in antiquity.

Ancient Romans, Greeks and no doubt other Europeans did not fantasize about Black genetic inferiority. They knew better. They consistently wrote of Black people -- whom they generally referred to as Ethiopians and Egyptians -- as being highly intelligent, just, pious and favored by the gods. Let us consider the comments of some of the early White writers. Roman architect Vitrivius Pollio said "...the southern peoples [Ethiopians and Egyptians] are of acute intelligence and infinite resource..."

The Roman writer Lucian also noted that the Ethiopians "being in all else wiser than other men," had invented astrology and taught it to the Egyptians. Diodorus Siculus, the Greek historian who lived in the first century B.C., said: "The Ethiopians conceived of themselves to be of greater antiquity than any other nation; and it is probable that, born under the sun's path, its warmth may have ripened them earlier than other men.

They supposed themselves to be the inventors of worship, of festivals, of solemn assemblies, of sacrifices, and every religious practice." Historian Basil Davidson has noted: "The Greeks all agreed upon the cultural supremacy of pharohnic civilization and the ways in which they wrote about this clearly show that they would have thought it absurd to advance a contrary opinion."

In this same vein, such scholars as Cheikh Anta Diop, Theophile Obenga, Martin Bernal and others have clearly documented the fact that most prominent Greek authorities attributed the origin of Greek philosophy, science, math, logic, astronomy, architecture and theater to Black people along the Nile River in Africa.

While the Greeks and Romans did indeed think highly of Black intelligence, they reserved their greatest praise for Black spirituality. In the Iliad, Homer states that Zeus and other Olympic gods feasted for twelve days with the "blameless Ethiopians." Diodorus said that the Ethiopians enjoyed "the favor of the gods."
Lady Flora Lugard has summarized the opinion of the ancients with respect to Black people: The annals of all the great early nations of Asia Minor are full of them. The Mosaic records allude to them frequently; but while they are described as the most powerful, the most just, and the most beautiful of the human race, they are constantly spoken of as black, and there seems to be no other conclusion to be drawn, than that at that remote period of history the leading race of the Western world was a black race.

In all of their insulting pontificating over whether Black people are subhuman, why have modern White scientists and academicians overlooked the obvious: What was the state of the Black race in its purest form, before genetic mixing, slavery, colonialism, the invasion of foreigners, the destruction of indigenous cultures, the annihilation of indigenous people and the domination of North Africa by Arabs and the remainder of the continent by Europeans?

As Lady Lugard has pointed out, Black Africans were the most revered people in the ancient Western World. Had she known, she might have added that evidence of Ancient Black civilizations and remnants of prehistoric Black people have not only been discovered in the West, but also in India, China, Japan, the South Sea Islands, Tasmania, Australia and the New World.

What MA'AT readers must understand is that the preoccupation of White scientists and academicians with Black genetics is a carefully orchestrated conspiracy -- which has no scientific basis whatsoever -- to promote White supremacy and to defame Black people. The recurrence of this nonsense every twenty years or so is no accident. It was timed in the early `70's to arrest the Civil Rights Movement, and its reappearance in the `90's, particularly in "The Bell Curve," was to seal the fate of affirmative action.

White scientists and academicians are fully aware of the Black origin of the human race and global civilization. But they remain in a mass State of Denial. They also know that, as the genetically dominant parents of the human family, Black people cannot be inferior, in intelligence or anything else, to their racially diverse offspring. In the final analysis, as Dr. Frances Cress Welsing so aptly demonstrates in The Isis Papers: Keys To The Colors: White scientists are obviously very insecure about their own genetic vulnerabilities on a planet where Whites are vastly outnumbered by Black, Brown, Red and Yellow people.