Trump's use of "low IQ" individuals when referring to AA is a nod to Charles Murray's "Bell Curve"

[Yavin4]

The Bell Curve supposedly provides scientific evidence that African Americans are genetically less intelligent than White people based on IO test scores. Published in the mid-90s, the book has seen a resurgence among the alt-right and "outside of the mainstream", so-called academics and intellectuals.

Vox did a whole thing about it back in April:



https://www.vox.com/2018/4/10/17182692/bell-curve-charles-murray-policy-wrong

[MountCleaners]

1. Absolutely

Charles Murray is repugnant. He's on Twitter. Trump supporters love the "Bell Curve" because it tells them they are smarter than other groups of people simply because they are white.

Trump's stuff about how he's a natural "genius" is definitely an oblique reference to the "Bell Curve". He thinks he is one of the genetic "elite".

[OnDoutside]

2. Ironic since Trump is a Bell End !

[wcmagumba]

3. I actually wasted time...

reading part of that crapola back in the 90s just to see what it was about...total bullshit, racist trash!

[DemocratSinceBirth]

4. I love the conservative Thomas Sowell's takedown of the Bell Curve

1) It's nurture, not nature.
2) There is greater difference in IQs within groups than between groups
3) Re: the nurture argument. Many Jews who came to America at the beginning of the twentieth century were labeled borderline retarded, now as a group they score the highest on IQ tests but Asians are catching up fast.

[DBoon]

8. about point 3

I read that when IQ tests were first being developed at the end of the 19th century, women scored higher than men. Obviously this could not be possible, so they revised the tests and scoring to remove this difference.

Meaning they started with presumptions about intelligence and modified the test to fit them

[Initech]

5. I saw a tweet the other day:

Where someone (can't remember who) was saying "Somewhere, LeBron James is looking at this tweet and going "He's calling me a low IQ individual?"

[surrealAmerican]

6. Probably not.

I doubt Trump read the book. Both it and the President's statements are based on much older racist tropes. In Trump's case, it was probably something he heard from his father.

[Yavin4]

7. Not saying Trump actually read the book

Rather, I'm saying that he knows what it says and represents.

[eppur_se_muova]

9. Bingo. nt

[NanceGreggs]

10. We all know that Trump projects.

Whatever negative thing is said about him, he will turn it around and level at someone else.

The first time I heard him talk about someone's "low IQ", I thought it was a sure tell that at some point, he'd been labelled as having a low IQ himself.

The term "low IQ" was probably first used when he was very young and in school. In all likelihood, his parents were told by teachers that Lil' Donnie's IQ was "below normal", which explained why he didn't do as well as his classmates.

That phrase, given Trump's ego, would have been a stinging insult - and from what we know of his father, it was probably thrown in his face on a regular basis.

So inevitably, Trump applies the term "low IQ" to those he hates - because that's what he does. "It's not ME who has a low IQ, it's you!

[LunaSea]

11. "Donald Trump was the dumbest goddamn student I ever had."

https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/former-wharton-professor-trump-was-dumbest-gddam-student-i-ever-had