Saying the unsayable
Sir: The latest idea from an IQ merchant gets some support (Letters, 22 August) from Mr George Chowdaray-Best, who is suggest- ing that American negroes must possess less intelligence than American whites (or African blacks), because their ancestors didn't have enough of that commodity to effect a getaway from the slavers. What we feel here, once again, is the dire grip on all our minds of that very American, very twen- tieth-century thing—the intelligence tester's idea of intelligence.
William Wordsworth, for instance, in an IQ test, would have got lost, very likely, in the sound of the words; Archimedes would have diverged into parallel problems; and both of them, certainly—whether wandering abroad murmuring in verse, or drawing dia- grams in the sand at home—would have fallen immediate victim to the slavers. Which, as is the case with the black Americans. would double-check their stupidity, wouldn't it?
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