Africa’s moral problems have indeed lead to a situation whereby, what we consider “intelligence” is, in the most general sense, diminished across populations.
I don’t think the factual matter of the depreciated intelligence of the citizens of third world countries across the world is so arguable.
I think this argument simply falls afoul of political correctness because the argument has been associated with skin color rather than the nature of third world nations and the cultures therein.
I feel, without evidence, that the measures of intelligence within the US today, among these same demographics, would not be dissimilar (they are) if assimilation were the by-word of today instead of “diversity”.
The important part to keep in mind is that these differences exist and political policies should be impacted by those differences.
For example: When seeking to influence a people in a foreign country favorably toward the US, how we seek to influence them depends greatly upon the intelligence of those people.
Years ago, I worked in a group home for retarded adults. They were mostly from rural areas of western Pennsylvania, and all of them were white. We had two in the group who were thought to have normal intelligence - but functioned and tested at a retarded level because of severe cultural deprivation.
They had been brought up on welfare in little backwoods trailers where everybody was their own aunt, uncle or cousin. Their diet consisted of boiled macaroni, an occasional squirrel, and soda and potato chips. They had almost no language skills because nobody ever talked to anybody else and their language had been so non-standard for generations that they were practically unintelligible anyway. They had no interaction with the outside world, except for an occasional visit from the social worker to certify them for welfare, until they got to the mandatory age for public school (and sometimes not even then, because the parents simply refused to send them).
A lot of Africans are in this situation. Their traditional culture has broken down and has been replaced by a highly politicized chaos that has no intellectual structure that could shape or train them to interact with the world around them in anything but the most instinctive and “primitive” way. Intelligence in its various degrees may be innate, but it is developed by living in a world that offers people fixed realities and concepts for building a theoretical structure that enables them to understand the world and act rationally in it (which also involves moral action). Therefore, their innate intelligence is simply never going to be developed until they have the structure that enables it to develop.
I have met some extremely intelligent African Christians, many of whom grew up in the same poverty as anybody else but were taken and sent to Catholic boarding schools when very young and emerged in no way inferior to their white counterparts.
We need more missionary activities in Africa. (Not to mention in rural Pennsylvania!) It is the structure and foundation of society that enables its people to be “intelligent.” While there will always be natural, individual differences within this, the basic level of civilized man will be pretty much the same. However, the very point of “cultural deprivation” is that there is no culture to nourish the mind, and this results in the permanent stunting of intellectual growth. Africa as a whole is in a state of cultural deprivation, and its people reflect this; but it’s a curable situation, if anybody cares to do so.
I am not in a position to opine on the accuracy of the intelligence comparisons. However, I do not agree that it’s particularly relevant. The cultural and moral factors that plague Africa are not unique to any racial group.
Our own “intellectual” class is proof that simple intelligence does not correlate with moral excellence, economic utility, or practical comprehension. If we can’t convince the brightest minds (by IQ measure) in the U.S. and Western Europe that Marxism is a recipe for disaster, why would we say that lower intelligence explains Africans’ falling for it?
PROTIP: Believing that all men are created equal is not being “politically correct.”