Readings on the racist, pseudoscientific history of psychometrics and intelligence-testing

Thanks for that. There's also Yarden Katz's article in Monthly Review that provides a nice overview of the historical attempts at measuring/quantifying "intelligence," starting with Alfred Binet, and how such efforts have almost invariably gone hand in hand with eugenics, white supremacist ideologies and policies, and racial pseudoscience. The American eugenics movement in fact directly influenced the sterilization and other policies of Nazi Germany. The latter part of Katz's article also shows how modern "intelligence" testers reproduce many of the ideas of earlier eugenicists, while dropping some of the overtly racist language, by pointing to "learning" platforms like Coursera and their emphasis on how certain parts of the world are fit for certain types of labor:

Katz wrote: The rankings of individuals and their skills are then aggregated to produce an extensive intelligence hierarchy, presented in Coursera’s 2021 Global Skills Report. The report is framed from the perspective of U.S. empire, scouring the globe for workers (or “learners”) with the necessary skills to serve U.S. corporations while trying to ensure no other state threatens its hegemony. The report ranks more than one hundred countries by their performance in the valorized areas of data science and business. These rankings are justified by a circular logic familiar from intelligence testing. Just as Terman justified IQ scores by claiming that they positively correlate with incomes, Coursera justifies its rankings by suggesting they positively correlate with indicators such as the World Bank’s “Human Capital Index” (the latter being yet another crude metric that incorporates GDP, international standardized tests, and other indicators to rank countries’ worth). Coursera then uses the rankings to categorize countries and regions as “cutting edge,” “competitive,” “emerging,” or “lagging.”

The results resemble the racialist hierarchies that were concocted using the U.S. army intelligence tests of the First World War. Wealthy European countries such as Germany, Sweden, and Austria are classified as “cutting edge,” while those places still suffering the weight of colonialism, such as Algeria, Brazil, and Puerto Rico, are classified as “lagging.” The “Cutting Edge” places excel in the areas valorized by U.S. technocratic elites, such as Bayesian statistics, and have “stand-out industries” such as information technology and the arts. By contrast, the “lagging” nations are reported to excel in so-called soft skills such as “adaptability” and “sales”; their noteworthy industries are “household activities,” mining, and hospitality and food. Like Brigham’s hierarchy, Coursera’s rankings reaffirm white supremacy and imperialist attitudes. But while Brigham and his peers determined that the less white countries are less intelligent, Coursera determines that mostly non-white countries lack the most desirable skills.

It's worth noting that the aforementioned Carl Brigham, a eugenicist and white supremacist, also created the Scholastic Aptitude Test (or SAT). Many colleges in the US still use SAT scores as part of their admission requirements, though the number of colleges requiring these scores has been decreasing in recent years, partly due to its unsavory history, as well as other factors like the pandemic and the inherently inequitable nature of such assessments.

The idea that there is something called "intelligence" in the first place, and which can supposedly be quantified by taking one of a number of "intelligence"-measuring tests, is also just fundamentally unsound and unscientific (much like the entire field of psychology itself; see for instance its replication crisis, with the reproducibility of studies being a key criterion for a field being considered scientific). "Intelligence"-measuring also serves neo-Nazis and white supremacists like Trump and co., just like it served its original proponents, by letting them point to how better-off white people (shockingly) score better on such tests, and enjoy more "success" in capitalist society, than poorer and disadvantaged groups.

Nice one. I've also come across Ron Roberts' Psychology and Capitalism, which partly deals with the history of "intelligence"-measuring and its historical association with eugenics. There are also loads of other informative books on the same topic if one searches around; I was just wondering if anyone had any particularly good recommendations. I still think Gould's book (The Mismeasure of Man) is a must-read as far as critiquing the reification of intelligence, along with the appalling history of "intelligence"-measuring itself (which has often been directly in the service of capital and the state).

Speaking of the "racehorse theory," here's Trump today at his "victory rally" following a speech by Musk:

Trump said: But his son [who's 4] is a great guy [sic]. One thing we know: his son is smart. If you believe in the racehorse theory, he's got a nice smart son.

Never mind the fact that Musk came from a well-off South African family who was heavily involved in the emerald-mining trade, or the fact that his father gave him thousands of dollars to help set up his first major business (i.e. Zip2), or the fact that Musk's "success" owes much to government funding and subsidies, as well as technologies created within the government and education sectors, like the internet itself, etc. The "great-man" image of Musk that portrays him as this "revolutionary capitalist innovator," who single-handedly created all of the junk-products he peddles, is a complete myth; in many cases he is merely rebranding or commercializing technologies that had been created elsewhere. They prefer to just chalk up Musk's "success" to genes and this reified, vulgar concept of "intelligence," rather than a privileged-bourgeois upbringing and the horrific exploitation of countless workers.

This hereditary fallacy, or Trump's claim that he and his allies are fit to rule due to their "good genes" and "inherited intelligence" (they inherited wealth—not intelligence!), also sort of reminds me of Paine's critique of hereditary rule from around 250 years ago:

Paine wrote: Secondly, as no man at first could possess any other public honors than were bestowed upon him, so the givers of those honors could have no power to give away the right of posterity, and though they might say "We choose you for our head," they could not without manifest injustice to their children say "that your children and your children's children shall reign over ours forever." Because such an unwise, unjust, unnatural compact might (perhaps) in the next succession put them under the government of a rogue or a fool. Most wise men in their private sentiments have ever treated hereditary right with contempt; yet it is one of those evils which when once established is not easily removed: many submit from fear, others from superstition, and the more powerful part shares with the king the plunder of the rest. (79-80)

At any rate, it seems like there's now (and has been) a capitalist oligarchy, rather than a foreign monarchy, that the US has to contend with.

At any rate, it seems like there's now (and has been) a capitalist oligarchy, rather than a foreign monarchy, that the US has to contend with.

I should maybe add that I'm aware that the issue is not the greed or cruelty of a handful of capitalists, but rather capitalism as a mode of production itself. I was just referencing how this upcoming administration is unprecedented in its closeness to business interests and billionaire tech-capitalists.