This is a fascinating entry, if true. A highly intelligent person (we’ll just let that stand for now), being deluded into believing that race is actually a real thing. So many entries on this site can be traced back to utter ignorance and stupidity, and therefore it is a bit too easy to tell one self that only dumb people could delude themselves like this. But let’s never forget that intelligence (especially not whatever part of it might or might not be tested via IQ tests) doesn’t automatically give you critical thinking skill, doesn’t erase any potential biases, doesn’t make you magically immune from hypocrasy, hubris, arrogance, and irrationality in general. In fact the enlightenment was wrong. Being irrational is such a fundamental part of being human, absolutely rational reasoning is basically impossible. It’s not even always a bad thing! But this case makes me angry and sad at the same time. Here we have someone raised in an environment putting huge emphasis on race. He notices that he doesn’t like to be put into the same category as other black people in his surroundings. He is intellectually inclined, and much of the culture he observes (or rather, what is force fed to him) doesn’t speak to him. I emphasize with that. When I noticed my own homosexuality, the stereotype of what a gay man is was still very strong: Flamboyant, ‘feminine’, hysterical and shrill. I despised that stereotype, I hated being put into the same category as ‘those USUAL gay guys’. I felt that I began to abhor other gay people for putting me in a social position in which I couldn’t be myself. Same is true for this guy and black people.
Here though is where things went differently: I began to think critically about these feelings. What was the history of this stereotype? Why do gay guys often like to exhibit these traits? What role plays the history and culture of my surroundings, both when it comes to homosexuality and myself? Was I really judging the right persons? Were they the ones that held me back? No they were not. I was close to accepting the narrative of the typical homophobes. By just wanting to be accepted I was close to becoming something I hated. So instead I embraced the fact that I was gay and that it was simply a trait like any other. That if I were not like the stereotype then others aren’t either. That there is nothing wrong with not being what the majority considers normal. That there is nothing unnatural about it. I accepted myself and concluded that homosexuality is a part of me and that there was nothing wrong with that and that it wasn’t the huge divide I had thought it was to other people.
This guy on the other hand took the other route. For all his alleged intelligence, he has embraced the racist narrative because it is convenient for him. ‘Most other black people are dumb and thugs and play the race card because they are idiots. Their IQ proofs that just as it proofs my own intelligence. I must be genetically special to be that different from ordinary dumb black people, after all I have neanderthal genes, probably the thing that makes me better than those other blacks.’ He doesn’t seem to question whether any of this is actually true, he doesn’t question his own ideas, or the cultural narrative he follows, or his environment, because he LIKES the idea that the world is like that, since that means he himself is special, just like he always knew he was. Nothing what he said can’t be explained by anything but race realism. But he has fallen for his own delusions of superiority, fearing that not furthering the narrative of alleged race realism will make him seem just like any other black guy in the eyes of those he thinks of as ‘better’. Which basically is what an ‘Uncle Tom’ is all about. And that, I really have to say is just truly, truly sad and pathetic. And also very telling.
Edit: I won’t go into yet another tirade about this, but I really would have expected a more differentiated opinion on all of this from someone who thinks of himself as an intellectual. IQ as I stated before should probably be abolished in its current form, it is mostly just used nowadays by right-wingers to make fallacious claims about ‘race’ or is used by smug people to underline their superiority. And he should definitely do some actual research on human genetics and why there is no such thing as human races. He doesn’t though. Very telling indeed.