Ayanna Pressley allegedly Tweeted, IQ is a measure of Whiteness (*Article has been updated below)
US Representative Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts finds herself in a growing controversy. An alleged Tweet has surfaced from two years ago on the race and IQ controversy.
Pressley, who represents downtown and parts of greater Boston, is alleged to have said, “IQ is a measure of whiteness.” Some, particularly on Twitter, Reddit, and other forums have interpreted the remark as suggesting that Afro-American students do not have what it takes, to achieve success to the same levels as Asians and ethnic Europeans due to inherent inadequacies.
At the time race and IQ had just emerged as a hot-button issue across the US. Universities and colleges were cancelling standardized tests in favor of affirmative action quotas for admissions. Local school board meetings, particularly in States like Virginia, were having raging controversies over parent involvement in their children’s education.
It was during this period that business entrepreneur and innovator Glenn Youngkin, running on a pro-parents rights platform, emerged as a favorite Republican gubernatorial nominee in Va.
Additionally, Christopher Rufo, a fellow at the center-right Manhattan Institue, emerged as a parent’s rights advocate. Rufo was a frequent guest on cable news arguing against Critical Race Theory and affirmative action programs for school admissions that seemed to discriminate against ethnically European and Asian students.
Rufo at the city-journal.org, April 22, 2021,
The courage of our convictions
On the grassroots level, a multiracial and bipartisan coalition is emerging to fight critical race theory. Parents are mobilizing against racially divisive curricula in public schools and employees are increasingly speaking out against Orwellian reeducation in the workplace. When they see what is happening, Americans are naturally outraged that critical race theory promotes three ideas—race essentialism, collective guilt, and neo-segregation—that violate the basic principles of equality and justice.
Liberal groups during that period floated out differing trial balloons to respond to parents and conservative elected officials concerned over the standardized test issue.
Some leaders of the black community conceded racial differences in IQ levels. They used the arguments as a means for greater funding for schools in predominately black areas. One of Pressley’s colleagues Tweeted out a cartoon that could be interpreted as explicitly race realist.
From our article here at Subspecieist.com, April 2, 2021,
Democrat Congressman Jamaal Bowman Controversial Tweet: Race Realism Cartoon on Standardized Testing
[Congressman Bowman] “Our education system and the problem with standardized testing.”
Bowman was making the point, one size does not fit all, that Afro-ethnic students may require different learning methods from white children.
The Tweet as of this writing gained 1,095 Retweets and included 1,299 Quote Tweets (Comments in his thread). They ranged from outright accusations that the Congressman was being “racist,” to many others supporting him on the view that standardized testing is outdated, and needs to be less “white-oriented.”
AllahPundit, co-editor of the legacy conservative site HotAir.com, responded:
He’s trying to make the point, I assume, that white students are better equipped to pass standardized tests because they go to better funded schools and come from higher-earning households on average than black students do. An underprivileged group can’t be expected to perform as well as a privileged one in the aggregate…
But making that point about racial disparities by borrowing an analogy to animals, which have different innate abilities because they’re literally different species, is … not a good analogy… Imagine how deep in the weeds of racial essentialism you need to be to miss Blum’s point and push a cartoon that would fit comfortably on an alt-right message board.
Center-right news site PJ Media columnist Jim Treacher tweeted:
Asking a [B]lack person to pass a test is like asking a goldfish to climb a tree.’ Who said it: David Duke or Jamaal Bowman?
Bari Weiss, than co-editor of the New York Times editorial page referred to Bowman’s Tweet as the “neo-racism of anti-racism.”
“Ayanna, you literally just said blacks are retards”
The alleged Pressley Tweet started to make the rounds of social media starting on January 16, largely due to David Vance, a UK-based YouTuber and social commenter. Vance, who has a large following on various social media platforms asked Pressley via a Tweet, “can you please explain what this means.”
Some of the reactions were brutal.
John Fry – And I once had a young black woman tell me that she learned in college black people couldn’t be racist.
32KM2003 – Ayanna Pressley you literally just said black people are retards. That’s very racist from you, I’m so disappointed…
Jackie Hendrick – Ayanna Pressley is a disgrace to humanity… “IQ is a measure of whiteness”. What she is saying is that if your not white, you have no IQ. All people should be offended by this.
And this:
MaximusThic – Math scores of black ppl on standardized tests are also far lower. Are we just gonna make excuses for them till the end of time or are we going to consider evolution.
Snopes, liberal media comes to Ayanna Pressley’s defense
In an article dated January 17 at MSN, titled, “Did Ayanna Pressley Tweet, ‘IQ Is a Measure of Whiteness’?,” Snopes reporter Jordan Liles called into question the legitimacy of the alleged Pressley Tweet.
The screenshot under the tweet, which was poor quality, appeared to show that Rep. Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., had tweeted from an iPhone, “IQ is a measure of whiteness.” The date showed as June 15, 2021.
We did not find any record of this tweet on Pressley’s Twitter account. We checked both the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine and also archive.today. Both websites exist to archive websites, as their names indicate.
We also found no reporting about the words in the tweet anywhere online, at least according to a Google search. For example, no political blogs, whether left-leaning or right-leaning, reported anything about the words, “IQ is a measure of whiteness.”
Liles goes on to write that Snopes reached out to Pressley’s office for comment, but as of that date, had not received a response.
Then at the very bottom of the article, Liles had this to say:
Was the tweet created as a fake by @LivingScribe or someone else, or did Pressley actually put out the tweet? We’re still looking for answers before establishing a firm rating.
We have reached out to Liles on Twitter, but we have yet to receive a response.
UPDATE! The Associated Press quoted the press secretary for Ayanna Pressley denying the authenticity of the Tweet. Scopes has also changed their story. However, both sources they quote verifying that the Tweet is inauthentic have a hard left bias.
“IQ is a measure of whiteness” is really the statement: “Low IQ is a measure of blackness.”
And?
Seems rather logical to me there Duncan. I think you nailed it.
Seems rather logical to me there Duncan. I think you nailed it.
“The major cause of the American Negro’s intellectual and social deficits is hereditary and racially genetic in origin and, thus, not remediable to a major degree by practical improvements in the environment.”
Who said it: Ayanna Pressley or William Shockley?
Lol. I get your point.
There’s some news about to break. I think Berger’s found Homo naledi DNA. And very likely modern Africans admixed with Homo naledi. H-naledi at 550-600cc. Gonna be interesting to see how they spin that.
How are they going to spin it? They’ve laid the propaganda groundwork for years now.
“Africa is the cradle of humanity.” “We are all Africans.” “Humanity is an African story.” yada yada yada
Africa a part of our heritage? Absolutely. The wellspring from which our species flows? Hardly! That’s the perspective of a neurotic political ideology, it’s never been the record of the science. There’s never been anything like a conclusive case for that, and yet it’s been preached like gospel for many decades.
If Africa is the vanguard of humanity, why has it been and is still today the home of the most archaic, regressive, backward peoples on the planet?
So how do the ideologues reconcile themselves with the accumulating weight of their folly? Let’s look at history:
1. Ignore contrary evidence.
2. Stigmatize and marginalize messengers of the contrary evidence.
3. Impede, squelch and censor the existence of contrary evidence.
4. Redefine undeniable findings with the smear of contrived caveats and gaslight.
And finally:
5. Declare purveyors of the evidence as criminals who need to be punished.
How are they going to spin this you ask?
“It’s white supremacists claiming blacks are subhumans who screwed monkeys.”