Where Are The High IQ Black People?

By W. F. Twyman, Jr.

“Facts Matter” — Bumper Sticker on Car in San Diego

Sometimes we read that schools are failing black students. I do not know this story. I know my story.

Mrs. Meredith Hunt led me from class and down the long, carpeted hallway. Our school was brand new, a monument to the manifest destiny of southern suburbs in the Fall of 1972. I knew I was not in trouble. But Mrs. Hunt kept me in the dark about my mysterious visit to the Principal’s office. We walked down two flights of steps and turned right into the office. I met a pleasant woman who sat me in a vacant office. After a few pleasantries were exchanged, she started asking me questions. I was always up for a good challenge. I gave every question my best effort. Thirty minutes passed. The intriguing strange woman asked me if I had read The Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan? I said no, but, I wanted to read this book as soon as possible.

I was in the sixth grade.

As a result of this impromptu interview, Chesterfield County, Virginia public schools identified me as a gifted and talented student. The benchmark for admission was an IQ of 130. My suburban, conservative, Republican junior high school was 3.74% black and 96.26% white. I was one of two black students in Mrs. Hunt’s class.

Did it matter that Mrs. Hunt was a southern white female in the fall of 1972? I was a black male in the bad old times, a place twenty miles from the White House of the Confederacy. What did Mrs. Hunt see in me? Why did Mrs. Hunt not fail me? Why did Salem Church Junior High school not fail me?

The answers were in me. Here is my best speculation.

Throughout the early days and weeks of the fall semester, Mrs. Hunt took an interest in me. I asked the most questions in every class. That was my goal every day. This goal came naturally to me as I was a curious soul. Mrs. Hunt noticed that I made a beeline for the library at the end of every school day. I would run to the history section and find a nice juicy history book to read that evening after my homework was done. I read a book a day which was uncommon for my classmates, I suppose. Circling back to this trait of curiosity, I had intense curiosity beyond tribalism. I was interested in the larger world, including the woe begotten Confederacy. How did things fall apart? I wanted to know. I had no sense of race consciousness as a student. I had designs on a career in Student Council and my classmates elected me their Homeroom Delegate in sixth grade. I surmise I intrigued Mrs. Hunt with my intensity. Yes, I was a very intense sixth grader. How to Live with Gifted Intensity I vowed to get top grades in my class and remain competitive with my best friend, Terry Nicholson. Race did not matter and was beside the point. My aim in life every day was to think outside the box and apply creative thinking to achievement.

So, you see, I do not recognize stories of schools failing black students. Such mantra would have struck me as illogical and wrong even in the sixth grade. My drive to conquer sixth grade was in my hands. I didn’t have the language for it but I recall a visceral sense of self-direction. The result was a trip one day to the Principal’s office with Mrs. Hunt leading me towards my gifted future.

=========

Where are the High IQ Black People?

This lament is tongue in cheek, so be not dismayed and call the dogma police on me/smile. Michael Bowen is out there. We have a podcast taping this Sunday morning. I have met Professor Wilfred Reilly at a secure undisclosed location in downtown San Diego. I have broken bread with Harvard Professor Roland Fryer. My adult children are High IQ. I have been diminished in the presence of the late Harvard Law School professor Christopher Edley, Jr. I have met Brown University Professor Glenn Loury on a podcast. So, High IQ Black people are out there in the wilderness.

Before I continue, I should revise and chisel down my terms. I use the label “High IQ” as a stand-in for “Gifted.” See the link above. To be smart is not to be gifted. To be gifted is not to be smart. Apparently, there are real biological differences between smartness and giftedness.

If one is smart, one learns and understands well. One can remember a slew of facts. Lineal thinking is the groove in life. What can a smart person really, really do well? One takes what one knows and applies it. Those of the smart tribe amongst us like being taught.

Those considered gifted are different. They are quirky which describes my Twyman uncles and aunts to perfection. May their memory be a blessing. Black old timers in Chesterfield knew of the Twymans. Labels like smart and stubborn and propertied come to mind. These are the scattered recollections from people who knew my uncles and aunts as children. I have written previously about my quirky kinfolks. No need to repeat myself. A Beautiful Mind

We know the gifted by their way of being in the world. The gifted notice more detail than the smart. They process information faster. For example, my Aunt Amy Wilson Twyman skipped three grades and critiqued her math textbooks in grade school. I did not inherit those genes…but my son did. The gifted make new connections between unrelated ideas. They comprehend information in a deeper and more nuanced way without instruction. Emergent Properties of the Human Condition The gifted see multiple meanings and patterns. Intuition is always at the ready. The emphasis is on understanding, analogies, metaphors and creativity.

Scratch a gifted person and what does one find? One finds a soul always questioning. One finds intense curiosity at the center. I like the way the video link at the top of this essay sums up the matter: “A smart person performs at the top of the group. A gifted person performs beyond the group.” — What’s the Difference Between Smart and Gifted? See 8:55 to 9:03.

And it is performance beyond the group that drew me to the keyboard this evening.

Those captured by dogma and slogan words are not gifted, not particularly High IQ in my view. Ibram X. Kendi’s IQ is likely around 100 based on his SAT score. I could be wrong, so let’s bump up my conjecture to 105. Perhaps borderline smart for his racial group but well short of performance beyond the group. High IQ people, gifted people, are less vulnerable to manipulation, dogma and slogan words. Those who perform beyond the group are driven by curiosity, a relentless drive to learn. There is more to life than oppression. There is existence beyond evil racism.

=========

Because I am a curious person, I remembered how color indifferent was my relationship with Mrs. Hunt. I set ambitious goals for myself and viewed my sixth grade teacher as a trusted authority figure. I suspect Mrs. Hunt viewed me as a gifted student who warranted testing, not a smart Black Male student but just a student on the right edge of the bell curve. When Is a Bright Kid Just A Bright Kid?

I wanted to know more about Black people who were High IQ 130 and above, the gifted ones among us. Surely, in this age of diversity, equity and inclusion, there would be abundant and plentiful information on the uncommon ones amongst us. I pulled up Chat GPT-4 and prepared for a river of information about people like me, the gifted ones.

Me: How many Americans are at the IQ level of 130 and above?

Chat GPT-4: The area under the curve for scores above 130 corresponds to about 2.1% of the population.

Me: Of this 2.1%, what percentage are black Americans?

Black Americans are estimated to make up approximately 0.84% of the U.S. population with IQs of 130 or higher, or about 58,874 individuals.

This result took my breath away. Like, 0.84% of the U.S. population clocking in at an IQ level that my Twyman uncles and aunts likely took for granted. I wasn’t sure how to process this information. People always joked that we Twymans were quirky but it could be that we were perceived as quirky because our race and IQ experience did not match up. I am going to quote the acclaimed novelist Pervical Everett at this point as I process the meaning of these numbers:

I had never seen a white man filled with such fear. The remarkable truth, however, was that it was not the pistol, but my language, the fact that I didn’t conform to his expectations, that I could read, that had so disturbed and frightened him.” — James by Percival Everett

What happens when one’s experience of black family so performs beyond the racial group? Does one become invisible to white Americans on questions of race? I still remember the former Federal Reserve official from Austin who was incredulous, disbelieving, that I grew up in a black residential subdivision developed by a black developer. Like my real childhood was incomprehensible to the otherwise intelligent man. Jen picked up on the man’s mental blindness. Or, the interview with a major journalist who wondered if I must be fringe because I had no racial horror stories? Or, the literary agent who declared I was just like her in my experience? Well, I did grow up in a southern suburb, you know. No trauma of note.

Here is the question I am drawn to. If I am living amongst black people in the top 58,874 of black IQ scores, why should anyone listen to my views and opinions on race? Doesn’t my cognitive memory of blackness remove me from the larger racial group experience? And might the same critique be leveled at Michael, Will, Glenn, and Chris? Aren’t my adult children caught in a cognitive bind between a 99% non-black world where people are gifted and the 58,000 black people who inhabit the same gifted terrain?

These are interesting questions. I suspect the High IQ or gifted black people will increasingly choose intellectual affinity over racial solidarity. Increasingly, the 58,000 gifted black Americans will find close friends, dating partners and spouses among the universe of 7 million gifted Americans, regardless of race, as opposed to liming one’s closest friendships and connections to 58,000 people. 7 million versus 58,000 — in which direction lies a richer life?

I was not expecting the black percentage of High IQ Americans to be so low. The 0.84% percentage took me by surprise. It behooves the gifted and High IQ black American to be open-minded when it comes to friendships and marriages. Just my opinion.

=========

We need more High IQ and gifted Americans who are black for several reasons.

Smart people at the top of the group live unexamined lives in my experience. They are vulnerable to manipulative dogma and slogan words. The gifted person, however, performs beyond the group, beyond dogma and slogan words. We need more gifted persons of all races when it comes to race. We are all becoming bored with race because smart parroting of dogma and slogan words is…well…boring.

Imagine a new generation of gifted Black Americans, millions of people in the next generation or two, who are wise to the ways of manipulation. These children and grandchildren will grow up curious like I did. They will read what they want to read, not what they are fed. They will be intense about life. One only lives once. And they will discover incredible lives of resilience in our American past. They will grow angry about the manipulations of their smart parents and grandparents.

It will take a generation of gifted Black American children, like I was, to usher in a Golden Age in Black Culture and Consciousness.

Where are the high IQ black people today? For my money, they are Igbo immigrants in medical school at Yale. They are Jamaican immigrants at Harvard Law School. They are boarding school graduates from Sierra Leone dreaming of mergers and acquisitions at the Stanford Business School. They are naturalized U.S. citizens on our law school faculties. They teach mathematics at elite colleges and universities.

We do not celebrate High IQ black people. Air time is given to the bombastic and mediocre. I see these things. The Honor of Claudine Gay Please Resign Harvard University President Claudine Gay Holiday Greetings

Conclusion:

As for answers? Well, the answer is not to flood commercials and advertisements with black people. To Be Affirmed At J.C. Penny The Examined Life How many grade school students have been made gifted by watching black people in commercials? Being gifted is innate. One can spot a gifted kid as young as two or three. Bright Child v. Gifted Intelligence I loved to dream about the meaning of life when I was five, six and seven. I didn’t gain that curiosity about deep questions of existence from television commercials. That curiosity was just…there to the consternation, and joy, of my Mom.

What constructive purpose is served when a 33% to 50% black world is presented to American audiences night after night on television commercials and in You Tube advertisements? Blacks are only 13% of the national population, so why distort American reality? I don’t have an answer. I know this — our country would benefit from more gifted Black Americans who can see beyond dogma and slogan words.

The Genius Dr. Richard Daystrom