For the record, I do not feel the need to state my position on Dr. Watson's comments that are the subject of this thread as Rowan and others here have stated my position so well.

**

Mrrzy,

I stand by what I said to you in my previous posts on this thread that "The last part of your 23 Oct 07 -10:04 PM post appears to me to have a built in implication that the only place where Black people can show our intelligence is in the bush..."

However, given the international nature of this discussion forum, I concede that it is possible that non-UnitedStaters may not as readily or may not at all associate the statement "surviving in the bush" with stereotypical images and negative opinions of Africans to the same degree that {I believe} many UnitedStaters have and still do. A variant form of that statement "Go back to the bush" {meaning "Go back to Africa"} has often been directed to Black people {African Americans}. That statement is very stereotypical of African nations and is very offensive. However, Mrrzy, I accept that you didn't mean your statement to be either stereotypical or offensive. That said, since the topic of this thread is Dr. Watson's comments about Africans, it seems to me that it was not {is not} unreasonable to for me {and perhaps for others} to believe that your statement about surviving in the bush referred to Black people.

I agree with what I believe is your and dianavan's {and some other posters on this thread's} core point that most-if not all-IQ tests are culturally biased.

I recall the 1970s Chitlin test. You wrote that "it was an "IQ" test that only poor inner-city folk could do well on, as it assumed their background knowledge rather than your standard educated rich person's". I would like to make a friendly revision of your statement. The Chitlin test assumed knowlege of Black street culture of that decade and also some general knowledge of African American history & culture {such as the names of singers like Bo Diddley} up to that decade. Black people and non-Black people of all economic categories could score well on that test if they were knowledgeable about Black slang of that decade, and familiar with other indices of Black culture.

Imo, a bad {meaning "not good"} example of the Chitlin test is found at https://www.unb.ca/sweb/psychology/fields/psyc1024/module09/write/essay/chitlingfs.html .

In that version of the Chitlin test, when you select an answer, the statement that lets you know that your selection is correct includes the sentence "you be eggheadish man". And if you choose incorrectly, the statement appears that "you dude not be eggheadish!"

What??!! "Dude??" "Eggheadish???". I consider these to be extremely inauthentic examples of Black vernacular then and now. In my not at all humble opinion, the developer of that version of the Chitlin test needs to enroll in Harlem 101.

**

With regard to the word "Black", my apologies for the confusion that may occur in my usage of this referent on this and on other Mudcat threads. Sometimes when I use "Black" I mean "African American". My statement about the Chitlin test is an example of that usage. But sometimes when I use the referent "Black" I mean the more inclusive referent for "a non-White person and/or non-White persons of African descent". When I used "Black" in my first post to Mrrzy on this thread, that is the usage that I meant.