Intelligence Study Links Low I.Q. To Prejudice, Racism, Conservatism — Are racists dumb? Do conservatives tend to be less intelligent than liberals? A provocative new study from Brock University in Ontario suggests the answer to both questions may be a qualified yes.

By: Rebecca Searles –For The Huffington Post

The study, published in Psychological Science, showed that people who score low on I.Q. tests in childhood are more likely to develop prejudiced beliefs and socially conservative politics in adulthood.

I.Q., or intelligence quotient, is a score determined by standardized tests, but whether the tests truly reveal intelligence remains a topic of hot debate among psychologists.

Dr. Gordon Hodson, a professor of psychology at the university and the study’s lead author, said the finding represented evidence of a vicious cycle: People of low intelligence gravitate toward socially conservative ideologies, which stress resistance to change and, in turn, prejudice, he told LiveScience.

   The Ku Klux Klan Terrorists

   A “Tea-Bagger” With Low I.Q. at a Tea Party/Republican Rally

   [ MORE PICTURES OF RACISTS ] [ VIDEOS OF RACISTS ]

Why might less intelligent people be drawn to conservative ideologies? Because such ideologies feature “structure and order” that make it easier to comprehend a complicated world, Dodson said. “Unfortunately, many of these features can also contribute to prejudice,” he added.

Dr. Brian Nosek, a University of Virginia psychologist, echoed those sentiments.

“Reality is complicated and messy,” he told The Huffington Post in an email. “Ideologies get rid of the messiness and impose a simpler solution. So, it may not be surprising that people with less cognitive capacity will be attracted to simplifying ideologies.”

But Nosek said less intelligent types might be attracted to liberal “simplifying ideologies” as well as conservative ones.

In any case, the study has taken the Internet by storm, with some outspoken liberals saying that it validates their suspicions about conservatives and conservatives arguing that the research has been misinterpreted.

PLAYLIST: Republican/Tea-Party Racism

PLAYLIST: Christian Bigotry & Racism

PLAYLIST: Right-Wing Terrorism in America

HuffingtonPost: AUSTIN, Texas — The Texas State Board of Education adopted a social studies and history curriculum Friday that amends or waters down the teaching of religious freedoms, America’s relationship with the U.N. and hundreds of other items. The ideological debate over the guidelines, which drew intense scrutiny beyond Texas, will be used to determine what important political events and figures some 4.8 million students will learn about for the next decade. [ READ MORE ]

Textbook changes to school curriculum will follow, and since Texas is the largest purchaser of school books in the country, the state therefore has financial clout in the publishing business — and is set to influence the rest of the country — in propagating right-wing racism and mis-information.

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Highlights of the prejudiced and racist right-wing changes are:
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1.   Public students in Texas will now be required to “evaluate” efforts by global organizations such as the United Nations to “undermine U.S. sovereignty.” The UN’s funding for international humanitarian relief and environmental initiatives will now be portrayed as threats to individual freedom and U.S. sovereignty.

2.   The board will require students to explain the roles of “Phyllis Schlafly, the Contract With America, the Heritage Foundation, the Moral Majority, and the National Rifle Association.” — Phyllis McAlpin Stewart Schlafly is racist conservative political activist and constitutional attorney known for her opposition to feminism and the Equal Rights Amendment. The Heritage Foundation is racist right-wing “think-tank,” established by Joseph Coors in 1974. Heritage is infested with anti-semite, pro-nazi, Aryan supremacists who seek to abolish civil rights laws, minimum wage laws, affirmative action, rights for the handicapped, arms control — and to deport every single non-white immigrant from the United States!. Joseph Coors was the grandson of Adolph Coors and president of Coors Brewing Company. I have always had serious misgivings about skunky “coors light” beer, never tasted it before — now I know why!

The Moral Majority — The Moral Majority was a political organization which had an agenda of evangelical Christian-oriented political lobbying. It was founded in 1979 and dissolved in the late 1980s. It’s origins can be traced to 1976 when Jerry Falwell embarked on a series of “I Love America” rallies across the country to raise awareness of social issues important to Falwell. These rallies were an extension of Falwell’s decision to go against the traditional Baptist principle of separating religion and politics, a change of heart Falwell says he had when he perceived the decay of the nation’s morality. Through hosting these rallies, Falwell was able to gauge national support for a formal organization and also raise his profile as a leader. Having already been a part of a well-established network of ministers and ministries, within a few years Falwell was favorably positioned to launch the Moral Majority. [ READ MORE ]

The now dead Falwell, was one of the biggest religious bigots while alive. His followers are the evangelical Republicans behind “Kill The Gays” law in Uganda, East Africa. Their racist-bigot empire was and is still vast.

The Contract with America was a document released by the United States Republican Party during the 1994 Congressional election campaign. Written by Larry Hunter, who was aided by Newt Gingrich, Robert Walker, Richard Armey, Bill Paxon, Tom DeLay, John Boehner and Jim Nussle, and in part using text from former President Ronald Reagan’s 1985 State of the Union Address, the Contract detailed the actions the Republicans promised to take if they became the majority party in the United States House of Representatives for the first time in 40 years. Many of the Contract’s policy ideas originated at The Heritage Foundation — the conservative think tank.

Republicans were elected to a majority of both houses of Congress for the first time since 1953, and several parts of the Contract were enacted. Some elements did not pass in Congress, while others were vetoed by, or substantially altered in negotiations with President Bill Clinton, who would later sarcastically refer to it as the “Contract on America.”

The leader of the group, Newt Gingrich — ended up being kicked out of the speaker’s chair, and has never held any elective office since, but has maintained a high profile — lying frequently while applauding the current political stunts that House Republicans have been engaging in.

Gingrich is a serial-womanizer, a hardcore racist and shameless liar — as documented variously on this blog. The bum has a split personality — part racist bomb thrower, part statesman, and part tea-bagger.

The National Rifle Association is the custodian of “gun-sucking” bigot America, who hysterically oppose controls that are indistinguishable from those they readily accept as applied to automobiles. Lunatics who anticipate a “future” race war — with blacks and browns, I suppose. Don B. Kates, Jr. demolishes their bigoted rationale in his article: Bigotry, Symbolism and Ideology in the Battle over Gun Control.

3.   The whitewashing of slavery in textbooks: The board renamed “Slavery” — “Atlantic Triangular Trade,” Whitewashing the genocidal, disgusting and perverted practice and leveling the trade of people to rum and sugar, says the DC Skeptics blog.

4.   Ronald Reagan, the greatest PR swindle in the history of mankind, has been added to a list of “great Americans,” while country music, but not hip hop, can be described as an important cultural movement. The board’s five Democrats objected to the Republican call to include President Barack Obama’s second name of Hussein — obviously a stealth attempt to de-legitimize him as an un-American Muslim!

5.   Note: Last year, conservatives on the board changed the science curriculum to downplay the teaching of evolution and the Big Bang theory.

Two Right-Wing Idiots (Kirk Cameron & Ray Comfort) Try To Convince You That God Created a Banana! LOL!

…And Here The Two Thieves “Debunk” Darwin’s Theory of Evolution For The Benefit of Their Pockets

Deluded Morons, drunk with “Jesus” — Help This sickness Mr Dawkins! LOL!

…or even better — exorcise them brother …afriqueonline!

6.   Senator Joe McCarthy’s anti-communist witch hunt in the 1950s, will be watered down. Joe McCarthy was a scumbag for the ages. Much like “Tea-Partyism,” McCarthyism was the political action of making accusations of disloyalty, subversion, or treason without proper regard for evidence; Reckless, unsubstantiated accusations, as well as demagogic attacks on the character or patriotism of political adversaries — exactly what the current tea-baggers are doing to the Obama administration.

Essentially, young American students will learn more about the virtues of free enterprise, Biblical values and the Confederacy’s RACIST cause, and less about slavery and civil rights. They will learn less about how brutal, barbaric criminal Anglos nearly wiped out indigenous Indians, stole half of Mexico and viciously used free African labor to sustain a plantation economy in the south.

They want the Saturday market-place lynchings of Africans be erased off the history books. These racist Republican goons are determined to deny future generations of young Americans the knowledge of America’s bloody and sordid past — hence mold them into mindless Republican sheep and racist goon-bags, like Sarah Palin and Rand Paul — hungry and ready to lynch again without the “heavy burden” of their forefather’s despicable deeds!

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Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

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   [ By: Melissa Harris-Lacewell ]
Joe Biden once remarked that Barack Obama was “clean” and “articulate.” He is now Vice President. During the Democratic primaries Hillary Clinton invoked Robert Kennedy in a way that implied Barack Obama’s assassination was imminent. She is now the Secretary of State. It is foolish to suggest Senator Harry Reid should step down as Senate majority leader because of his 2008 assessment that Barack Obama’s election was more likely because he is “light-skinned” and free from “Negro dialect.”

If President Obama has demonstrated anything at all, it is that he unperturbed by the racially awkward outbursts of his fellow Democrats.

Republicans hope that reports of Reid’s old gaffe might derail his leadership of the health care reform package. But watching Michael Steele go after Reid is more bizarre than convincing. Steele seems to pride himself on the liberal use of black discursive patterns. It’s hard to take seriously the moral outrage of a self-professed “hip-hop Republican” who explains his tenure as GOP chairman saying “brother still here.”

President Obama may be unconcerned and the GOP may be transparently race baiting, but Reid’s comments did create a legitimate queasiness among many Americans that is worth exploring.

President Obama is a forgiving, beer summit kind of leader, but I am less likely to give Democrats a free pass on issues of racial bias. As I wrote a few months ago here on The Notion, any implication that racism is the sole purview of the Right obscures the continuing and troubling realities of racism within the Democratic Party and progressive political movements.

Still, I remain entirely uninterested in a racial McCarthyism that plays “gotcha politics” with elected officials public utterances. Yes, public officials should be particularly careful when talking about race to media (on or off the record). The opportunities for misunderstanding, divisiveness and assumption of ill intent are heightened in this area of political discussion.

But let’s be honest, if we weeded out every public official guilty of racial insensitivity, the halls of Congress would echo with utter emptiness. The point is not so much public gaffes as it is the creation, support, and maintenance of systemic and structural inequalities. This is why Trent Lott’s wistfulness about a Strom Thurmond presidency is in a different class than Reid’s comments. Lott was longing for a bygone era when structural barriers and entrenched inequality were the norm. Reid was enthusiastic that the same barriers were lessening and that America was ready, albeit with caveats, for a new racial reality.

Rather than being worked up about Reid’s awkward assessment of these barriers, we should be asking whether these structural biases actually make academic and political accomplishments easier for light-skinned African Americans. NC State University historian Blair LM Kelley makes this argument in her piece on Salon.com. She points out skin color bias in the 21st century should alarm us. It shouldn’t be a matter of breezy acceptance, as many Sunday morning pundits seemed to suggest. “Accepting this as a matter of course degrades the quality of our democracy.”

Reid’s assertions about “Negro dialect” also should raise structural justice questions far more important than his offensive use of an antiquated term for black Americans. Because of generations of lower class status and legal barriers to quality education, black children are far more likely than their white counterparts to be raised by parents with inadequate literacy skills. But rather than acting as a leveling ground, many public schools only reinforce these disadvantages. These are the same children relegated to schools with fewer expert teachers, larger classroom sizes, fewer educational resources, and fewer literacy support tools.

This is the racism that should worry us: millions of black American children attend and graduate from public schools that leave them utterly unqualified for public office for their entire lives. As adults these children will always be second-class citizens, unable to participate as rule makers rather than simply rule followers in their own country. Not only does this deprive whole group from full participation in government, it also deprives our country of the skills, talents, and ideas that these citizens might have offered, had we not initially deprived them of the capacity to communicate their ideas effectively in the public realm.

Political theorist Nancy Fraser’s describes imagines justice as “a difference-friendly world, where assimilation to majority or dominant cultural norms is no longer the price for equal respect.” Creating that world is an important task for combating racism.

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MediaMatters: Of course it wasn’t liberals or Democrats or preachers who derailed Limbaugh. It was Limbaugh himself, and his well-documented history of divisive, hateful, and often race-baiting commentary. (e.g. “[I]n Obama’s America, the white kids now get beat up with the black kids cheering.”)

Limbaugh last week learned the overdue lesson that there are real-world consequences for trafficking in hate speech. That there are free-market penalties, including the fact that the NFL decided for itself that it can’t, and won’t, be connected with Limbaugh.

It’s the same lesson Glenn Beck learned this year when he discovered that his niche, on-air rants (Obama is a communist-racist-fascist-Nazi) don’t speak to the masses. Instead, they freaked out nearly 100 former Glenn Beck advertisers who have gone on record as refusing to be associated with his show. These are blue-chip, small-”c” conservative advertisers who’ve dropped Beck quicker than a wobbly JaMarcus Russell pass. [ READ MORE ]

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| Beck’s stated goal: Get administration officials fired, “take down this administration“ | The Glenn Beck chart — Media Matters for America has explored Beck’s links to the extremist, unhinged, and sometimes paranoid people and groups that inhabit the world of right-wing political activism and laid them out in a Beck-style chart, but with two key differences: these connections actually exist, and they were spell-checked. |
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Notes on Mccarthyism: McCarthyism is the politically motivated practice of making accusations of disloyalty, subversion, or treason without proper regard for evidence. The term specifically describes activities associated with the period in the United States known as the Second Red Scare, lasting roughly from the late 1940s to the late 1950s and characterized by heightened fears of communist influence on American institutions and espionage by Soviet agents. Originally coined to criticize the anti-communist pursuits of U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy, “McCarthyism” soon took on a broader meaning, describing the excesses of similar efforts. The term is also now used more generally to describe reckless, unsubstantiated accusations, as well as demagogic attacks on the character or patriotism of political adversaries. [ READ MORE ] [ ABOUT JOSEPH MCCARTHY ]

Communist Paranoia: Beck airs anonymous “concerned parent” with distorted face, image to attack Dunn’s reference to Mao

Beck Slams President Obama For Encouraging Volunteerism: “Almost Like We’re Living In Mao’s China“

In an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, Rush Limbaugh said that the left-wing conspiracy came between him and the Saint Louis Rams. Rev. Al Sharpton, who was named in the column, joins the Ed Show to talk about the defamation lawsuit he is considering.

Sharpton Threatens Defamation

References:

1. In the Case of Rush Limbaugh, Activism Once Again Prevails.
2.

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MediaMatters: Since Barack Obama’s inauguration, Fox News has frequently engaged in political advocacy against the Democratic Congress and White House. Specifically, Fox News personalities have promoted and encouraged viewers to “join” tea party protests, Glenn Beck’s organization The 9-12 Project and its September 12 “March on Washington,” and town hall meetings; engaged in a witch hunt seeking to “get rid of” Obama administration officials and nominees; implored viewers to call Congress and the White House to protest Democratic policies; and celebrated “victor[ies]” when Democratic legislation has been stalled. [ READ MORE ]

GOP — A Cranky Party

Beck’s Witch Hunt: The New McCarthyism

Irrefutable Proof That Sean Hannity is An Unconscious Syphilitic LIAR!: Sean Hannity’s has such “deep-seated hatred” of Obama that he will conjure the most blatant of lies — even when it is so obvious that it will be caught — as in the case below.

Death Panel: Pawlenty Lying

Pawlenty’s Constitutional Ignorance

New Low For Congressional Republicans

Race and The Obama Presidency

Joe Wilson Becomes A National Joke

The Republican’s Small Angry Tent

Joe Wilson – Habitual BLURTER

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