BLACK INTELLIGENCE: THE MOST CLOSELY GUARDED SECRET IN AMERICA (Reprise)

Beneath the Spin * Eric L. Wattree

BLACK INTELLIGENCE: THE MOST CLOSELY GUARDED SECRET IN AMERICA 

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KAI AND ERIC, JR.

Most Black people have well above average intelligence. We have to just to survive in America. Every day, from the time we get up, until the time we go to bed we have to navigate our way through all manner of bigotry, both overt and covert. Racism is so pervasive in the lives of Black people that many of us don't even have to think about the intellectual strategies necessary to outwit most bigots - we do it on autopilot. As a result, we've developed an intellectual muscularity that we don't even have to think about. 
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As Naturalist Charles Darwin pointed out in his book, On the Origin of Species, all species of organisms arise and develop through the natural selection of small, inherited variations that increase the individual's ability to compete, survive, and reproduce.  In other words, the adversity that Black people have been forced to endure over the centuries has caused nature to step in to enhance our innate intellectual abilities in order to help us to survive in a hostile environment. So the adversity that we’ve endured over the centuries is serving to make Black people MORE rather than less. It is causing us to evolve as we speak, but it's up to Black people themselves to recognize, develop, and utilize that potential.
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A HOME IN THE BLACK MIDDLE-CLASS

SUBBURB OF BALDWIN HILLS, CA.

President Barack Obama, and the Imafidon family at the bottom of this article, are graphic examples of the fact that the evolutionary process mentioned above may already be revealing itself. As the son of an African immigrant, in ONE generation Barack Obama rose to become one of this nation's greatest presidents, and he possessed the intellectual muscularity to handle the entire Republican establishment like they were a group of irate children.  He also saved the world from a second Great Depression, and if it weren't for the Republican Party's eight-year tantrum of ignorant, racist, and childish obstructionism, America would undoubtedly be experiencing the greatest era in its history at this very moment. And then there's the Imafidons, a Nigerian family, acknowledged as THE most brilliant FAMILY in the United Kingdom.
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Those facts are significant when it comes to defining what Black people represent. But facts such as these tend to be ignored, or played down in a bigot drenched America, because they don't conform to America's preferred view of reality. America prefers to define Black people based upon the images of the most dysfunctional among us. But I intend to explode that myth, not only for the average uninformed White person, but for the many Black people who've been brainwashed by the mass media into embracing their tainted view of reality. If we portrayed White people in the same way that Black people are being portrayed, all White people would be seen as hillbillies.
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As I've mentioned in a previous article, racists tend to be the mediocrity of White society, so they try to use the fact that they were born White to define themselves and to compensate for their lack of personal value. Their entire sense of self-esteem is based more upon group association than individual value and accomplishment, and their entire claim to personal significance is, "Well, at least I'm better than them."  Well, here are the facts:
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In the Live Science Article, Low IQ And Conservative Beliefs Linked to Prejudice, it states unequivocally that "There's no gentle way to put it: People who give in to racism and prejudice may simply be dumb, according to a new study that is bound to stir public controversy." That's what drives radical conservatives so crazy about President Obama - he's walking, breathing, evidence that they cannot claim superiority by virtue of the color T-shirt they were born in, and that simple fact alone is causing them to suffer a severe attack of cognitive dissonance before the eyes of the entire world. That's also why they were so determined not to allow President Obama to be as successful as he could have been, even if it meant  destroying the country.
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But Obama's not the only chink in their armor. These people feel such a desperate need to be superior that they’ll go to any length to try to substantiate that claim, even if they have to corrupt both logic and reality to make it conform to their point of view. For example, how can they claim to be superior to Black people while at the same time claim that America is such a devoutly Christian Nation? If Jesus Christ had been born in the desert with blond hair and blue eyes they wouldn’t have had to crucify him - he would have died of Sunburn. Jesus Christ was a man of color. So how can you claim to be superior to a man that you also claim to worship? One would think that a “superior race” would have recognized the flaw in that logic.
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So now this entire nation, including the future of our children, is being threatened by the desperate attempt of a handful of insecure bigots to maintain their delusion of superiority, and as far as they’re concerned, if the country has to be sacrificed for that cause, so be it.  That's what makes it so important for Black people to begin to develope the innate intelligence that we've been both hiding, and/or, holding a cultural antagonism toward.
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What do I mean by a cultural antagonism toward intelligence?
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The root of the problem that we’ve traditionally had in the Black community among the more dysfunctional among us is not a lack of intelligence but our attitude toward knowledge. As a direct result of our history of slavery, we’ve developed a sort of hostility toward both knowledge, Black people who embrace it, and/or tend to display an exceptional level of intelligence. We tend to equate the pursuit of knowledge with selling out. We also tend to see the active pursuit of knowledge as part of the White man’s domain, so we look upon Black people who have a love of knowledge with disdain, because we see them as "trying to be White."
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KRIS KROSS WEARING THEIR

PANTS BACKWARDS

The reason for that is simple. During slavery the only Black people we knew who spoke anything close to "proper English" were the "house niggas," and many house slaves had a tendency to look down their noses at slaves who worked in the field. As a result of that experience, many Blacks have an hostility toward "proper talkin'" Black people that persist to this day. So many highly intelligent Black people will often try to hide their intelligence, because, ironically, over the years we’ve developed an attitude where many feel that we have a moral obligation to remain ignorant in order to prove that we take pride in being Black.  Think about that. Isn't it ironic that many of us embrace ignorance as a sign of Black pride? That's why we can hear many educated young Black people going around saying things like, "What it is?", "What it be like?", and other obvious assaults on the English language. They know it's improper English, but they see it as giving credibility to their pride in being Black.  Some young people would put their shoes on backwards if they could just to show how unlike White people they are, and one hip hop group, Kris Kross, actually did wear their pants backwards.
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That attitude among some Blacks was one of the weapons that was used against President Obama by many envious Black intellectuals. They tried to use his "all-American" conventionality against him. They attempted to convince the Black community of the following:
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"I’m cool - see my long, wooly Afro, how cool I act, and how I can quote Lil’ Wayne when I’m on television? I’m one of y’all. I just have enough intelligence to speak the White man’s language, so I’m keeping an eye on him for the people. But that Obama, he’s not like us. He don’t have no Afro, he don’t never quote Lil Wayne, and he’s obviously much too intelligent to be trusted as a genuine Black man. He thinks like the White man."
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So even as Black "intellectuals," many send the message to Black youth that intelligence is the White man's domain, and that being Black and intelligent are incompatible - and ironically, many Black people have become more wedded to that attitude than White people. The message isn't overt, because we claim to be seekers of knowledge, but it can be clearly seen in our daily interactions with one another.
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An example of that is reflected in a joke that I wrote for a comedienne by the name of Frances Nealy.  I spoke of a new kid in school who continued to enthusiastically raise his hand to answer all of the teacher's questions.  Finally a kid in the back of the class said, "Who IS this dude!!!?  He must think he White or somethin'!" What made that a joke was it put it's finger on the underlying attitude of many Black people pointed out above.

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Here's another  example of that attitude at work posted on YouTube:
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"THE BLACK BOULE-NEGROS THAT HELP SELL YOU OUT "

WHAT DID THESE PEOPLE DO TO DESERVE BEING CALLED SELL-OUTS?
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JIM CROW
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Another reason that Black people have a tradition of hiding their intelligence is through necessity. During the Jim Crow era many White folks saw a smart Black man as an "uppity nigga," and it could get him lynched, because a smart Black man was a challenge to what bigots wanted to believe - that they were superior. Again, that's why they hate Barack Obama - and I've been surprised to see how deep seated that attitude is today, even among many White people who claim to be liberals. I've noticed over the internet that many White people believe that a Black person should defer to them in a debate, even if they're proven to be dead wrong. A Black person can say the very same thing to them as another White person, but they'll view the Black person as being arrogant - "How dare this spook try to make me look like an idiot!!!?" (Well, because you are).               
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When my mother was in nursing school my grandparents virtually raised me - we were connected at the hip. and my mother was more like an older sister that they allowed to play house with me from time to time. But every year my grandparents would go back to Louisiana to visit for a week, and every year they had to keep their pending trip a secret, because the moment I found out about it, it was absolutely ON until the car turned the corner headed for the airport.  I wanted to go with them, but my grandfather wouldn't let me.
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I could get them to cave-in on most things, but on this, my grandfather stood absolutely firm.  He said, "Eric, I wouldn't take you no farther South than San Diego, because you talk too much, and you could get us killed.You've got to learn to listen to what's on everybody else's mind, and never let anyone know what's on yours, because if you tell the another man everything that's on your mind, he'll then know everything you know, plus what he already knew, and that'll make him smarter than you. So that's why you have to stay home - because we can't afford to let those White folks down South know more about us, than we know about them." That was the thinking of many Jim Crow era Black people, and they also knew something that's true even today -  one of the fastest ways in the world to lose a job in America is to let your boss know that you're smarter than he is. So for all of those reasons, Black people have developed a tradition of hiding their intellect.
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But at this point in our history it's time for Black people to come out of the closet and change that strategy, and for the very same reason - survival.  We're living in a different world today, a world where we can't survive without using all of the intellect and knowledge at our disposal.  So we've got to prepare our children to survive in a world of science, technology, and political manipulation.  We can no longer simply demonstrate and shake our fists at the establishment and expect results. All the establishment is going to do is wait a couple of weeks until we cool off, and then it'll be business as usual. We see that strategy currently being played out against the Black Lives Matter movement at this very moment.
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So our children have got to be taught that we can't out-scream the establishment, because they control the media; and we can't out-fight them, because they control the military; thus, the only option left is to out-think them.  We've got to prepare ourselves to assume positions of power and authority, and we've got to learn, as a culture, not to be self-serving, and to recognize the advantages of sticking together in order to jerk the chains of political power most effectively.  In short, we've got to start relying on our intellect, and we have plenty of it to draw upon.
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TAYLOR WATTREE-JACKSON

THE BILL CLINTON AWARD FOR SCHOLARSHIP
OUTSTANDING STUDENT OF THE YEAR 
KIWANIS CLUB OF RIALTO 

So our children already have the intellectual potential to meet the challenges of the modern world and more, but it's up to the parents to convince them of that fact, and to impart the importance of doing so.  We've got to teach them that life isn't about just sitting back and being cute, or cool anymore, so they can no longer afford to just sit around, party, and get high like many of us did in the past, because the election of Donald Trump sends a very clear and emphatic message - it's crisis time.  So we've got to stop letting our young people be programed regarding who they are by the corporate media, because as long as Black people are better known for dancin' and saggin' than we are thinking, we'll always be under the White man's thumb. That isn't to say we should ban our kids from consuming pop culture, but we should discuss these issues with them, and point out how they're being manipulated.
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These are horrible times for this country, but they present a prime opportunity for the Black community to level the playing field . While the establishment is pulling every lever at its disposal to dumb the rest of America down, Black people have the opportunity to pull every lever at our disposal in pursuit of knowledge and leveraging our innate intellectual competence.  So it's all about thinking, instead of just shaking our fists.
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For that reason, every time our children did anything exceptional, my late wife and I made a big deal of it - like when my daughter, Kai, taught me how to factor when she was in the 6th grade, while university professors couldn't do it. We made a big deal out of that - in fact, it was a big deal, because I was struggling with

TAYLOR WATTREE-JACKSON

PRE-MED

JACKSON STATE UNIVERSITY

that class.
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For some reason my math professor just couldn’t get the concept of factoring across to me, but Kai did it in about 10 minutes by simply drawing a little tree and then hanging numbers on its branches. We praised her to high Heaven. That rewarded her for thinking, instead of just being able to dance. We also had this little game where you had to insert various geometric-shaped blocks into the proper slots before it popped up. Kai and Eric could do it with time to spare, but I never did master that game. They loved it, and it gave them confidence in their abilities, because it clearly demonstrated to them that they were better at some things than their parents were, and that's a big deal to children.  So we always went out of our way to let them know that they weren't average, because “average is the best of the worst, and the worst of the best,” and they were better than that. We also always treated them like peers rather than children, and while always respectful, they acted that way.
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Today Kai is a Human Resources Specialist for her college alma mater and President of the California School Employee’s Association, And Eric is a Special Agent for the United States Department of Justice.  Here’s what the Air Force had to say about him:
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23 April 2002

MEMORANDUM FOR OFFICER TRAINING SCHOOL SELECTION COMMITTEE
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FROM: 92 SFS/SFO
2 E. ARNOLD STREET
FAIRCHILD AFB, WA 99011

SUBJECT: Recommendation for Staff Sergeant Eric L. Wattree

ERIC WATTREE, JR.

1. I wholeheartedly concur with Staff Sergeant Wattree’s request to attend Officer Training School. He represents the enlisted ranks with the highest standard and will bring that dedication and professionalism to the officer corps.

2. Eric continues to lead a stellar military career; his enlisted performance reports speak for themselves. His leadership and experience, especially in contingency environments, remains a vital asset to our unit and wing. As one of my primary Phoenix Raven team leaders, he’s propelled to the forefront of all major deployments throughout the world. He’s repeatedly secured aircraft and crews, supporting a wide variety of missions, in the most austere and terrorist-ridden environments where security is severely inadequate. The diversity of these missions never limited SSgt Wattree’s capacity to adapt to each situation. For this reason, Eric was selected as our 2000 Outstanding Phoenix Raven Member of the Year and the 2001 Air Force Reserve Component Airman of the Year for the 92d Security Forces Squadron.

3. Whether operating under peacetime or contingency operations, Eric easily assumes control and tackles every situation with meticulous tenacity, a quality highly desired in our Air Force officers. Requested by name, Sergeant Wattree, provided security for presidential Banner missions throughout Greece, Peru and Viet Nam. While deployed to Afghanistan, he flew numerous combat missions in our nation’s pursuit to eradicate terrorism through Operation ENDURING FREEDOM. Additionally, he provided round-the-clock force protection for aircraft in other high-threat environments including Uzbekistan, Pakistan and Oman.

4. Sergeant Wattree motivated his personnel during the worst conditions and raised the level of esprit de corps to integrate personnel from other Air Force specialties into a cohesive team. His leadership, integrity and devotion to our Air Force play an integral part in our future leadership. Eric has what it takes to become a commissioned officer and earns my full support to attend Officer Training School.

FRANK HELLSTERN, JR., Captain, USAF
Operations Officer
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Phoneix Ravens
This Elite Force Protects Vulnerable Air Force Aircraft

In The Most Dangerous Places On Earth

When Eric was discharged after his four-year tour, he was contacted by the Air Force and asked to return by “Special Request.”  But that didn’t last long, because as an Air Force Raven (Special Forces) he worked in concert with the Secret Service, FBI, CIA, and various other security agencies, so the federal government snatched him up. The agent who did his security clearance came to my home and told me, “Your son could get any security job in the federal government - I’m just glad he doesn’t want mine.”
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I couldn't help but get a little choked up when he told me that, because all I could think of was that timid little boy who used to peek out at the world from behind his older sister, and get into bed with me and Val at night because he was afraid of the dark. And on 4th of July he would get in the car and roll up the windows because he was afraid of the fireworks.  He was, literally, the family's pudgy-jawed little baby boy, and frankly, I was concerned about what was going to become of him when his sister grew up and moved on with her life.
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ME AND MY BABY BOY - BEFORE HE EVOLVED 

But in high school he sprung up in just one year, and in college he continued to morph, and now the government was here telling me that he's this 6'6", 250 lb. American hero. "Wait a minute! Are you trying to tell me that my timid baby boy is Buck Rogers!!!? Where did that come from?"  I couldn't believe it, and neither could my wife. When they arranged for Val and I to be brought out to attend his credentials ceremony at Quantico, they had a congressman there, but they stopped the ceremony just long enough to talk about who Eric was, and his exploits even in training, and my wife asked me, "Are they talking about OUR Eric?"  And I said, Yes they are, baby. But I don't think she ever did reconcile the difference between her little boy and the man that he later became. Actually, even after all this time, neither have I. Is this evolution at work?  I can't say with any degree of certainty, but what I can say is, it's been a chilling and fascinating thing to watch. Today, when I look into his eyes, there's absolutely nothing left of that timid little boy that I once knew. All I see is a dead serious, no-nonsense manhood, and without a bit of posturing, pretentiousness, or macho swagger. What I now see, is what manhood is suppose to look like.
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BARACK - BEFORE HE EVOLVED

So we don't know what potential lies dormant within our children. Thus, we must begin to instill the pursuit of excellence and the power of knowledge in them at birth, and never let up. We must also become their number one “road dawg,” and not just sit back and expect them to be educated by others, because we ARE what we think. The very purpose of Jim Crow was to keep us from knowing that.  So think big, and teach your children to do likewise. Let us make the pursuit of knowledge and intellect the new "soul" within the Black community. We must set a goal where when the world thinks of Black people, they think of brilliance, competence, and accomplishment, not just "soul."

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POPPI'S DREAM

Well, Taylor,

Well, Trey,

You’re on your way,

To add to the Wattree Clan;

It’s my conviction, not hope, you will surely both,

Add a page to the sojourn of man.

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You’ll be loved and nurtured to take your place,

In this world that you now belong;

And when we’re through, we trust both of you,

Will help make our people be strong.

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You’ll be taught that knowledge is the key to life,

And to harvest its essence you’ll strive;

Then combine that knowledge with the wisdom of Solomon,

To help see our people survive.

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Think not of what is politically correct,

Seek to be independent of thought;

For group-think, indeed, is not thought at all,

But that of which fools are wrought.

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Embrace truth over all as your clarion call,

Make integrity your moral code;

And when life’s so tough you think it’s too much,

Allow God to relieve your load.

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Make the God you trust the God of your heart,

And not the God of man;

For the God of man is man himself,

And only just when it suits his plan.

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And look to the note that your poppi once wrote,

A withered vine ignored as benign;

Make my words come true, what I said of you,

And make my legacy whisper through time:

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“Neither scholar nor the head of state,

The most common of men seems to be my fate;

A life blistered with struggle and constant need,

As my legacy to man I present my seed.

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More fertile, more sturdy, they both than I,

This withered old vine left fallow and dry;

The nectar of their roots lie dormant still,

But through their fruit I’ll be revealed.”

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Love,

Poppi

ERIC WATTREE III
INVESTMENT/FINANCE

UNIVERSITY OF HAWAII

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The Imafidons, a Nigerian family, is the smartest family in Britain

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EVOLUTION IN PROGRESS

Eric L. Wattree
Http://wattree.blogspot.com
Ewattree@Gmail.com
Citizens Against Reckless Middle-Class Abuse (CARMA)

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Religious bigotry: It's not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think, and act like me - it's just that God does.