Black people are intelligent!

The BBQ Pit
1

Because a certain ornery fag is making a boneheaded point and needlessly offending our black Dopers, I thought that the scales need to balance.

America would be immeasurably poorer without the contributions of black Americans. Despite centuries of oppression and prejudice, black Americans have aided in our nation’s progress and defense.

Frederick Douglass, a fiery voice for freedom
Phyllis Wheatley, a slave who became America’s first poet
Benjamin Banneker, America’s first inventor
Sojourner Truth, a former slave turned abolitionist lecturer and one of America’s first feminists
Madame CJ Walker, America’s first African-American millionaire
Matthew Henson, Arctic explorer

Adn those are just a few of the most famous names. . .

there are scientists
Hyman Yates Chase
Jewel Plummer Cobb
Alfred O. Coffin
Jehu Callis Hunter
Ernest Everett Just
Roger Arliner Young
Benjamin Banneker
Sister Mary Sylvester Deconge
Annie Easley
Evelyn Boyd Collins Granville
Katherine G. Johnson
J. Ernest Wilkins, Jr.
Scott Warner Williams
Roscoe L. Koontz
Samuel L. Kountz
William A. Hinton
Maurice Rabb
Vivien T. Thomas
Daniel Hale Williams

Astronauts
Mae Jemison
Michael Anderson
Ron McNair (died in the Challenger disaster)

Authors
WEB Dubois
Ralph Ellison
Richard Wright
Toni Morrison
Zora Neale Hurston
James Baldwin
Maya Angelou
Samuel Delany
Octavia Butler
Tananarive Due
Steven Barnes
Langston Hughes
Nikki Giovanni

Composers and Musicians
Duke Ellington
Louis Armstrong
Thomas Dorsey
WC Handy
Leontyne Price
Marian Anderson
Kathleen Battle
Scott Joplin

among many others

There is not a sphere of American intellectual and cultural life in whioch black
Americans have not created an immense legacy.

Much love to all.

2

You forgot Anita Baker! I’m absolutely outraged!!!

3

My friend Cathy is pretty smart too.
I wanted to add Denzel Washington to your list, but I don’t have any truthful idea whether he has a brain or not. It’s hard to tell with actors. I avoid watching interviews because some actors are so much less attractive when they are rock-poundingly dumb (I will occasionally refer to this as the Brad Pitt effect).

4

How could you forget Booker T. Washington, who figured out dozens of uses for peanuts and peanut oil, many of them non-food? And Harriet Tubman, who led countless escaped slaves north? And Mary McLeod Bethune, who established what is now Bethune-Cookman college? (Freedom meant nothing if blacks weren’t educated, after all.)

Anyway. Otto is a jackass. That whole “I’m using an inflammatory term to show how wrong generalizations are” schtick was never a good idea, and now it’s just…well, stupid.

5

Anita Baker? I thought she was British. My error.

6

You forgot to mention monstro!

7

He was an educator (and the first black man to dine at the White House). You’re thinking of George Washington Carver.

[quote

Anyway. Otto is a jackass. That whole “I’m using an inflammatory term to show how wrong generalizations are” schtick was never a good idea, and now it’s just…well, stupid.[/QUOTE]

Well, his attitude pissed me off, so I wanted to show love to our black Dopers.

No need, all Dopers are assumed to be intelligent.

8

Don’t forget Mildred Taylor, who wrote two of my favorite childhood books - Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry and Let the Circle Be Unbroken - all about the Logan family in Depression-era Mississippi. She’s got more books about the family, but I was never able to find those. I think I’ll go order them from Amazon right now.

(Parents, I highly recommend her books for about ages 8 - 14. If they’re anything like me as a kid, they won’t be able to put them down.)

E.

9

Granted, I’m not familiar with all the names you’ve listed but looking your OP over, it looks like you’re naming African Americans, not blacks.

What about Dumas, Mandela, and other international blacks?

10

::: scratches head:::
Aren’t African Americans considerd black?

11

Y’know, both this thread and the other one are just flat out ridiculous. Black people are human, with all that implies, and with their full quota of dumbasses, jerks, ordinary joes, and saints. Aren’t we ever going to be able to get past this sort of shit?

12

Most are, yes, but not all African Americans black nor are all blacks African American.

13

Is this thread really needed? Is there actually anyone on these boards capable of believing that some ethnic groups are less intelligent than others?

I say no.

14

I once heard a kid in class speculating about the African Americans in South Africa being oppressed. Er… all the people from Africa are African, and none of the ones who haven’t left are American.

15

In one of the classes I’m taking now, we heard scientific evidence that there is no biological basis for race.

Skin color is a spectrum, darkest in the areas with the most intense sunlight and getting progressively lighter as you go towards less intense areas.

That’s it. How we came up with the idea of “races” from that I’ll never know.

16

Don’t forget Carl, my corporate IT tech with the mad networking skillz. He’s Jamaican, but he’s still black.

17

I’m pissed that there aren’t threads praising Asians, Hispanics, or whatever race that one kid in my neighborhood is.

18

I have been gone awhile. But not long enought for the courtesy of a link to be provided!

Give me the racist link, fool!

19

[QUOTE=gobear]
He was an educator (and the first black man to dine at the White House). You’re thinking of George Washington Carver.

[quote]

:smack: :smack: :smack: :smack: Yes, I was. Shame on me.

20

Dumas was black? Interesting, I never knew that.

I’d actually like to see a similar treatment given to Middle-Easterners. Besides stuff like the Bible or other religious texts, what has their impact on our society been?