Trump, his ‘low IQ’ slur, and the right’s race obsession (Michael Mathes, with Raphaelle Peltier in New York, 4/22/26, AFP)
“Trump’s characterization of people of color as ‘low IQ’ is a racist dog whistle with a long history in the US,” Karrin Vasby Anderson, a professor of communication studies at Colorado State University, told AFP.
During the periods of colonialism and 19th century slavery, “white male elites took for granted that they were cognitively superior to women and people of color and, thus, divinely appointed for leadership.”
Trump’s recent repeated use of the expression dovetails with the American far-right’s apparent obsession with genetics and phrenology, a pseudoscience of cranium size and shape as a supposed marker of intelligence.