Its conception and first uses were tailored to have data backing up the concept poor people, disabled people, and black people were dumber, thereby justifying forced sterilisation and human rights abuses of those groups.
In fact, the Nazis used a modified version inspired by the american concept of IQ tests to justify their genocide of disabled people.
True, Binet, the french psychologist who created the first test of this type was not a eugenicist.
But the first American to popularise the concept, was a radical eugenicist (racist, ableist etc.), Lewis Terman, and it’s his version of the IQ test that got popularised in the US.
And even today it’s a bit problematic, because it doesn’t measure what a lot of people assume it measures. Leave it to the professionals for the areas it’s still useful for.
Its conception and first uses were tailored to have data backing up the concept poor people, disabled people, and black people were dumber, thereby justifying forced sterilisation and human rights abuses of those groups.
In fact, the Nazis used a modified version inspired by the american concept of IQ tests to justify their genocide of disabled people.
Well, that’s just not true, but the creator was horrified when that’s how it got used anyways.
True, Binet, the french psychologist who created the first test of this type was not a eugenicist.
But the first American to popularise the concept, was a radical eugenicist (racist, ableist etc.), Lewis Terman, and it’s his version of the IQ test that got popularised in the US.
And even today it’s a bit problematic, because it doesn’t measure what a lot of people assume it measures. Leave it to the professionals for the areas it’s still useful for.
(And some reactionary intellectual circles still try to use it to justify “scientific” racism, to this day)