#163. The Wonderlic Test

Grown men and the young alike of all races spend untold hours of their day unproductively researching inane statistics of their favorite athletes and football teams; spending time carousing message boards such as Rivals.com and Scout.com to learn about the latest Black high school recruit that will sign with their alma mater; and waste months of their lives digesting every nugget of information regarding the National Football League (NFL) draft, an event that is now more celebrated than most men's wedding anniversary.

After the Super Bowl, men fret about the lack of sports to follow, but the creation of 21st centuries version of the Slave Meat Market has enabled white sports fans a continuance of football as they get the chance to salivate over future NFL players prior to their being drafted.

The NFL Draft is now a holy day that is beloved by white sports fans everywhere, for they get the opportunity to relive the days of their ancestors whom once partook in the buying and selling of Black people for their betterment. Then, it was slavery, now, it is for strictly entertainment purposes and the NFL offers wonderful jubilation.

Warren Sapp, a once talented defensive lineman in the NFL, confirmed this notion of a modern-day plantation, as he famously said:

"If you're a black man in America who makes money, you're supposed to just shut up."

Never one to shy away from a supportive analogy, Sapp added that NFL players are like "slaves," and the commissioner and league owners are like "slave masters."

The NFL Draft and the combines that lead up to it offer white people the chance to see a modern-day slave market in action, as Black people and the occasional white player (whites make up roughly 39 percent of the NFL rosters) are forced to run the 40-yard dash, perform the shuttle run, do as many reps of 225 on the bench press as they can, and, most importantly, take a Wonderlic Test.

What is the Wonderlic Test, you may ask? It is simply a test that measures an individual's IQ, and gives the potential employer of the Black athlete an opportunity to measure their intelligence:

"Wonderlic Personnel Test is a twelve-minute, fifty-question test used to assess the aptitude of prospective employees for learning and problem-solving in a wide range of occupations. The score is calculated as the number of correct answers given in the allotted time. A score of 20 is intended to indicate average intelligence ... corresponding to an intelligence quotient of 100."

Black people excel at the tests of physical endurance (as do many white players who post numbers equal or greater to the Black players), but have infamously been lousy at taking the Wonderlic. Vince Young famously scored a 6 out of 50 on his Wonderlic, and he has since demonstrated amazing intellect in the NFL, being benched and partaking in "Making it Rain" like his former teammate Pacman Jones.

As the story linked to above from USA Today tells us:

"A score of 20 indicates average intelligence. A 50 is a perfect score, which has rarely been achieved; former Bengals punter Pat McInally is believed to be the only player to ever get a 50. For the record, McInally attended Harvard."

McInally, besides being a lowly punter, is also white. So his score doesn't count, but Kevin Curtis - a white wide receiver who plays for the Philadelphia Eagles - scored a 48.

A sample question from the test that so perplexed Vince Young - and most other Black players - at the NFL's modern-day slave market:

"The first questions on the test are easy, but they get harder and harder.

An easy question: In the following set of words, which word is different from the others? 1) copper, 2) nickel, 3) aluminum, 4) wood, 5) bronze.

A tougher one: A rectangular bin, completely filled, holds 640 cubic feet of grain. If the bin is 8 feet wide and 10 feet long, how deep is it"

Black people find these questions very difficult and routinely score poorly on the Wonderlic, leaving the test feeling bemused and highly desirous of performing the 40-yard dash again to bolster their ego.

Some scores of Black athletes that white people pay money to worship for their entertainment value, that were drafted in the 2009 draft:

" Matt Stafford (white) proved that he's definitely pretty smart. Stafford scored a 38 on the Wonderlic which obviously boosts his stock. USC's Mark Sanchez (Hispanic) scored a 28 and Kansas State's Josh Freeman (Black) a 27, which is about average for QBs.

Seems the wide receiving corps is especially stupid this year. Michael Crabtree of Texas Tech scored a 15, Darrius Heyward-Bey of Maryland scored a 14, and Percy Harvin of Florida scored a 12. Not real good. But don't worry, there was someone who was worse. Hakeem Nicks of UNC wowed everyone with an 11. A score of 10 suggests a person is literate, so at least all of the receivers can read this, I hope."

All of the above receivers are Black people. It has been reported that receivers, a position dominated by Black people in the NFL - save for Wes Welker and the Colt's receiving core - have an average Wonderlic score of 17:

Offensive tackles: 26
Centers: 25
Quarterbacks: 24
Guards: 23
Tight Ends: 22
Safeties: 19
Middle linebackers: 19
Cornerbacks: 18
Wide receivers: 17
Fullbacks: 17
Halfbacks: 16

Regardless of the incredible poor performance of Black people on the Wonderlic, they continue to be drafted in numbers that consistently make them 69 percent of the NFL's entertainers and also the fodder of Jeff Benedict and his book exposing the criminal nature of 21 percent of NFL players (as of 1998) who had committed a serious crime.

The Wonderlic Test is a conundrum to Black people and a paradox to owners of NFL teams who will soon employ these 21st century indentured servants.

For, Stuff Black People Don't Like includes the Wonderlic Test, a bastion of whiteness in a sea of imminent Blackness. Black people wish this draconian IQ Test would go away or they could be absolved from taking it, as the low scores they consistently get cause their gushing white supporters to snicker at their intellectual inabilities.

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#149. Accreditation

Black people have long enjoyed the idea of being "separate and extra-equal" - an idea that they get to have their own institutions, schools and organizations, yet Black people also get to continue to garner affirmative action, victim status and laws that codify "hate crimes" as only those committed by white people against them and not vice-versa.

"Separate and extra-equal" also implies to the idea that Black people do not live near white people, but still are given extra rights which place them above the law and those very white people who live nowhere near them, like the disingenuous white liberal.

However, in the long struggle to remain "separate and extra-equal", Black people have hit a major impediment: accreditation.

Accreditation is:

"Educational accreditation is a type of quality assurance process under which services and operations of an educational institution or program are evaluated by an external body to determine if applicable standards are met. If standards are met, accredited status is granted by the agency."

In the past two decades alone, seven Historically Black Colleges and Universities across the country have lost their accreditation:

“Historically black colleges represent only 4 percent of all higher-education institutions, but roughly 40 percent of all African-American students graduate from them,” said Dorothy Yancy, the president of Johnson C. Smith University in Charlotte, N.C.According to a study by Education Trust, 60 percent of the nation’s students complete their undergraduate studies in six years.

For an African-American student enrolled at a historically black college or university, where 70 percent of students are low income, the odds of completion are even lower, Sias said.

"Over the past two decades, at least seven historically black colleges have lost their accreditation. While some schools were able to regain their accreditation status, others, such as Knoxville College and Morris Brown College, remain open without regional accreditation.

So with 40 percent of Black people graduating from schools that are in jeopardy of losing their accreditation - schools no longer trusted to bestow a quality education to their students - what does that mean to the future of Black people everywhere?

There are not enough crusading white pedagogues to try and extirpate the racial gap in learning that exists between Black and white people and every other year another Historical Black College loses its accreditation.

Paul Quinn College, a Historically Black College in Texas, recently lost its accreditation:

"Paul Quinn College lost its accreditation on Thursday, one of several actions taken by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools. "

The small, historically black Texas college had struggled for several years with financial and academic problems. The association’s Commission on Colleges had placed the institution on probation in 2007. "

“They had made progress … but they ran out of time before they could come into compliance on everything,” Belle S. Wheelan, president of the commission, told The Dallas Morning News.

Sadly, accreditation problems are not indigenous to Historically Black Colleges, as Clayton County Schools, in Clayton County, Georgia recently lost their accreditation:

"Clayton County schools are the first in the nation in the past 40 years to lose accreditation, failing to meet eight of nine improvement mandates...

That means that if Clayton meets the mandates by May, this year’s seniors could graduate with an accredited diploma...

A loss of accreditation means the 50,000 Clayton students could have trouble getting into some colleges and universities, or receiving scholarship money. High school juniors and seniors will be able to maintain Hope scholarship eligibility because of legislation signed earlier this year by Gov. Sonny Perdue."

Clayton County is a "suburb" of Atlanta and has a population that is 62 percent Black people and that number rises everyday. In almost every single way, shape and form possible, Black people run the local government, police department and Board of Education. And they obviously don't like accreditation as they were the first school system in 40 years in America to lose it.

Clayton County Public Schools are a beacon of hope to the rest of the increasingly non-white citizens of America of what the future will look educationally and how things will be run (pictures of Board of Education members can be found here... note the two crusading white pedagogues who are part of the Board) in the coming Black America.

Education is the foundation of any society and the ability or inability of preparing future generations of children to one day be civic leaders in society and take the reins of the nation and steer it into the future is becoming an increasingly shocking proposition and a conundrum to Black people, as evidenced by the loss of accreditation for so many of their schools.

Is it white racism that keeps these schools, full of Black people from performing? A lack of crusading white pedagogues?

Or, does Stuff Black People Don't Like include accreditation, because the assurance that the education an institution is providing through auditing and outside quality control mechanisms is really just a clever ploy of "The Man" to keep Black people and schools that are majority Black perpetually down?

Despite being "separate and extra-equal" Historically Black Colleges and school systems that are run by Black people are failing and this qualifies accreditation as the Stuff Black People Don't Like.

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