That Is Not Intelligence — Dr. Amos Wilson

Added: 2026-05-13

[00:00:00]And, and I want you to note that intelligence is related to the setting of goals.

[00:00:08]Goals.

[00:00:10]We going to see in a minute that one of the major reasons for the confusion of my children one of the major reasons for the kind of educational problems African children have over the world is because we as black adults are not clear about the goals that we want to accomplish as people.

[00:00:33]Because it is the goals, if you know, that we set that organizes and informs intelligence.

[00:00:45]You see, if you have no goals and no sense of purpose, then there is there is no organization of the intellectual capacities of your children.

[00:00:57]We going to come back to that. You have got to have goals. You have goals, people.

[00:01:03]You just can't send your children to school and expect them to learn when you have no no real cultural goals and directions and things you want to accomplish.

[00:01:13]The first thing they ask you is, "Why am I studying this mathematics?

[00:01:18]Why do I have to learn this, mama? Why do I have to read this?"

[00:01:22]And because you have no sense of where you want to go as a people, you have lost intelligence, too.

[00:01:27]"Well, you know, it'll get you a job."

[00:01:30]Don't you know that mathematics will get you a job?

[00:01:33]>> [laughter] >> Why do I have to go through all of this?

[00:01:40]If this is merely what what it's about you know?

[00:01:45]You've got to be able to to inculcate the children with goals and and have a goal orientation in order for them to organize their intelligence.

[00:01:55]And I'm going to show you because you have let your future be determined by another people, your children's minds and brains have nowhere to go.

[00:02:05]And they have no reasons for learning.

[00:02:07]Period.

[00:02:10]>> [applause] >> The other aspect of intelligence has to do with the adaptive The adaptive refers to the fact that intelligence consists of the ability to solve problems. Keep that in mind. To what? To solve problems.

[00:02:30]Not to score high on the IQ test. That is not intelligence.

[00:02:38]Not to score high on the SAT.

[00:02:42]That's coincidental.

[00:02:45]But to do what? Solve problems.

[00:02:49]Solve the problems that confront you as a people and solve the problem that confront you as an individual.

[00:02:54]I don't care how high you score on an IQ test. If you can't solve the problems that confront you as a people and as an individual, you are dumb.

[00:03:03]And you will be destroyed.

[00:03:06]See?

[00:03:07]And I'm telling you.

[00:03:09]You've heard me say before that regardless of the level of education of black people from the PhD level on down, there is a certain fundamental dumbness in the black community.

[00:03:26]Yes.

[00:03:28]A dumbness.

[00:03:32]You talk about the crack dealer though he makes his thousands per month [clears throat] and maybe millions who still doesn't know how to launder the money.

[00:03:46]Still doesn't know how to legitimize the money.

[00:03:51]Gets raided and the money is stacked up in the closet.

[00:03:56]You know?

[00:03:58]Doesn't know what to do with it.

[00:04:01]Period.

[00:04:02]But he is just as stupid as the black middle classer who takes that little check and takes every ounce of that check and spends it giving it to a white man to pay inflated rent and other KINDS OF STUFF.

[00:04:14]>> [applause] >> WHO WILL NOT SAVE, WHO WILL NOT invest in the future of the children or in the future of the community. The same idiocy you know, is characteristic of them both. So, you have the same dumbness that runs from the highly educated right down to the one writing this speech. No, you're basically no different.

[00:04:36]Yeah.

[00:04:37]I was talking to a black female one night and he was complaining about the cars that the drug sellers would sell him and the gold and stuff. I said, "Well, really, brother, there is no fundamental difference from you."

[00:04:52]In essence, you're just mad because he can buy the car you can buy.

[00:04:57]Because you're using that car to distinguish yourself in terms of class and you know, in terms of who you are, in terms of your status. And he's doing the same thing. So, you you're functionally operating on the same plane.

[00:05:10]Do you see? No difference.

[00:05:13]And you're just angry that he being in one class different from yours is able to conspicuously consume the same way you do. And now you have a hell of a way of determining how can you be distinguished from this person here.

[00:05:27]Look, it's the same game.

[00:05:30]You're still feeding white people.

[00:05:32]You're still buying overpriced junk and garbage.

[00:05:37]You're still imperiling the future of black people.

[00:05:41]You should study history in its real aspects.

[00:05:45]Read Barbara Tuchman's history. I forget what it's called. Of the 14th century of 14th century Europe.

[00:05:54]Read that.

[00:05:56]And I'm not one of these Africans to tell you you should only read African history. You need to read your [clears throat] Indian history.

[00:06:02]You must understand European history.

[00:06:04]You really cannot appropriately understand African history [clears throat] unless you understand European history.

[00:06:10]I'm telling you.

[00:06:11]You can't do it.

[00:06:13]Because the histories of the two inextricably intertwined one with the other. You only get to know the psychology of the European by reading European history. You will know to a good extent that these great civilizations, these centuries, were based on thievery and robbery and criminal activities.

[00:06:37]In fact, you can read the personal history of some of our most illustrious families today and quickly run into bootlegging and other kinds of illegal activity that is the basis of their fortune and influence in America today.

[00:06:50]You must recognize that war is a pretty name for robbing and thieving.

[00:06:55]>> [clears throat] >> Yeah.

[00:06:58]That's all it is.

[00:07:00]One country gets a a gang gang decides to take the private out of another country and call it war.

[00:07:06]And then they make pretty beautiful slogans and beautiful music >> [clears throat] >> to deceive the people so that they can participate in robbing the other people's resources and their territory.

[00:07:19]Realize how many millions of people had to be killed to make this country possible.

[00:07:30]Do you understand what I'm saying?

[00:07:32]You forgotten that.

[00:07:34]You forgotten that.

[00:07:36]How many people do you have to be murdered, raped, tortured, robbed, dispossessed?

[00:07:43]And you think you're doing nice, good people.

[00:07:48]When you read my new book, you'll see where I talk about European ethics is is based on, you know, European criminality.

[00:07:58]You robbed enough to steal, but not to be nice.

[00:08:02]That's all it is.

[00:08:04]>> [clears throat] >> So, if we took that wealth from you, you'd be out here robbing and stealing in these streets like everybody else.

[00:08:10]You're not intrinsically nice. Don't deceive yourself. Your ethics are bought and paid for.

[00:08:17]They're not intrinsic within your own character and personality.

[00:08:21]The ultimate test of of one's ethical character is when one is starving and has no way to go.

[00:08:29]Okay? And when one is standing in front of real temptation [clears throat] and you have no money in your pocket.

[00:08:35]That's when your ethics are tested.

[00:08:38]Not when you got all the money in the world and you can act all nice. Come on.

[00:08:43]And you let these people run this game.

[00:08:45]And they have enough nerve.

[00:08:45][clears throat] What am I saying here, then?

[00:08:49]Intelligence, then, has to do with solving problems.

[00:08:55]Solving problems.

[00:08:58]You are not intelligent until you solve the problems that confront [clears throat] whom?

[00:09:05]You.

[00:09:06]You.

[00:09:06]You.

[00:09:08]Yes. Yes, man.

[00:09:11]You have let another people define intelligence as the ability to solve their problems.

[00:09:21]Not your own.

[00:09:23]Their problems.

[00:09:25]They didn't call you intelligent when you can behave and think in a way [clears throat] that adds to their power and maintains their position in the world.

[00:09:36]Then you're intelligent.

[00:09:39]Then you have good character.

[00:09:42]You understand? I want you to think about what I'm saying here.

[00:09:45]You see?

[00:09:47]And their measure of intelligence, then, is intrinsically related to those abilities and ways of thinking that allows them to solve the problems that confront them as a people.

[00:10:03]Those African-Americans then who [clears throat] are often called intelligent within this system are what I would call intellectual mercenaries.

[00:10:17]They are hired guns who then are used to solve the problems of the European corporate system, economic system, political and social system, but who when confronted with their own problems cannot solve their own problems.

[00:10:37]They can fly European shuttles into the space.

[00:10:42]They can land European ships upon the moon.

[00:10:47]They can sit on the board and on the Joint Chiefs of Staff and direct European [clears throat] armies and and develop military strategies for European, and yet they cannot run the white man out of South Africa, and they cannot deal WITH THE PEOPLE.

[00:11:04]>> [applause] [applause] >> THEY CANNOT MOVE AFRICA INTO THE space race. [clears throat] They cannot get our people in the position where we can commercially exploit space and be a part of the expansion of this system into the universe.

[00:11:25]You are dumb and ignorant no matter what position you have in this society if you cannot solve those problems, ladies and gentlemen.

[00:11:35]So, you got IBM so that you can be smart and be productive even better than the white boys that are producing for Xerox and producing for IBM and all the rest, but you can't build and take over your own economic systems in Brooklyn and all and other places. You Africans let these Arabs and these other groups have control of their ECONOMY AND THEIR SOCIAL SYSTEM.

[00:11:58]>> [applause] >> I DON'T CARE HOW MUCH YOU CAN GO TO CAMBRIDGE AND HOW many Rhodes Scholars you produce and so forth. If you can't solve the starvation of African people, if you cannot move Africa to a position to take a national challenge to other powers, if you cannot solve the issue of security and survival of African people, you are dumb and stupid.

[00:12:24]>> [applause] >> Therefore, you must define intelligence in terms of your own goals, in terms of your own survival.

[00:12:36]You must organize the thinking of children and the behavior of your children in terms of your own survival, not in terms of supporting the survival of another people. When you organize the intelligence of these children in terms of the interest of another people, you are making your children traitors to your own causes.

[00:13:01]Colonial power will direct armed assaults on African nations and African people.

[00:13:10]And I bet [clears throat] you couldn't get it to organize an army in Africa against the colonial and other forces in Africa.

[00:13:18]Understand what I'm saying?

[00:13:20]You have to look at intelligence. You can't accept the standard definition of intelligence. Screw the white folks' definition of intelligence.

[00:13:29]You must look at it in terms of what do we need to survive? What do we need to be liberated? What do we need as a people to secure our survival?

[00:13:40]So, in this sense, the intelligence involves the constant active interaction between so-called inherited ability and environmental experience.

[00:13:51]Really, we're going to see intelligence and environment is essentially one in the same thing. We talked about them for convenience as if they are different things, but they are really one in the same thing. Intelligence and behavior and so forth only can make sense within the context of an environment.

[00:14:10]Otherwise, they have no meaning at all, no value whatsoever.

[00:14:14]Yeah, no value at all.

[00:14:16]You can't separate intelligence from environment.

[00:14:21]Yeah, our goal orientation, our problem solving has no meaning.

[00:14:25]It only It only has meaning within a particular context and reflects that context. You can't have criminality where boys kill each other over sneakers in a society that doesn't sell sneakers, can you?

[00:14:42]No.

[00:14:43]So, in in in essence, almost every crime is a social act.

[00:14:47]Almost every behavior is a social act, you see, defined by the social environment of the social system in which that act [clears throat] takes place. And so is the case with intelligence. In this