Trump’s repeated ‘low IQ’ insults against Black leaders revive a racist dog whistle with deep historical roots in American white supremacy.
WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump’s repeated use of the term “low IQ” to describe prominent Black figures is a racial dog whistle with a long history in the United States. He this week attacked Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson and top House Democrat Hakeem Jeffries with the pejorative insult.
Trump branded Jackson, a double Harvard graduate and the first Black woman on the Supreme Court, as “that new, Low IQ person”. He similarly called Jeffries a “totally low IQ person” on Monday.
The president has applied the label frequently against people of colour, particularly Black women. Targets have included 2024 election rival Kamala Harris, whom he called “a very low IQ individual,” and several ethnic minority Democratic lawmakers.
He has also broadly branded immigrants from Somalia as “low IQ people”. While Trump has used the expression against white critics, its use against Black Americans carries distinct historical weight.
Experts note the slur is especially offensive given how white supremacists historically pushed claims of lesser Black brain capacity. “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 at Colorado State University, told AFP.
She explained that during slavery, “white male elites took for granted that they were cognitively superior to women and people of color”. Trump’s rhetoric dovetails with a resurgent far-right interest in discredited race science and phrenology.
This pseudoscience, linking skull shape to intelligence, has simmered in extremist circles but is entering more mainstream outlets. Right-wing host Benny Johnson recently suggested on his podcast that low average IQ in nations like Somalia justified suppressing migrant inflows.
“The average IQ in Somalia hovers around 70, and that’s the threshold for mentally handicapped,” said Johnson, who has six million YouTube subscribers. Psychology professor Robert Sternberg told AFP that IQ tests are only “moderately” useful in predicting real-world outcomes.
Anderson argues terms like “low IQ” provide plausible deniability for the speaker and audience. “Trump and his audience can say that there’s nothing racist about ‘low IQ’ because that label could be applied to anyone,” she said.
She added that when used primarily against Black people, it connects to a specific history that appeals to racists in Trump’s base. Meanwhile, Jeffries offered a sharp retort to the president’s insult.
“What’s so ironic is that Donald Trump is clearly the dumbest person ever to sit at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue,” he told MS NOW.