A society fighting for the rights of fools in America and around the world! We work to eliminate discrimination based on intelligence, merits and ability! To protect your rights, join us!
Intelligence-based discrimination is a form of social injustice deeply entrenched in the modern society and impacting people's lives every day. Intelligence discrimination should be addressed the same way as race, gender or age discrimination and legislation shoulbe be enacted to ban unfair treatment because of intelligence, or preception of intelligence. Affirmative actions for disadvantaged people due to low intelligence are badly needed.
"All Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness" --from the Declaration of Independence, 1776
All men are created equal, the words have been told for more than two hundred years. Yet it took the struggles of many to obtain equalty for people disadvantaged because of their race, skin color, gender, and age. Laws have been passed to ban these discriminations and affirmative actions implemented to correct the past wrongs. Yet another serious form of discrimination, that of intelligence, has not received significant attention and millions of people are denied opportunities or successes because of their intelligence, or, their perceived intelligence.
Intelligence is, like skin color, a trait from birth. Some people are born poor speakers. Some are born poor at math, or at art or at sports. Some people are slow thinkers or react slowly. But they are human beings, and they should have rights for the same opportunities and potential for advancement as smart people. People may be stupid, but that's not their fault!
Intelligence discrimination, or "preceived intelligence" discrimination (because many people do not have the skills to judge intelligence accurately), is everywhere, and you probably have experienced it in your life. When you were in grade school, did you wonder why your math teacher always favor that kid who did well in math tests more than you? In your job, did you wonder why should that guy who completes tasks faster or appears to be a quick thinker get promoted instead of you? Or even worse, you may have the same ability as that other guy at the particular tasks, but bacause he expresses himself better or is a smooth talker, he, not you, gets that big job?
Such unfairness occurs daily everywhere in the world. People appearing foolish are denied successes and advancements. Such denials often are due to perception, instead of accurate measurements of one's ability to do a particular task. People do not know that fools can take important and leading roles and often can do a better job than the so-called "smart" people.
Fools often have to hide their nature, for these who can learn such lessons and capable of hiding it. They cannot express their true selves and have to try to "fit in" with the "smart" people. They have to live painful lives and watch out everyday not to reveal their foolishness. Often after they made to the top, people find out that they are actually fools, like Dan Quayle! But people do not think that, fools can be leaders too! People do not assume that, fools, like Dan Quayle, can serve as the Vice President of the United States! But he did! His political career was over once his foolishness was known, but that should not be the case.
Putting fools at the position of leadership actually has great benefits. Fools obey the rules and cannot figure out evil plans. For example, if Enron's leaders were fools, would they have figure out how to commit accounting fraud? On ther other hand, it requires no reminder that great evils were done by smart people. Do you think bin Laden or Hilter were fools? Of course not!
Therefore the common belief to advance smart or hard working people should be changed. Fools need to be given equal opportunities and considerations. But merely conceptual changes and public education are not enough. The social injustice runs so deep that only legal measures can guarantee equal rights for fools.
Hard working is often stated as the way to make to the top no matter what the preconditions are. But smart people can work hard too, and this places fools at a disadvantage. Fools have to work much harder than smarties to achieve the same. Therefore hard working is not the save-all solution for the social injustice and cannot be relied upon as the only measure. External help is necessary for fools.
Therefore, we demand laws to ban discrimination based on IQ, perceived IQ or similar measures. We call on governments to implement policies prohibiting preferential treatments for people with high achievements or IQs. (Perceived) Intelligence should not be a factor in job application, scholarship application or school admission. Fools should not be afraid that showing their foolishness may have negative consequences.
We also calls for affirmative actions for fools. Foolish children should receive more lecture time from teachers. Test scores should be normalized against students' IQ. Fools should receive more relaxed standards for job performance, for example, more time to complete a task than that given to a "smart" person. Fools should receive more training from employers. Fools should not receive lower salaries than smart people. We call for government agencies to enforce these regulations and to accept complains from fools for intelligence discrimination.
We are in the last barrier toward addressing inequalities in our society, that of intelligence-based discrimination. Race, gender and other forms of discrimination have been outlawed, and it is time to take action to eliminate injustices due to intelligence. We have presented the rational for fool equality and concrete measures to be implemented. It is time to implement these actions and to have all people, dumb and smart, as equals and sharing the same potential for successful, happy and satisfying lives.
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