Steve Corbin is a freelance writer and emeritus professor of marketing at the University of Northern Iowa.

Racism and white supremacy may be America’s top domestic problems. A person with a sound educational background would be hard pressed to embrace the authoritarian view that racism is good.

Wray Herbert contends racism is a form of stupidity. Herbert is Psychology Today’s editor-in-chief and behavioral science editor and columnist for numerous respected publications. Herbert asserts low intelligence, lack of mental ability, and cognitive rigidity are often characteristics of people who hold white supremacy viewpoints.

Herbert’s assessment is supported by two researchers, Kristof Dhont (Ghent University, Belgium) and Gordon Hodson (Brock University, Canada), who have found through exhaustive longitudinal research that “there is a clear, predictable and causal link between low intelligence and prejudice, including racism.”

Researchers know a lot of variables must be examined before reaching a conclusion. Dhort and Hodson studied the attributes of family socio-economic status, population representation, verbal ability, math skills, meta-analysis of other research, longitudinal data, multiple measures of intelligence and the list of variables continues. Their bottom line finding: “Empirical evidence has consistently linked low intelligence with prejudice.”

A study of white children found some couldn’t comprehend how a short but wide-rimed glass could hold the same amount of water as a taller but skinnier glass. This concept, known as conservation, is widely considered an important mental ability test. The kids who lacked this differentiation ability also held more negative views of Black children.

Longitudinal research provided the most compelling finding. The general intelligence of 10- and 11-year old kids was re-measured 20 years later, revealing a clear correlation between low intelligence at a young age and racism in adulthood.

Dhont and Hodson determined that adults with a solid educational background grasped the concept the world is changing and were more progressive in their thinking. Conversely, adults with lower mental abilities preferred a world that was status-quo, tradition-bound, and avoided uncertainty.

The majority of the U.S. population will be people of color by 2044, and the Latino and Asian populations are growing fastest. Those trends could greatly disturb a person with lower cognitive ability. Their status-quo conservative world is changing; demonstrating racism is their immature way of reacting.

The Southern Poverty Law Center reports there are 838 hate groups in America. We can guess about the members’ mental cognition.

Herbert states, “Right-wing ideologies offer well-structured and ordered views of society, views that preserve traditions and norms, so they are especially attractive to those who are threatened by change and want to avoid uncertainty and ambiguity.”

Many GOP-controlled states have funded public education at levels that don’t keep up with rising costs, year after year. Recently we’ve seen calls to ban books, divert public funds to private education, accuse teachers of having a “sinister agenda,” and spread disinformation about critical race theory. Those authoritarian actions are . . . not so bright.

Should the funding drought an attacks on public education continue, fewer bright-minded college graduates will become K-12 teachers. We may have a less intelligent, more racist U.S. population down the road.

Change is possible. First, remove the cognitively impaired legislators who are dumbing down states. Next, support legislators who understand the education-racism parallel research findings and will confront white supremacy at its roots by increasing our pre-K and K-12 educational system resources.

The legendary broadcast journalist Walter Cronkite’s statement about libraries could be applied to the value of public education and eradicating racism: “Whatever the cost of our libraries, the price is cheap compared to that of an ignorant nation.” Cronkite might have added his signature sign-off line: “And that’s the way it is.”

Top image of kids in school library available via Shutterstock.