By Kathleen Béres Rogers
In a recent speech, Donald Trump used the language of intelligence, or intellectual impairment, as a weapon against Kamala Harris. And he used similar language about vice presidential candidate Tim Walz in a TV appearance.
In a rally on Sept. 29, 2024, in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, Trump told supporters that “Joe Biden became mentally impaired. Kamala was born that way. She was born that way. And if you think about it, only a mentally disabled person could have allowed this to happen to our country.” He made similar comments at a rally in Erie, Pennsylvania, over the same weekend.
Disability rights advocates were quick to point out that Trump’s language is what is called “ableist,” meaning that it assumes people with disabilities are somehow less valuable than those without.
In an attempt to fire back, “Saturday Night Live” Weekend Update host Colin Jost quipped that “I cannot believe Trump admitted he lost the debate to a mentally disabled person,” repeating the same ableist premise.
And on a Fox Nation program on Sept. 30, 2024 hosted by Kellyanne Conway, Trump called Walz “a total moron.”
While this is the most recent round of personal attacks focusing on a lack of intelligence, it is far from unusual. Demeaning language about intelligence is a bipartisan political campaign staple – and extends further into much of American history and contemporary culture.
The worth of a person
Donald Trump has repeatedly called Kamala Harris – and others – “low IQ” and recently referred to Jewish voters as “fools” were they to help elect Harris. Harold Myerson of The American Prospect refers to Trump as a “blithering idiot,” and political cartoons paint Trump as akin to a buffoon.
While people often stop to think about and discuss race or gender, comments about intelligence do not typically get much sustained attention. People either agree with Trump or laugh along with Jost, not thinking about what it means to be called “low IQ,” “mentally impaired” or an “idiot.”
For me, as a mother of a child with Down Syndrome, these comments remind me of the ways in which she is consistently categorized, compared with so-called “normal” children, and found lacking based on variations of IQ tests.
And as a mother and a disability studies scholar writing a book about cognitive disability, I know that intelligence has always been defined in different ways by different societies. You cannot take a number on an IQ test and use it to definitively categorize any person.
In the West, before the mid-19th century, there was no definitive distinction between the “insane,” the “idiot” and the “imbecile.” While many of these individuals were sent to asylums or, in the case of author Jane Austen’s brother, to live with another family, it was more common to keep them at home and integrate them into the larger community.
Much of this changed in the 1840s when Adolphe Quetelet, the Belgian mathematician, astronomer and statistician, sketched the body – complete with measurements – of the “normal” man. While he focused only on the physical body, the idea of the norm, reinforced by the rise of statistics as a discipline, grew more and more important when it came to intellectual function.
Once statistics took off and people started the process of norming, or coming up with what the average human should look and think like, statisticians and laypeople grew to rely heavily on the bell curve, a useful but inaccurate means of measuring all sorts of characteristics, chief among them being intelligence.
Forced sterilization, institutionalization
By the 1880s, intelligence, now a characteristic quantified by IQ testing, was used to “prove” the inferiority of anyone whose behaviors, ways of talking and even ways of thinking threatened the social order. That characterization was part of the theory of eugenics, in which people labeled inferior were discouraged – or actively prevented – from having children and, in some cases, from living at all.
As historian Douglas Baynton points out in his 2013 essay Disability and the Justification of Inequality in American History, many would-be immigrants were turned away by officials at Ellis Island if they had “any mental abnormality whatever,” be it a cognitive disability, a stutter or even depression.
The language becomes even more horrific when race is brought in. In the racial science of the early 1800s, both the “idiot” skull and the “African” skull resembled the orangutan more than they resembled Shakespeare or Napoleon. Africans and people considered “idiots” were seen to be animalistic and unreasonable, in need of protection by their wards or owners.
In the early 20th century, these same ideas about racial and cognitive inferiority resulted in forced sterilization of women with intellectual disabilities as well as women of color, many of whom were considered “unfit” to birth the next generation of American children.
In addition to sterilization, those considered to have low IQs or to be mentally disabled were placed into unhygienic institutions located in places far from populated urban centers. Unseen and unthought of, these people were kept at places such as the Willowbrook State Developmental Center on Staten Island in New York Bay, where they often had no clothing, no means of sanitation, and were subject to abuse.
Institutions still exist today where people with intellectual disabilities are housed. The U.S. does not have an educational system in which people like my daughter can learn every day with neurotypical kids – kids whose brains work in a way deemed normal.
North Carolina State Documents Collection/State Library of North Carolina
Special education classrooms are disproportionately filled with students of color, most often diagnosed with behavioral disabilities. These students often end up in the school-to-prison pipeline. These classrooms show how something as “simple” as an IQ test – something as innocuous as a label – can end up sentencing the country’s children to lives of segregation and social oppression.
Not just Trump’s words
Temperatures are running high during this presidential election. Yet Trump’s words about Harris, while extraordinarily coarse and ugly for a presidential candidate, are often found among disparaging descriptions used by both sides. These phrases are part of a culture that uses measures of intelligence as a way to measure the worth of a human being.
Words are powerful: They can either, like the literature I teach, broaden perspectives of the world, or they can serve to reinforce limiting ideologies that perpetuate oppression.
Terms such as “low IQ,” “idiot” and “mentally impaired” have a traumatic history, one that many cognitively disabled, lower-class and minority people continue to live with today. I believe politicians and their constituents should understand the destructive history of these terms – and think twice before using words like these as an easy means to attack one another.
Kathleen Béres Rogers is Professor of English and Director of the Program in Medical Humanities at the College of Charleston.
The Conversation arose out of deep-seated concerns for the fading quality of our public discourse and recognition of the vital role that academic experts could play in the public arena. Information has always been essential to democracy. It’s a societal good, like clean water. But many now find it difficult to put their trust in the media and experts who have spent years researching a topic. Instead, they listen to those who have the loudest voices. Those uninformed views are amplified by social media networks that reward those who spark outrage instead of insight or thoughtful discussion. The Conversation seeks to be part of the solution to this problem, to raise up the voices of true experts and to make their knowledge available to everyone. The Conversation publishes nightly at 9 p.m. on FlaglerLive.
Kennan says
What a surprise! Less and less on an issue front. More and more on a tribal one. The Crips. The Bloods. Coke. Pepsi.
Politics and politicians are just a sore and obvious symptom of a bar that has been so lowered to expose the ignorance of way too many Americans.
John says
He has revenge on the whole world, he is hateful, has no dignity to admit defeat. He is being used by dictators around the world and is too stupid to realize it.
He is probably planning the next insurrections against the country he was born it which shows us he doesn’t care about our country just himself.
I vote for winners and for those that takes pride in their country and our military and all it stands for.
Laurel says
My husband, who is a Christian, has said that we are not to call someone an “idiot.”
Um, oh-oh.
Well, I didn’t really think of Trump one way or another, until he mocked a reporter who has cerebral palsy. That was the deal breaker, for me, then and there. Since Trump didn’t stop with the bad mouthing, it was downhill from there. The article states that both sides do it, which is absolutely true. However, the Trump/Vance side made it constant. Come to think of it, I don’t recall Pence talking like that, but he stood by.
The reason Trump bad mouths all, and I mean all, opponents, is he cannot win with the truth. Donny Downer (and I don’t mind saying that).
Jim says
It’s just a shame in this great country that someone like Donald Trump is actually considered a viable candidate for President. As a potential leader of this country and the free world, you would hope that the person in charge had at least some core concern for the populace in general to avoid personal insults and making insulting and ignorant statements about any person at any time. Trump doesn’t care about anyone but Trump and it amazes me that so many otherwise decent people find him to be a viable candidate.
Using slurs about someone’s mental/physical issues is just as bad as comments on race and gender. If you can’t make your point without going that low, you likely don’t have a point to make anyway.
Trump supporters, listen to what Trump actually says and then decide if he’s your guy. I seriously doubt most of you would even drink a beer with a guy who behaves and speaks like him. Why in God’s name would you vote for him???
A says
I’d rather have a beer with him then have one with you.p
DaleL says
Donald Trump does not drink beer or any alcoholic beverages.
Kamala Harris did drink a beer with Stephen Colbert on last night’s Late Show with Stephen Colbert (10/8/2024).
I choose unity over division, hope over fear, truth over lies, science over fiction and normal over weird. The result is Harris over Trump.
Tired of it says
And that says everything I need to know about you. You would rather have a drink with a serial liar, cheater, lousy businessman, who is obviously failing mentally. A man who has said he would suspend the Constitution and incited an insurrection.
Sherry says
@ a. . . . please tell us all why in the world you would want to have a beer with a person found guilty of “sexual assault” and found guilty of “Fraud” , a “Convicted Felon”, “an adulterer, a pathological lier and more. . ., Why would you choose to be around such a person? Why would you even consider him for our president? What does that say about your judgement?
A republic if we can keep it says
The guy doesn’t drink beer so no excuse of being tipsy when he debases this country, women, blacks, Hispanics, anyone who disagrees with him and anyone who doesn’t worship at his feet (you’re safe there A)
oldtimer says
What about calling people “deplorables” or fascist or Hitler…. what words are ok? Just asking
Robjr says
What, what, what about Hillary?
Nephew Of Uncle Sam says
Your comparing apples to oranges, what’s your point.
Ray W, says
Hello oldtimer.
Merriam-Webster defines deplorable as “deserving censure or contempt, wretched”
Merriam-Webster defines fascism as “a populist political philosophy, movement, or regime … that exalts nation and often race above the individual, that is associated with a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, and that is characterized by severe economic and social regimentation and by forcible suppression of opposition”
I suppose I don’t need a definition of Hitler to make a point. The point makes itself.
Help me understand your point.
When someone maliciously lies to the American people, would not the definition of deplorable fit? There is no evidence that anyone is eating their neighbors’ cats and dogs, and a vice-presidential candidate maliciously says that if it takes a lie about immigrants to get people to talk about immigrants, then he will continue to lie about it. Does that not fit the definition of deplorable?
What if a former president says an obviously intelligent person is actually mentally disabled? No one can dispute that it would be a malicious lie to do something like that. Does that not fit the definition of deplorable?
Can it be argued that anyone who engages in a malicious lie is a deplorable person.
Make of this what you will. Me? It seems to me that malicious lies by political candidates are by definition deplorable acts.
Do you, oldtimer, agree that maliciously lying about someone else is a deplorable act? That is ok to call someone deplorable when they really are deplorable and that it is not ok to call someone mentally disabled when they really are not mentally disabled?
Sherry says
A “HUGE THANK YOU”! Ray W.
A republic if we cab keep it says
Old timer, JD says he saw the light and didn’t mean to speak ill of the weaver. They say that countries deserve the leaders they get , I pray God has mercy on the USA and stops this grifter from ever stepping in the White House.