A Terrible Thing to Waste by Harriet A. Washington

Washington uses this example to illuminate how our environment and experiences can impact our IQ scores, proving that these disparities can be addressed by doing as other developed nations do and restricting exposure to chemicals until they’re proven to be safe for the public to use, something the United States is very lax about. Though the goal was to decrease the amount of goiters in the population, the federal government’s attempt to combat nationwide nutritional deficiencies had an unintentional effect: it raised the average IQ in the United States by 15 points.

A Terrible Thing to Waste opens in 1924 when the United States decided to iodize the salt in the country’s water supply.

“We can end human exposure to these poisons, and we must do so for the sake of people of color, and for the sake of our nation, because we cannot afford to throw genius away,” she writes. Washington argues that intelligence is malleable rather than fixed or inherited, and that it’s possible to solve the problem of poisons and pathogens attacking the nervous systems of people of color-and raise IQs in process. Washington delves into the 15-point gap that exists between the average Black American intelligence quotient (IQ) and the average white American’s IQ, asking questions like: What is intelligence? How is it measured? Is the way that it’s measured biased? Washington ultimately draws the conclusion that, though IQ tests have been used and interpreted incredibly problematically, environmental racism-in addition to unequal access to education, healthcare, and upward mobility-is mainly to blame for disproportionate learning and intellectual disabilities in communities of color. In A Terrible Thing to Waste: Environmental Racism and Its Assault on the American Mind, journalist Harriet A.

Washington, author of A Terrible Thing to Waste: Environmental Racism and Its Assault on the American Mind (Photo credit: University of Nevada at Las Vegas)

A Terrible Thing to Waste by Harriet A. Washington