By: Donald V. Watkins
Copyrighted and Published on March 13, 2025
An Editorial Opinion
Some fights against racism never seem to end.
On January 9, 2024, "First Buddy" Elon Musk, a longtime beneficiary of brutally enforced white privilege under South Africa’s racial apartheid system, embraced a tweet on X (formerly known as Twitter) that questioned the IQ of black USAF pilots and insinuated these aviators are intellectually inferior to white pilots. According to Musk, black HBCH graduates are entering the aviation profession as pilots because of "crazy" DEI policies.
Here is the original January 9th tweet from io@eyeslasho:
“The average IQ of USAF pilots is about 120, and the figures I've seen for major airline pilots range from 115 to 130. By contrast, the mean IQ of grads from two of those United Airline HBCU "partners" is about 85 to 90, based on the average SATs at those schools. (The SAT correlates reasonably well with IQ.) To put this into context, the HBCU IQ averages are within 10 points of the threshold for what is considered "borderline intellectual impairment," while the pilots IQ averages are within 10 points of what is considered "intellectually gifted. I'll add that IQ is a well-studied and well-known predictor of job performance, especially for quick-processing and mentally demanding occupations like major airline pilot.”
Elon Musk embraced the concept expressed in this tweet and retweeted it with this comment, “It will take an airplane crashing and killing hundreds of people for them to change this crazy policy of DIE.” Obviously, Musk was referring to “DEI” policies, which he sarcastically labels as “this crazy policy of DIE.”
The point that io@eyeslaso and Musk were making is simple: Black pilots who graduate from HBCUs are inferior.
The full text of io@eyeslasho’s post has since been made "unavailable," but not before we captured the entire quote and reprinted it above.
Are Black Pilots from HBCUs Close to “Borderline Intellectually Impaired"?
Musk's tweet resurrects the pre-World War II debate about the intelligence of black HBCU graduates who become military and commercial pilots. I thought that debate ended when the war ended in 1945.
I will let the accomplishments of the famed Tuskegee Airmen speak to the IQ, aptitude, training, ability to performance flight missions, success, and courage of black pilots. Here is the record:
During World War II, Tuskegee University, a distinguished HBCU, was awarded the U.S. Army Air Corps contract to help train America's first black military aviators. Tuskegee had already invested in the development of an airfield, had a proven civilian pilot training program, and its graduates performed at the highest levels on flight aptitude exams.
The all-Black, 332nd Fighter Group consisted originally of four fighter squadrons, the 99th, the 100th, the 301st and the 302nd.
From 1941-1946, some 1,000 Black pilots were trained at Tuskegee.
The Airmen's success in escorting bombers during World War II – having one of the lowest loss records of all the escort fighter groups and being in constant demand for their services by the allied bomber units piloted by white aviators -- is a record unmatched by any other fighter group.
The 99th Squadron distinguished itself by being awarded two Presidential Unit Citations (June-July 1943 and May 1944) for outstanding tactical air support and aerial combat in the 12th Air Force in Italy, before joining the 332nd Fighter Group.
The 332nd Fighter group was awarded the Presidential Unit Citation for its' longest bomber escort mission to Berlin, Germany on March 24, 1945. During this mission, the Tuskegee Airmen (then known as the 'Red Tails') destroyed three German ME-262 jet fighters and damaged five additional jet fighters.
The 332nd Fighter Group had also distinguished itself in June 1944 when two of its pilots flying P-47 Thunderbolts discovered a German destroyer in the harbor of Trieste, Italy.
On March 29, 2007, President George W. Bush and members of Congress awarded the Airmen the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest civilian award given by Congress.
The apartheid rulers in South Africa obviously did not make this aviation history known to the white beneficiaries of apartheid like Elon Musk and his family.
Musk fled South Africa for Canada as the country's apartheid system was beginning to crumble in 1989. South Africa gained its independence in 1992. The nation elected human rights activist Nelson Mandela as its first black president in 1994.
The First "Top Gun" Winners were Tuskegee Airmen
The Tuskegee Airmen’s list of accomplishments did not stop with their brilliance and bravery in the European theater during World War II.
The first "Top Gun" competition, which is depicted in Tom Cruise’s 1986 and 2022 "Top Gun" movies, took place in May 1949 at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada.
The competition included white and black combat pilots. The white pilots in the Top Gun competition flew in state-of-the-art F-51 and F-82 airplanes.
A team of four Tuskegee Airmen pilots, consisting of Captain Alva Temple, 1st Lieutenant Harry Stewart, 1st Lieutenant James Harvey, and 1st Lieutenant Halbert Alexander (alternate), competed with their propeller-driven Republic F-47N fighters, which were older, obsolete planes.
For 10 days, the Tuskegee Airmen team squared off against the other pilots on aerial gunnery at 12,000 and 20,000 feet, skip bombing, rocket firing, strafing, and dive bombing. Notching perfect scores, the Tuskegee Airmen dominated the competition and held first place all the way from the first day.
When the Tuskegee Airmen team was announced as the "Top Gun" winners, there was dead silence in the room. Not one of their white colleagues applauded this remarkable accomplishment.
The Tuskegee Airmen team was presented their victory trophy and posed for a photograph with it. The victory, however, was quickly erased from history. Somehow, the trophy vanished and was not seen again for 55 years.
For decades, the Air Force Association’s annual almanac listed the winners of the 1949 "Top Gun" competition as “unknown.”
In the 1990s, the records of the first "Top Gun" competition were uncovered at Nellis AFB, and the Tuskegee Airmen team’s victory was officially acknowledged by the Air Force as the winners.
The "Top Gun" trophy was found in 2004, some 55 years after the Tuskegee Airmen team won it. Zellie Rainey Orr, historian and president of the Atlanta chapter of Tuskegee Airmen Inc., uncovered the trophy in a storage area at Wright Patterson AFB in Ohio. It is now on display at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force at Wright Patterson AFB.
Epilogue
Elon Musk needs to focus his attention on (a) making Tesla cars better products in the EV marketplace and (b) keeping his SpaceX Starship rockets from exploding after their launch. His record of achievement on these two fronts is sorely lacking.
Furthermore, Musk embraces and amplifies the old apartheid beliefs about blacks and other people of color.
Additionally, The Wall Street Journal has reported that Elon Musk exhibits a passion for using hallucinogenic drugs, both legal and illegal. In public, Musk acts weird a lot of the time.
Finally, Elon Musk is the "immigrant" who is taking away jobs from middle-class Americans. According to my sources in Washington, nobody likes Musk, except President Donald Trump and the handful of young, personality-deprived, cold-hearted nerds on his DOGE team.
Elon Musk should NEVER question the IQ of blacks again. His success comes from the kind of "white privilege" that keeps blacks downtrodden from the "cradle to the grave" and not an exceptional IQ score.