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Race, women and health · Claim record

Awake! of 8 October 1977 gave a whole issue to race. Its article on intelligence reported that "the weight of scientific opinion … seems to be that the lower average IQ scores of blacks can be explained largely, if not entirely, by environmental factors", while saying that the question "cannot be positively determined" and that "there is no proof that whites either have, or have not, inherited more intelligence than blacks"; it concluded that "there is no sound basis for viewing people of another race as inferior".

Claim ID claim-attitudes-race-1977-no-basis-inferiorConcerns 8 October 1977Later reinterpretation
Later reinterpretation · 8 October 1977 Verified

Awake! of 8 October 1977 gave a whole issue to race. Its article on intelligence reported that "the weight of scientific opinion … seems to be that the lower average IQ scores of blacks can be explained largely, if not entirely, by environmental factors", while saying that the question "cannot be positively determined" and that "there is no proof that whites either have, or have not, inherited more intelligence than blacks"; it concluded that "there is no sound basis for viewing people of another race as inferior". Awake!, 8 October 1977Awake!, 8 October 1977

Show the evidence (2 sources)
Primary JW publication Verified

Awake!, “Are Whites More Intelligent than Blacks?”

8 October 1977 · pp.11-16 · Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society

“One thing is certain, however, and that is that there is no sound basis for viewing people of another race as inferior. Without making any distinctions as to race, the Bible wholesomely advises us to have "lowliness of mind considering that the others are superior to you."”

The closing argument of a six-page article in an issue of Awake! given over to race; one further sentence, introducing the next article, follows it. The article sets out the claims of William Shockley and Arthur Jensen, examines IQ testing, quotes Ashley Montagu, Thomas Pettigrew, Theodosius Dobzhansky, Frederick Osborn and the National Academy of Sciences, and says that "the weight of scientific opinion … seems to be that the lower average IQ scores of blacks can be explained largely, if not entirely, by environmental factors". It does not present the question as settled: it also says "There is no proof that whites either have, or have not, inherited more intelligence than blacks" and "the question of the relative intelligence of the races cannot be positively determined. The evidence is now inconclusive, open to various interpretations."

Official source

Provenance and verification note

Confidence note. The whole article was opened on the Watchtower Online Library on 19 September 2026, read from the document’s own HTML and re-checked independently; the quoted sentence follows the page marker for page 16 and the printed citation line reads “g77 10/8 pp. 11-16”.

Notes. The whole issue of 8 October 1977 is given over to race. The other articles, with the page ranges printed in the library’s own citation lines, are "Races Are Strikingly Different" (pp. 3-6), "What About Racial Superiority?" (pp. 6-10), "Body Odor and Race" (pp. 17-20), "One Human Race" (pp. 20-23), "They Found the Solution to the Problem of Race" (pp. 24-27) and "Are Blacks Cursed by God?" (pp. 28-29).

Accessed. 19 September 2026 · Source ID. src-race-g-1977-1008-whites-blacks

Primary JW publication Verified

Awake!, “What Is the Bible’s View? — Are Blacks Cursed by God?”

8 October 1977 · pp.28-29 · Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society

“MANY religious leaders have answered “Yes.” … But, first of all, please note that nothing is said in this Bible account about anyone’s being cursed with blackness of skin. And note, too, that it is Canaan, not his father Ham, who was cursed. … What great harm has resulted from the misapplication by churchmen of this Biblical curse! The slavery of African blacks, and their mistreatment since the days of slavery, can in no way be justified by the Bible. The truth is, blacks are not, and never were, cursed by God!”

A two-page article in the same issue of Awake! that is given over to race. It quotes the Jamieson, Fausset and Brown commentary applying the curse of Canaan to “the slavery of the Africans”, traces the misreading to the fourth-century writer Ambrosiaster, to a 1873 prayer indulgence of Pope Pius IX and to defenders of American slavery, prints a black reader’s account of trying to scrub the colour off her skin, and says the black race descends from Ham’s sons Cush and probably Put. It attributes the teaching throughout to “religious leaders”, “church commentators” and “churchmen”. It does not mention that The Golden Age of 24 July 1929 printed the same answer, or that Zion’s Watch Tower of 15 July 1902 had called that view “as probable as any other”.

Official source

Provenance and verification note

Confidence note. Opened on the Watchtower Online Library on 19 September 2026 and read in full from the document’s own HTML. The page markers read 28 and 29, the printed citation line reads “g77 10/8 pp. 28-29” and the series label above the title reads “What Is the Bible’s View?” The article carries no by-line. Its place in the issue was fixed from the citation lines of the neighbouring documents in the same issue.

Corroborated by. src-race-ga-1929-0724-origin-of-negro, src-race-zwt-1902-0715-ham-canaan, src-race-w-1956-1015-god-segregationist

Notes. The organisation’s own magazine devotes an article to refuting the teaching that black people are under Noah’s curse, and names churchmen and slaveholders as the source of it. The same teaching had appeared in its own Golden Age in 1929.

Accessed. 19 September 2026 · Source ID. src-race-g-1977-1008-blacks-cursed

Claim page Correct or update

A direct link to this claim is https://jwtruth.org/evidence/claim-attitudes-race-1977-no-basis-inferior/. Every source above opens the original document or the best available copy. If you believe the wording, date or context is wrong, report an error.