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U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s spokesman refused to condemn the views of one of his government’s new advisers, who said white Americans are more intelligent than their black compatriots.
Andrew Sabisky, who was appointed to work in Johnson’s Downing Street office last week, said in a posting on an academic blog in 2014 that “you will see a far greater percentage of blacks than whites in the range of IQs 75 or below, at which point we are close to the typical boundary for mild mental retardation.”
He also posted on twitter that women’s sport is “more comparable to the Paralympics than it is to men’s,” the Mail on Sunday reported, and in a 2016 interview with Schools Week advocated eugenics – the practice of selective breeding.
Opposition politicians have called for Sabisky, 27, to be fired.
Asked on Monday whether Johnson backed Sabisky’s views, the prime minister’s spokesman Jamie Davies repeatedly declined to answer.
“The prime minister’s views are well publicized and well documented,” Davies told reporters in London. He refused to direct journalists to any specific statements from Johnson. Sabisky did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
It’s not the first time Johnson’s officials have had to deal with allegations of racism. Johnson himself has been criticised for articles he wrote for the Daily Telegraph newspaper, in which he used a racist term to refer to black people, and said Muslim women wearing the burqa looked liked “letter boxes.”
To contact the reporter on this story: Jessica Shankleman in London at [email protected]
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Tim Ross at [email protected], Thomas Penny
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