Dr. James Watson is a Nobel prize winner for his work and study in DNA. He was recently quoted as saying, "he's "inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa" because "all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours -- whereas all the testing says not really."
He also stated that while he would like to believe that all people are created equal, "people who have to deal with black employees find this is not true."
Dr. Watson apologized stating, "To all those who have drawn the inference from my words that Africa, as a continent, is somehow genetically inferior, I can only apologize unreservedly. That is not what I meant. More importantly from my point of view, there is no scientific basis for such a belief."
Was Dr. Watson quoted incorrectly, misunderstood or does he believe that whites, in general, are superior to blacks? What do you think?
Below are several links to sources publishing the story.
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/article2630748.ece
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,303432,00.html
http://www.newsday.com/news/local/longisland/ny-liwats1019,0,1054521.story?coll=ny_home_rail_headlines
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11 comments:
It is time for the human race to stop putting one group over the other. It gets the species absolutely no where.
The question shouldn't be whether we disagree or agree with his statement, whether it was meant one way or another, the real question should be, Why are we even talking about this anymore?
We have seen many incidences in the last hundred years of ethnic cleansing, genocide, etc.(Hitler, Bosnia, Africa). Enough is enough!
Some people are more intelligent than others, some people are more physically fit than others, some people are more compassionate and emotional than others, some people do harm, some people do good, and any other possible combination of this or that. In other words, all of us have different talents and gifts. So we can say that we are all not equal to each other because of our individual strengths or weaknesses, but to generically label one group of people as inferior or superior, is not scientific, its pure prejudicism.
I was once told, and I believe this to be true, that any human being today, could accomplish anything that any other human being in the history of the world has ever accomplished (lets not point out the obvious, like a parapaligic trying to run a marathon in record time).
I was also told, and I wish for all the people who can walk on water to pay close attention, that God has created us all with different gifts. It is like the human race is a tree. Some people are the leaves on higher branches for their different abilities and some people are on lower branches for those same abilities, and visa versa. But we are all part of the same tree and we all need each other for our different strengths. As a whole, the tree can't survive just from one part of the tree. It needs the entire tree to survive and flourish.
I love random science like this. Can you call it science even though? Whatever, I think it is hilarious--racism in itself is hilarous.
There is no science to this. Valid scientific evidence rejects these kinds of claims almost 100%. This is one of those times where someone who is an expert in one field spoke about something in another field and he was way off.
I believe they are warped in their thinking. What would you call a guy from India? I would call him an Indian and I would be correct. Yet, that is a nationality not a color. His color is black most African americans have the same skin tone if not lighter than a lot of these Indians. Yet, Indians are seen to be smart are they not? Therefore, his research being done only in Africa is not just. I consider myself to be black yet I am not African American and not even half African American. Whites also have different nationalities (Irish, Spanish, English, and etc.) and so do blacks. Therefore, for a proper test to be done all of this has to be taken into consideration.
Proper tests have been done and they reject what this guy is saying almost 100%. You do find that certain races and ethnicities tend to score lower on intelligence tests, but this is a spurious relationship. When you control for socioeconomic status, the differences disappear. This means that poor people do bad on such tests and rich people do good on them, regardless of race an ethnicity. Rich black people do just as well as rich whites and poor whites do just as bad as poor blacks.
I think people say things like this just to get a rise out of people. Whether or not he sincerely belives this, he said it, and some people say things candidly and then recant them to avoid criticism yet the damage is done. No level-headed intelligent would concur with foolish statements like these, and I wouldn't give him the satisfaction of getting upset about it.
I don't have a "bluemeanie" in my gradebook, so I can't give you credit for these posts unless you go back to each individual post an add your name.
i think that this is insane, color is not a factor in being smart. Genetics is a factor in that yes some whites may be smarter than some blacks, but if you were not able to learn and stayed in fields workig your whole life as a slave the people in your family line would be dumb to
I'm not racist, but somebody tell me what social policies aren't based on the fact that us and Africa are equal in intelligence. And since people love to get technical, we aren't created equal. Of course, racism is wrong on every level, but to answer that question; yes he was quoted wrong. Anything to get a rise out of people is worth arguing about, right? And seriously, what doctor that publishes studies like this is NOT going to be quoted wrong? Also, at any given time that someone is going to perform these studies, people are going to assume that it is done out of racism or hatred against opposing groups of people.
I don't have a "dustinmc1708" in my gradebook. You can't get credit without putting your real name on this comment.
Speaking as someone who studies policy, we don't take intelligence of a particular group of people into account when making policies. Individuals aren't created equal, but races are. He wasn't quoted wrong, he misspoke. Most people who publish things are not quoted wrong and neither was he. The whole point is that there are exactly zero studies that say that whites are more intelligent than blacks. For one, "intelligence" is something we can't really measure accurately. IQ doesn't actually measure intelligence, it measure's ones ability to perform in Western schools and nothing else. Similarly, anything else that supposedly measures "intelligence" in reality measures "knowledge," something completely unrelated.
You will find that black Americans typically score worse on tests than white Americans. But this is a spurious relationship that has nothing to do with the intelligence of people of either race. It is directly caused by socioeconomic status. Poor whites and poor blacks do equally bad on measures of intelligence. Rich whites and rich blacks do equally well. The difference is not race. We have more than 100 years of scientific evidence that shows there is not a difference in intelligence based on race. For someone to reject all of the evidence and suggest the opposite is, by definition, a racist thing to do, because we know for a fact that it isn't true.
I think people say things like this just to get a rise out of people. Whether or not he sincerely belives this, he said it, and some people say things candidly and then recant them to avoid criticism yet the damage is done. No level-headed intelligent would concur with foolish statements like these, and I wouldn't give him the satisfaction of getting upset about it.
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