The Sunday Times newspaper out of London, England is reporting that perhaps that debatable the most accomplished scientist on earth, James Watson, is claiming that black people are “scientifically” less intelligent than white people. Could it be the smartest man on the planet just made the dumbest comment of the year?

James Watson is the world reknown 79-year-old geneticist who was awarded the Nobel Prize for his part in discovering the DNA structure. As part of a publicity campaign to promote a new book, Watson told the Times he was “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 said he hoped that everyone was equal, but countered that “people who have to deal with black employees find this not true.”

He says that you should not discriminate on the basis of color, because “there are many people of color who are very talented, but don’t promote them when they haven’t succeeded at the lower level”. He went on to say “there is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically. Our wanting to reserve equal powers of reason as some universal heritage of humanity will not be enough to make it so.”

Ordinarily I would chalk this one up to his old age. However, Watson is a professional bigot. On record he’s said woman should have the right to abort her unborn child ONLY IF tests could determine it would be homosexual and has claimed that that beauty could be genetically manufactured. “People say it would be terrible if we made all girls pretty.” He said I think it would be great.”

Watson said something very dumb, probably in part to promote his book, but his words don’t make him any less smart. His claims ARE probably based in scientific conclusions probably based on flawed or biased sampling. This is simply a classic example of one unfortunate reality of humanity. No one likes anyone else and we never did. Whether it was the Crusades, Spanish American War, The Battle of Little Bighorn, the Jewish/ Palestinian conflict or the War on Terror, we have always been fueled by our inability to accept differences in others.

In reading the article, I couldn’t help but notice some of the hateful reaction remarks (most of them from Americans) who have used this article to provide a public forum to spew racist hate. I can only sit here and shake my head. Not only are Watson’s claims baseless but by using his public esteem as a former Nobel Prize winner to provide the fallacy of credibility, he has recklessly tried to justify more racism and discrimination and perhaps the institution of slavery.

Honestly it’s nonsense. In the end all he’s saying is job selection should be based on merit not race, the rest is just racist window dressing. But it highlights an important point, this is why it is important as a person of color to always promote a image of dignity and self respect. This type of attitude is brought about by the clownish buffoonery we see proliferated in Hip Hop and Sports today. Keep it clean.