I cannot understand how I could have said what I am quoted as having said.
October 19th 2007 11:23 pm
OK. If you haven’t heard already Dr. James D. Watson, Nobel Prize winner and DNA pioneer, does not like black people. I don’t know if that is the case but he does think that Africans are intellectually inferior…
In an interview published Sunday in The Times of London, Dr. Watson is quoted as saying that while “there are many people of color who are very talented,” he is “inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa.”
“All our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours — whereas all the testing says not really,” the newspaper quoted him as saying.
Before I even address that comment I want to tell a story about myself in school working on my bachelors, wont mention the school but it is the best engineering school in the South, and when I had an epiphany about intelligence. There is a general class on electromagnetics that everyone has to take if you are majoring in electrical engineering. That was the hardest class I think I have ever had. I would study, study, study and I still only had a surface level understanding of what was going on in the class. It actually seemed like everyone else was in the same boat and the grades reflected it because the average was around the mid 30’s out of 100. But, there were two people in the class that just got it. A Russian dude that was probably 30 at the time and a good friend of mine from NY. He had dreads and looked nothing like a stereotypical engineer but he was a genius. The two of them basically taught the rest of us enough so we could just pass the class…and we were are all extremely bright but we needed help.
What I found was that there are a lot of smart people of all different races. The common denominators of most of them (not all)…a good drive to succeed, decent schools growing up, and someone at home (parents, mentor, etc.) that instilled good educational habits. Then there are just some that are plain geniuses and it was just a gift. I saw as many white, Asian, Indian, and Black people who fell in the genius category but way more middle-upper class white people in the pretty smart but not genius area. So, I believe that your environment and home factors really have a big factor on intelligence. Not race or sex and I base that only on the super smart people I have run into in my life because it has been about equal (by race) across the board.
Late yesterday, the board of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, a research institution in New York, issued a statement saying it was suspending the administrative responsibilities of Dr. Watson as chancellor “pending further deliberation.”
On Wednesday, Bruce Stillman, president of the laboratory, had issued a statement saying the laboratory’s trustees, administration and faculty “vehemently disagree” with the sentiments of Dr. Watson, who has served as director and president of the laboratory, whose school of biological sciences is named for him.
Scientists at Cold Spring Harbor study plant and animal genetics, cancer and other diseases. Dr. Stillman said they did not “engage in any research that could even form the basis of the statements attributed to Dr. Watson.”…
There is wide agreement among researchers on intelligence that genetic inheritance influences mental acuity, but there is also wide agreement that life experiences, even in the womb, exert a powerful influence on brain structure. Further, there is wide disagreement about what intelligence consists of and how — or even if — it can be measured in the abstract.
For example, in “The Mismeasure of Man,” Stephen Jay Gould, the evolutionary biologist, dismissed “the I.Q. industry” as little more than an effort by men of European descent to maintain their prominence in the world.
So to his comments…I have no comment. I’m not smart enough to understand. I will leave you with a little something a different Nobel Prize winner thought…
Here’s something you probably don’t know about Albert Einstein.
In 1946, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist traveled to Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, the alma mater of Langston Hughes and Thurgood Marshall and the first school in America to grant college degrees to blacks. At Lincoln, Einstein gave a speech in which he called racism “a disease of white people,” and added, “I do not intend to be quiet about it.” He also received an honorary degree and gave a lecture on relativity to Lincoln students.
Monique responded on 20 Oct 2007 at 6:12 pm #
That’s a crying shame that a Nobel Prize winner would be that stupid to make comments like that.
shae-shae responded on 21 Oct 2007 at 7:46 pm #
People will say anything out their mouths without thinking about the consequences or potential consequences.