" The Science of Racism"
Last fall, James Watson, the father of DNA, spoke the unspeakable,
saying that blacks are intellectually inferior. In a conversation
with
The Root Editor-in-Chief Henry Louis Gates Jr., Watson clarified his
views about race and genetics. Read what he says now =97 and why Gates
regards him as "a racialist."
TheRoot.com
Updated: 2:07 PM ET May 30, 2008
June 2, 2008 -- James Watson has long assumed a certain special
status
among American scientists. The molecular biologist was awarded the
Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1962, along with Francis
Crick and Maurice Wilkins, for, as the Swedish Academy put it in its
announcement for the prize, "their discoveries concerning the
molecular structure of nucleic acids and its significance for
information transfer in living material." Watson and his British
colleague Crick are remembered popularly for identifying the elegant
and unexpected "double helix" three-dimensional structure of
deoxyribonucleic acid, commonly known as DNA. Watson's im****tant
contribution to this uncanny discovery was to define how the four
nucleotide bases that make up DNA=97guanine (G), cytosine (C), adenine
(A) and thymine (T)=97combine in pairs to form its structure. These
base
pairs turn out to be the key to both the structure of DNA and its
various functions. In other words, Watson identified the language and
the code by which we understand and talk about our genetic makeup.
I have been among those who have long held Watson in high regard for
several reasons. First of all, the discovery of DNA's three-
dimensional structure was counterintuitive; it was an ingenious act
of
deduction, using models made of cardboard and paste with an exacto
knife and a straight edge. How Watson and Crick, working at the
Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge, became the first
scientists to identify this elusive structure is the stuff of drama,
especially when we recall that Watson was just 25 years old when he
and Crick published their findings in the journal Nature on April 25,
1953.
Though Watson would tell me during our recent interview that he had a
rather low IQ, as proof that IQ tests aren't really that im****tant,
he
enrolled at the University of Chicago when he was merely 15 and
earned
his B.S. in zoology there in 1947 at the age of 19 and a Ph.D. in
zoology from Indiana University at age 22. He was 34 when he won the
Nobel Prize. Not too shabby for a guy with a "low" IQ.
Watson's youth and a certain absent-minded professorial quirkiness
made him an American hero, the symbol of American enterprise and
intelligence. What's more, unlike Crick, or Einstein, say, Watson was
an American born and bred: His discovery, coming at the height of the
Cold War, would be hailed as attesting to American genius and the
unrivaled potential of the free market system versus communism. The
intrigue over allegations that Watson and Crick made unauthorized use
of the seminal work on X-ray diffraction by Rosalind Franklin, a
brilliant scientist who died before the Nobel Prize committee made
its
decision, only made Watson's story all the more titillating.
And Watson=97never camera shy or publicity averse=97contributed to the
power of his own myth first by writing "Molecular Biology of the
Gene," a 1965 textbook that, updated, remains enormously popular
today, and, three years later, "The Double Helix," an account of the
dramatic story of his discovery that also contained startling and
scandalous revelations of petty tensions, jealousies and rivalries
among scientists whom we all had assumed were motivated primarily by
the pursuit of truth. Watson's book did nothing less than deconstruct
the myth of the scientist as secular saint, laboring away in a
laboratory for knowledge's sake at the service of mankind. (One
scientist summed up Watson's view of the scientific profession as
"with malice toward most and charity toward none.") But Watson's
account also made his quest to determine the structure of DNA
gripping
and exciting, one of science's greatest and most compelling triumphs.
Though he was a professor at Harvard University at the time=97he taught
there from 1956 to 1976=97the Harvard University Press refused to
publish the book because of its tell-all nature. A commercial press
published it instead, it became a best-seller and Watson's celebrity
only grew.
In 1989, such was the power and force of Watson's reputation and his
place in the history of science that he was named the head of the
Human Genome Project at the National Institutes of Health, a position
he held until 1992, when he resigned because of what he said was his
opposition to NIH's intention to patent gene sequences; others
suggested his owner****p of stock in biotechnology companies posed a
possible conflict of interest. In 1994, Watson became president of
the
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (he had been its director since 1968),
a
lavishly funded and idyllic center on Long Island for the advanced
study of genomics and cancer that in 1998 created the Watson School
of
Biological Sciences. In 2004, he became Cold Spring's chancellor.
On Oct. 14, 2007, one of Watson's former assistants, Charlotte Hunt-
Grubbe, wrote an article about him in London's Sunday Times that
quoted him making racist comments about black people by suggesting
there are inherent, unalterable biological differences in
intelligence
between black people and everyone else. The response was swift and
impressively devastating. The father of DNA had spoken the
unspeakable. Echoing racist remarks that have been used to justify
the
enslavement and colonization of black people since the Enlightenment
(think Hume, Kant, Jefferson, Hegel), Watson's comments implied that
he believed that nature had created a primal distinction in
intelligence and innate mental capacity between blacks and whites,
which no amount of social intervention could ever change.
He had uttered the unutterable, the most ardent fantasy of white
racists (David Duke would wax poetic on his Web site that the truth
had at last been revealed, and by no less than the discoverer of the
structure of DNA). His words caused a ripple effect of shock, dismay
and disgust among those of us who embrace the range of biological
diversity and potential within the human community. It was as if one
of the smartest white men in the world had confirmed what so many
racists believe already: that the gap between blacks and whites in,
say, IQ test scores and SAT results has a biological basis and that
environmental factors such as centuries of slavery, colonization, Jim
Crow segregation and race-based discrimination=97all contributing to
uneven economic development=97don't amount to a hill of beans. Nature
has given us an extra basketball gene, as it were, in lieu of native
intelligence.
Watson is no stranger to controversy. Since the heated critical
reception to the publication of "The Double Helix" 40 years ago, he
has seemed to delight in making, with some regularity, outrageously
provocative comments, comments designed at best to disturb the status
quo, to shock if not awe both his fellow scientists and the general
public. His autobiography, "Avoid Boring People," published in
September 2007, lambastes his fellow scientists as "dinosaurs,"
"deadbeats" and "has-beens." By the time the London Sunday Times
article appeared, Watson had been engaged in several controversies
over genetic screening, genetic engineering, homo***uality, obesity
and the pur****ted relation between skin color and libido.
But none of those controversies could begin to prepare him for the
intensity of the firestorm ignited by the Sunday Times article, which
quoted him as saying that "he was inherently gloomy about the
prospect
of Africa," since "all of our social policies are based on the fact
that their intelligence is the same as ours=97whereas all the testing
says not really"; that "people who have to deal with black employees
find that [the belief that everyone is equal] is not true"; and that
"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." Five days after the article was published, he
profusely apologized in a statement to the press; on Oct. 25, he
abruptly retired from his position at Cold Spring Harbor, after 40
years of service there.
When I read about Watson's remarks, I was astonished, not to mention
angered and saddened. I was also determined to ask him about these
comments directly. Though The Root was still in its nascent form and
we wouldn't launch until January 2008, I sent him a letter, offering
him a platform in the black world through which he could explain,
defend and perhaps clarify the remarks attributed to him. He accepted
my invitation to give The Root his first major interview since the
Hunt-Grubbe article appeared.
I had read, with the admiring avidity of a high school senior
hellbent
on medical school, his best-selling book, "The Double Helix," back in
1968. It never occurred to me that I would one day be making
do***entaries for public television about the uses of DNA for
ancestry
tracing among African Americans. But it was not until December 2006
that I met the scientist I had so admired. I was in New York,
delivering a lecture for alumni of Clare College at the University of
Cambridge. I had earned my M.A. and Ph.D. in English language and
literature from Clare in February 1979, and Watson was living there
and working at the Cavendish Laboratory when he and Crick identified
the structure of DNA. As I rose to deliver my lecture at the podium,
the Master of Clare College whispered to me that James Watson was in
the audience. I was astonished; I had no idea that he was still
alive.
Following the lecture, I was seated next to Dr. Watson at dinner. He
was indeed still alive; he was a sprightly and mentally acute 78 at
the time. I found him friendly, but a bit awkward in conversation;
generous and thoughtful, funny, but quirky-funny. A week later,
unsolicited, a signed copy of "The Double Helix" arrived at my home.
I thought of that slightly awkward dinner conversation and his
gracious gift as I arrived at his offices at Cold Spring Harbor on
March 17 for our interview. We talked for well over an hour, with no
holds barred.
"Well?" one of my friends asked later. "Is he a racist?"
I don't think James Watson is a racist. But I do think that he is a
racialist=97that is, he believes that certain observable traits or
forms
of behavior among groups of human beings might, indeed, have a
biological basis in the code that scientists, eventually, may be able
to ascertain, that the "gene" is some mythically neutral space and
what it pur****tedly "measures" or "determines" is independent of
environmental factors, variables and influences. The difference, the
distinction, between being a racist and a racialist is crucial. James
Watson is not the garden-variety racist as he has been caricatured by
the press and bloggers, the sort epitomized by David Duke and his
ilk,
and he seemed genuinely chagrined, embarrassed and remorseful that
Duke and other racists had claimed him as their champion, as one of
their own, because of his remarks as quoted in the London Sunday
Times. And, as we might expect, he apologized profusely for those
remarks, contending that he had been misquoted, at worst, and his
remarks taken out of context, at best. (I have not been able to
determine if the writer who re****ted the remarks taped them or
reconstructed them from notes or memory.)
But I did leave Cold Spring Harbor convinced that Dr. Watson
believes
that many forms of behavior=97such as "Jewish intelligence" (his
phrase)
and the basketball prowess of black men in the NBA (his example)=97
could, possibly, be traced to genetic differences among human beings,
although no such connection has been made, and will probably never be
made on any firm scientific basis, it seems to me. And I have to say
that it was ultimately chilling to me when he remarked, with what
seemed to me to be monumental naivete, that "if they find genes for
all kinds of Jewish intelligence, I don't think it's going to affect
me in the slightest," especially when we couple that sort of remark
with his passionate belief that "everyone should be judged as
individuals. No one should be judged by a term like 'black.'"
Yet precisely because of the misuses of science and pseudoscience
since the 18th century, which put into place fixed categories of
four
or five "races" to justify an economic order dependent upon the
exploitation of blacks (and other people of color) as cheap sources
of
labor, starting with slavery and continuing through Jim Crow and
beyond, it has never been possible for a person of African descent to
function in American society simply and purely as an "individual."
And
if the presidential candidacy of Barack Obama has taught him, and us,
anything at all, it is that this perhaps ideal state of affairs=97to
function as an individual and to be judged on your individual merits=97
still remains a most elusive and somewhat na=EFve dream.
Watson's error is that he associates individual genetic differences
(which, of course, do in fact exist) with ethnic variation (which is
sociocultural and highly malleable). Character traits=97abilities and
behaviors, such as intelligence or basketball skills, that are
popularly attributed to groups and are defined as "genetic"=97will, in
fact, continue to delimit the freedom of choice and expression of
individuals who fall into those "racial" categories, regardless of
our
individual attainments and achievements. In the end, visions that are
racialist may end up doing the same work of those that are racist.
This is a lesson Watson has lived, and it is one from which we all
might learn.
Having spent the past three decades studying racist discourse in the
West (starting with my Ph.D. dissertation on the Enlightenment), I
know that such conclusions=97say, about an entity called "Jewish
intelligence"=97would deleteriously affect me as a black person because
it would reinforce stereotypes about Jewish people being genetically
superior to us, and that such a conclusion would reinforce
stereotypes
about black people being inherently less intelligent than other
members of the human community. If such differences in intelligence
were pur****ted to have a genetic basis, as David Duke proclaimed on
his Web site with such ****d glee, all of the social intervention in
the world could have only so much effect. (Head Start? Why bother,
when nature is to blame.) Sooner or later, in a time of increasing
economic scarcity, members of these supposedly "different" or
"lesser"
ethnic groups or genetic populations could very well find their life
possibilities limited and perhaps even regulated. Who among us can
doubt that this would be true?
Likewise, I worry even more that Dr. Watson confessed to me that "we
shouldn't expect that different persons have equal intelligence,
because we don't know that. And people say that these should be the
same [that is, that all human beings, that all members of different
"racial" groups, should have the same basic range and potential for
development of intelligence genetically]. I think the answer is we
don't know." And later, he remarked in passing that "we're not all
the
same," by which he meant genetically. Rest assured that in the very
near future, some scientist somewhere will claim to have proven this
through our genes, and that claim will be deeply problematic for the
future development of black people in American society.
As I drove away from Cold Spring Harbor, I realized that my
conversation with Dr. Watson only confirmed something I already, with
great trepidation, have come to believe: That the last great battle
over racism will be fought not over access to a lunch counter, or a
hotel room, or to the right to vote, or even the right to occupy the
White House; it will be fought in a laboratory, in a test tube, under
a microscope, in our genome, on the battleground of our DNA. It is
here where we, as a society, will rank and interpret our genetic
difference.
(Henry Louis Gates Jr. is editor-in-chief of The Root and is the
Alphonse Fletcher University Professor at Harvard University.)
http://www.theroot.com/id/46680/page/1
|
