Wednesday, October 17, 2007

The Great Grudge of Dr James Watson or How White People are More Intelligent Than Black People

Apparently black people (yes, your blogger included) are less intelligent than white people - the "testing" proves it. :-) And this from no less an authority than the Nobel prize-winning, DNA-double-helix-unwinding Dr James Watson himself. OK, sensationalist headlines to attract more readers aside, I think this is clearly a case of some scientist dude having a bad experience with their (black) employees, and generalizing it to cover every black person on the planet.

Something like this:

Dr Watson comes home from work. His wife waits with dinner on the table, heated right on time for when he got here (Dr Watson is never late, Dr Watson is never early). He sits, dons napkin, waits for the first course to be served.

His wife comes in with the first set of dishes, exuding cheeriness and goodwill, because she senses that something is wrong, tonight. It is in the way Dr Watson sits, the way he holds the soup-spoon, the angle of his neck, how his gaze seems fixed yet takes in nothing (a wife learns to read these things, especially if they are married to a temperamental but famous scientist doctor).

Wife: What's wrong, dear?

Dr Watson: It's those bloody black employees again...

Wife: [thinks "Oh boy"] Why do you always let them bother you? Look - I made your favorite mutton stew.

She sets the bowl before him, and withdraws to sit at a chair nearby. Dr Watson slurps the stew out of the bowl, angrily and with none of the usual expressions of delight (such as "Hmmm", and "What lovely stew this is!" and "I would give up my Nobel Prize for this stew, darling"). His wife sits watching, worry written all over her face. She wishes she could get her hand on those bloody employees, always putting her husband in such a state - she hates it when he is angry. Finally, when he is done slurping, Dr Watson sets the spoon down and sits looking straight ahead, waiting for the second course, not talking, still fuming (literally - she can see the fumes rising from his angry, hunched shoulders).

The Wife gets up, and as she passes on her way back to the kitchen she places a hand on his left shoulder.

Wife: Dear...

Dr Watson (sounding bitter and disillusioned): Here we are, trying our best to come up with social policies for Africa, and how do these people repay us? They come to work and laze all day, they never do what they're assigned...

Wife: [understanding look] (Dr Watson's wife has mastered understanding looks, to such a degree that she can give them an eloquence which mere words fail at achieving).

Dr Watson: You know, I look at them, and it is clear to me what is wrong - they are less intelligent than us. [He grows excited, so he trembles beneath her hand. "Oh dear", thinks Dr Watson's wife, "here we go again"]. Yes! Yes - that must be it. All these Africans are less intelligent than us - there is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically.

Wife: Of course Dear. Don't get too excited now - you know it's bad for the digestion. Let me get you the second course....


And then, of course, the interview with the newspaper happens the next day, and our hero, still bearing a grudge against those "bloody black employees" lets loose with his new theory.

And the rest, as they say, is history.

[original post]

2 comments:

  1. Funny when I read about it, but its just the "scientific" credibility some people would need to go back to their openly discriminatory methods...

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  2. NOTE: I think it would be fair to report Watson's apology for his remarks.(yeah,I know it's too late for an apology).

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